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I did a liberal arts degree and some time afterwards a CS masters. To me I got educated by doing arts and got qualified by doing CS. Being exposed to challengi

by k_kelly 14y ago

I did a liberal arts degree and some time afterwards a CS masters. To me I got educated by doing arts and got qualified by doing CS. Being exposed to challenging opinions on what it means to live is not going to come up in an engineering interview but I don't feel poorer for thinking about it. I almost feel like arts would do much better as a sabbatical from a real degree, where you took a year to think about yourself and your interests. Certainly price is the biggest problem here, no college degrees are worth their current prices, what you bank on is that they allow you to skip ahead of others less qualified to get better paid jobs, with no defined career from liberal arts this is a massive problem. Your education had value, but to yourself and writing a check for a hundred thousand dollars to yourself at 18 is not a wise investment period. On the other hand, CS majors are failed by their course too, everyone knows that a CS grad who only learns the prescribed texts is not the best grad. All college degrees do these days is determine intent. Education right now is at a massive junction, I feel like an arts student who used their extra free hours to hit Udacity, Coursera and mitX as well as building a github and doing internships in software companies would be downright dangerous when they graduated.

cafard 14y ago
I did the same route--BA and then about 15 years later CS masters. I would say that the liberal arts education gave me some of the background I needed to continue my education; I didn't even at the time consider myself educated. And I should say that I spent a good deal of those 15 years fairly broke, not from loans hanging over me but from low earning power while I figured out what to do next. Price is the killer. In the mid-1970s, a kid stocking shelves or pumping gas could make a year's tuition at a state school with a fair bit left over during the course of summer's work. For a private school it might be more like a third of tuition, leaving a couple thousand to be come by some other way.

by k_kelly 14y ago

cafard 14y ago

I did the same route--BA and then about 15 years later CS masters. I would say that the liberal arts education gave me some of the background I needed to continue my education; I didn't even at the time consider myself educated. And I should say that I spent a good deal of those 15 years fairly broke, not from loans hanging over me but from low earning power while I figured out what to do next. Price is the killer. In the mid-1970s, a kid stocking shelves or pumping gas could make a year's tuition at a state school with a fair bit left over during the course of summer's work. For a private school it might be more like a third of tuition, leaving a couple thousand to be come by some other way.