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Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything. What are you even interested in? I went to college thin

by Zimahl 14y ago

Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything. What are you even interested in? I went to college thinking chemistry or chemical engineering. Found I just didn't like either and moved to computer science. At 18 it's hard to even have a clue. It's hard to feel sorry for the kids coming out of school with loan debt and a sociology degree. That's a career, but you need to know your field is full of people and it's going to be tough to find a job. Kids today need to adjust their expectations. But the article is rubbish. 4 year apprenticeship for an associates and your journeyman card? Fine, anyone can find a machinist school (won't cost $44k per year) and be a machinist but that doesn't make you a materials scientist who came up with the alloy. You aren't going to be doing that without college.

eshvk 14y ago
The problem is that young people make stupid mistakes. While you selected a career which will be fruitful and possibly pay off your loan debt, a load of young people make career decisions based on flowery statements like "change the world" or "make a difference" and end up being baristas in Starbucks. There is a certain value inherent in expanding your intellect by going through college, I am not so sure it is worth doing that at the cost of crippling financial debt if you are not absolutely sure where you are going with it. So maybe the solution is to spend a few years mucking out at different things figuring out what you like before blowing through a ton of cash going to college.
potatolicious 14y ago
Can we have this self-discovery process without the giant 6-figure bill? As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose a field where paying it off is a piece of cake. In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs, but for the most part people studying for these jobs have completely abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the non-regulated sense of those words). A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.
- Zimahl 14y ago
  Six figures? You know all those taxes you (or your parents) pay to the state you are living in? Some of those are going to subsidize in-state colleges. If you want to go to an expensive private school or out-of-state because they are top notch, you'd better be top notch as well. Like I've said elsewhere, if you aren't willing to pay the cost, maybe that degree or school isn't worth it.
- jshowa 14y ago
  >> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs. >> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless. So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless? Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes logic and rationality out the door.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    You're splitting hairs on semantics - the notion of a "knowledge economy" as we've been referring to it for, oh, 3 decades now, does not exclude the value of experience. Knowledge economy doesn't imply that experience or skill is unnecessary, it is simply a catch-all term that suggests that low-skill, menial labor jobs are disappearing (and they are). The level of training required for any in-demand job, whether it's an electrician or an astrophysicist, is much, much higher than it historically has been. > "So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless?" I don't like to yell, but here it is plainly: YES. The kind of things they make you work in school, even in advanced degrees, is nothing like what private industry needs. Shit, the software engineering program at my alma mater spends a shitload of time on UML, as opposed to practical architectural skills that are actually useful in the real world. Your school projects do not in any meaningful way approximate a real software project in the real world. Your design docs are held to a completely different standard than real design docs, and the process by which they are synthesized, iterated upon, and approved is also either completely absent in academia or heavily bastardized. Likewise, programming exercises you see your typical CS or engineering program are incredibly simplistic compared to what you would run into the real-world once you're hacking on production systems at-scale. This is why open source experience is valuable, but class projects are not. A CS student, sans external experience, is like a Call of Duty player joining the Army. Heart might be in the right place, but by God they are a long way from ready. [edit] On-topic but aside: consistently the second worst programmers I've ever interviewed in my life are PhD candidates or holders. They are almost universally clueless, able to rattle off all kinds of incredibly complex knowledge, but are absolutely clueless about real-world engineering issues, and generally poor at implementation. Scalability and usability are theoretical constructs to the bulk of them. They can talk a lot of shop about algorithms, but to get them to implement their own algorithms (and do it well) is nigh impossible. Code quality is on the whole probably worse than fresh undergrads. Off-topic and aside: the worst demographic I've ever had the pleasure of regularly interviewing are current/former employees of outsourcing consultancies (Accenture, InfoSys, and the ilk). I'm unsure what percentage of their programmer population actually know how to code, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's < 25%. I've interviewed multiple such candidates who couldn't put together a loop in a language of their choosing.
funkdobiest 14y ago
i think the anti-college attitude comes from the cost of college being far more of a burden than what you can make from the degree. I was a self taught developer who learned a lot from reading stuff on the internet and lots of books, before going to college and getting that expensive piece of paper. In which most of the teachers that taught me were actually behind on the technology, which can cause quite a bit of conflict when you know that the class is being taught incorrectly.
jseliger 14y ago
Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything. I think the problems are several-fold: 1. College works for many people but not all. In addition, there's an American cultural meme that claims college is the absolute and only key/way to success, which isn't or shouldn't be true. I think you're experiencing the backlash, and you're part of the backlash to the backlash (the forelash, perhaps?). 2. The price of college is eroding the lifetime earnings gains for graduates in many fields. 3. Many people don't realize how universities work, which I've written about here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-how-universities-work-and-other-essays/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-how-universitie... and elsewhere. 4. Academics face perverse incentives that demand they produce research, even of dubious or low quality, rather than teach. Consequently, the academic experience many people have in college, especially big public schools, is at hit and miss, with a strong emphasis on miss. For highly self-motivated people, this might not be as big an issue.

