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Good point. I agree. I recall something being proposed in the state of Oregon: students don't pay tuition up front. Instead, a fixed percentage of a student
by JPKab 13y ago
Good point. I agree. I recall something being proposed in the state of Oregon: students don't pay tuition up front. Instead, a fixed percentage of a student's income for a designated time period after graduation is paid to the institution. I think this would have some amusingly rapid effects on ALL colleges. You wouldn't see schools like the University of Florida which recently axed their CS program in favor of expanding their English and History programs. My university is a decent one, but efforts to help graduating students get jobs were minimal and token: job fairs? I've attended your school for year, paying tons of money, and your best effort at job placement is a fucking job fair? And let's not forget the out of touch, tenured professors teaching out-dated skills. I'm looking at you, Virginia Tech, for continuing to teach your Introduction to Computer Science class with C++, while MIT and Harvard use Python. Students leave THEIR classes having learned to build things. They leave your shit C++ class having learned to build nothing other than homework solutions that have zero applicability in the real world.
- dagw 13y agoI think this would have some amusingly rapid effects on ALL colleges Undoubtedly, but would they be positive? Universities are not vocational schools, nor do I think they should be. Their goal should be to give you deep theoretical and philosophical understanding of your field of interest. The practical stuff you can pick up on the job or on your own. If you don't want that, but rather want to learn the current industry best practice in how to build web apps in Rails, then you should go to a vocational school. I'm not saying the current system is perfect or even very good, and there is much universities can do to improve. But forcing them to focus 100% on getting their students jobs is not the answer. The answer in my opinion is to stop demanding university degrees for every job, focus a lot more on creating industry specific 1-2 year trade schools for those who just want to learn a useful skill, and let universities be for people who enjoy a heavier focus on theory, research and pushing the state of the art.
- cafard 13y agoI have met at lest a couple of very sharp folks who came out of VT. One recent graduate, the son of an acquaintance immediately started working on air control simulation software.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoYou actually believe C++ isn't used in the real world?
- nine_k 13y agoWoefully, it is.
- JPKab 13y agoOf course not. It's just that its a god-awful way to introduce a general student population to Computer Science. Maybe its ok for CS majors, but even then I'm not sold. I think it should be reserved for a few semesters in, once students have an idea of what they CAN do, then focus on C++ in the sense that its where the real deal performance and mission critical stuff is built.
- gyom 13y agoI assumed that he meant that the kind of homeworks that you can realistically give students in C++ is going to be restricted to very elementary things that are not very representative of the "real" software that people encounter in the "real" world.