> Universities are designed to give you a firm grounding in the fundamental concepts, which should give you the ability to understand whatever tools are in fash

> Universities are designed to give you a firm grounding in the fundamental concepts, which should give you the ability to understand whatever tools are in fashion in the industry with relative ease. One of the things that continually frustrates me about people's attitudes toward higher education (at least in the U.S.) is that they don't recognize this fact. An undergraduate university education should give you a general competence, self-motivation, and curiosity. More particular skills can be learned elsewhere; if you spend your time in college learning Java instead of learning to be a well-rounded, thinking, educated person, you're making an expensive mistake. Particular skills go stale quickly, and, unlike other subjects you could study instead, they often lack intrinsic interest. Companies used to hire people with general competence and then train them in the particular skills they need on the job. I'm not sure why people now seem to expect students to learn these skills at universities, at their own expense. It seems to me that the burden of this training should be on industry, not on universities and their graduates.