by Zimahl 14y ago

eshvk 14y ago

The problem is that young people make stupid mistakes. While you selected a career which will be fruitful and possibly pay off your loan debt, a load of young people make career decisions based on flowery statements like "change the world" or "make a difference" and end up being baristas in Starbucks. There is a certain value inherent in expanding your intellect by going through college, I am not so sure it is worth doing that at the cost of crippling financial debt if you are not absolutely sure where you are going with it. So maybe the solution is to spend a few years mucking out at different things figuring out what you like before blowing through a ton of cash going to college.

potatolicious 14y ago

Can we have this self-discovery process without the giant 6-figure bill? As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose a field where paying it off is a piece of cake. In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs, but for the most part people studying for these jobs have completely abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the non-regulated sense of those words). A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.

Zimahl 14y ago
Six figures? You know all those taxes you (or your parents) pay to the state you are living in? Some of those are going to subsidize in-state colleges. If you want to go to an expensive private school or out-of-state because they are top notch, you'd better be top notch as well. Like I've said elsewhere, if you aren't willing to pay the cost, maybe that degree or school isn't worth it.
jshowa 14y ago
>> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs. >> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless. Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless. So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless? Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes logic and rationality out the door.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  You're splitting hairs on semantics - the notion of a "knowledge economy" as we've been referring to it for, oh, 3 decades now, does not exclude the value of experience. Knowledge economy doesn't imply that experience or skill is unnecessary, it is simply a catch-all term that suggests that low-skill, menial labor jobs are disappearing (and they are). The level of training required for any in-demand job, whether it's an electrician or an astrophysicist, is much, much higher than it historically has been. > "So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless?" I don't like to yell, but here it is plainly: YES. The kind of things they make you work in school, even in advanced degrees, is nothing like what private industry needs. Shit, the software engineering program at my alma mater spends a shitload of time on UML, as opposed to practical architectural skills that are actually useful in the real world. Your school projects do not in any meaningful way approximate a real software project in the real world. Your design docs are held to a completely different standard than real design docs, and the process by which they are synthesized, iterated upon, and approved is also either completely absent in academia or heavily bastardized. Likewise, programming exercises you see your typical CS or engineering program are incredibly simplistic compared to what you would run into the real-world once you're hacking on production systems at-scale. This is why open source experience is valuable, but class projects are not. A CS student, sans external experience, is like a Call of Duty player joining the Army. Heart might be in the right place, but by God they are a long way from ready. [edit] On-topic but aside: consistently the second worst programmers I've ever interviewed in my life are PhD candidates or holders. They are almost universally clueless, able to rattle off all kinds of incredibly complex knowledge, but are absolutely clueless about real-world engineering issues, and generally poor at implementation. Scalability and usability are theoretical constructs to the bulk of them. They can talk a lot of shop about algorithms, but to get them to implement their own algorithms (and do it well) is nigh impossible. Code quality is on the whole probably worse than fresh undergrads. Off-topic and aside: the worst demographic I've ever had the pleasure of regularly interviewing are current/former employees of outsourcing consultancies (Accenture, InfoSys, and the ilk). I'm unsure what percentage of their programmer population actually know how to code, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's < 25%. I've interviewed multiple such candidates who couldn't put together a loop in a language of their choosing.

funkdobiest 14y ago

i think the anti-college attitude comes from the cost of college being far more of a burden than what you can make from the degree. I was a self taught developer who learned a lot from reading stuff on the internet and lots of books, before going to college and getting that expensive piece of paper. In which most of the teachers that taught me were actually behind on the technology, which can cause quite a bit of conflict when you know that the class is being taught incorrectly.

jseliger 14y ago

Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything. I think the problems are several-fold: 1. College works for many people but not all. In addition, there's an American cultural meme that claims college is the absolute and only key/way to success, which isn't or shouldn't be true. I think you're experiencing the backlash, and you're part of the backlash to the backlash (the forelash, perhaps?). 2. The price of college is eroding the lifetime earnings gains for graduates in many fields. 3. Many people don't realize how universities work, which I've written about here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-how-universities-work-and-other-essays/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-how-universitie... and elsewhere. 4. Academics face perverse incentives that demand they produce research, even of dubious or low quality, rather than teach. Consequently, the academic experience many people have in college, especially big public schools, is at hit and miss, with a strong emphasis on miss. For highly self-motivated people, this might not be as big an issue.