Quote: Original post by ukdeveloper
Don't be sucked in by the student stereotype of endless drinking and partying.

That seems to be the majority of my memories of University... I do remember that being poor sucked (which is why I don't want to go back for another stint) but I definitely do have otherwise fond memories of my time there.

Maybe the stereotype has just sucked me in so bad, it's altered my own memories!

honestly, I am working a a full time job at this point and finishing my last two classes at school. I have never had to work as hard as you said (12 hr days). You may go to an extremely tough college, but honestly my school was/is so easy i just had to sit through the lectures to pass the test, and at most spend 8hrs of homework per week. At most. The job on the other hand is terrible: long hours, long commute, working in a position well below the ability level i think i have (so is everyone else here to be honest)... I would kill to have no job, but just be a full time student.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
Requiring a university degree is a socially acceptable way to discriminate against poor people and nonconformists. Degrees don't prevent incompetent people from wasting the employer's time and they certainly don't prevent socially retarded people from disrupting the work place. All that is left is that it makes for an easier time processing applicants.

If that's the case, would you support free college tuition for qualified students?

For what it's worth, of the posts on this second page, I agree with frob the most.

Quote: I added emphasis to a few words.

For Computer Science, obviously that's a college/university environment. Going to a trade school for a professional software development job is obviously the wrong track.


I'm talking about more traditional trades: machinists and welding, auto technicians, manufacturing technology, electrical and plumbing apprenticeships, bookkeeping, secretarial, medical assistant, cosmetology, and so on.

These are all jobs that require additional education and training but not necessarily in a post-secondary environment.

Telling people to go to college when they should not go to college is a disservice to everybody, which is why I thought the moral argument was interesting.

Well, at some point, the position of software technician (Note: Not Computer Scientist or Software Engineer) will become a traditional occupation. I don't think I'm being overly revolutionary when I say that your average janitor will be able to write his own backup script in Python two to three generations from now. At one point in history, your average janitor couldn't even spell his own name.

Just like language illiteracy has become a thing of the past, so too will computer illiteracy. Of course, I'm also putting stock on the assumption that the brains of people two to three decades from now will be wired differently from ours.

The problem is, my Country, and I think a lot of other not-fully-developed-but-still-quite-advanced countries are kinda taking advantage of this gearing up during the information revolution, so that they can transform their economies into something Service based. Something which is very advantagous for a country like Malta, which is small, overpopulated, and lacks natural resources (Except the Natural Table Water we use in our pools).

This resulted in...well...trade schools for Software Technicians.

What happened? Job Market exploded with people who knew how to write a small-scale C# program, but who had no idea what C# actually was. Then what happened? Of course, a lot of people, myself included, started shelling out money, and time, to get REAL education in Computer Science. While working in jobs involving software.

I have to say moving from trade-school education to university education is like walking out of the Cave in Plato's Allegory. It's even made me question my career goals numerous times, not really a blessing at twenty-four. Of course, I can't say I would have still appreciated it if I hadn't had hands on experience in writing software. I know a lot of University Graduates here don't remember half the stuff they learned in CS.

I have sympathy for those seeking higher education and feeling angered by the recent tuition hikes. But the fact of the matter is that the entire higher education system needs a big overhaul. People go into 6-figure debt and come out totally unable to find a job in most cases.

Most of the things you can study at university are totally useless from a job-hunting perspective: Sociology and Women's Studies don't put bread on the table. Even the hard science majors are having trouble finding work as it is increasingly shipped overseas.

Yeah, yeah, an education is about improving yourself, not finding a job...heard that one many a time...tell that to the fifty million Americans who struggled to find enough food to eat last year. Intellectual enlightenment is all well and good in times of prosperity, but people need to worry about EATING FIRST in darker times. And darker times are precisely where we are headed for.

It's only really since the post-WWII era that even a sizable minority of the population aspired to higher education. To have half the country spending four years of their lives partying day and night and studying material that leads up a jobless dead-end alley is beyond ludicrous. We are seeing the breakdown of this system because, in the end, its a fundamentally ridiculous system.

I believe wholeheartedly in the power and importance of knowledge, but with the Internet and other forms of communication/interaction, there must be more efficient and rational ways to achieve it. And as stated above the entire concept of what is studied at colleges and universities needs to be revamped so that most people can find some way to make the investment of time and money worthwhile. There will always be a place for the liberal arts, high philosophy, and theoretical studies...but to expect that 40% or more of the population can spend years going into hock to study non-practical fields is not a tenable proposition.

/rant

Quote: Original post by rian carnarvon
I have sympathy for those seeking higher education and feeling angered by the recent tuition hikes. But the fact of the matter is that the entire higher education system needs a big overhaul. People go into 6-figure debt and come out totally unable to find a job in most cases.

That much debt is unnecessary for most schools.

Community colleges and state schools offer great accredited degrees for far less money.

Financial aid is easy to find, and if you work hard you can get full tuition scholarships. If you are poor you can qualify for grants (free money) so the earlier complaints about discrimination against the poor are almost unfounded.

Quote: Most of the things you can study at university are totally useless from a job-hunting perspective: Sociology and Women's Studies don't put bread on the table. Even the hard science majors are having trouble finding work as it is increasingly shipped overseas.

Not at all. Sociology is a big field, so let's try some examples.

You said Women's Studies and related topics. With those you can work in social services. You can get qualified as a counselor for many things. Maybe you want to help rape victims, or family counseling, or work at United Way or YWCA or other major service organizations.

Other sociology topics can get you work in marketing, or as an investigator for criminal deviance, or a job in socioeconomics for government or business, or commercial market research, or medical statistics and clinical evaluations, or political sociology working for government or for parties or individual campaigns, and so on.

Let's assume you are a CS major who is required to take a sociology class or two. While it may not apply DIRECTLY to your job, it enables you to work with and understand many different fields. Even if you resist learning and get nothing else from it, the class will force you outside your comfort zone which is a good thing.

Other topics often considered "worthless" are language-arts and performing arts. The world needs writers for just about everything from movie scripts to copy-desk editing to advertising. Performance arts provide entertainment and enlightenment for the world from your neighborhood piano lessons to concert performances; from child dance classes to exercise classes to professional dance companies. Perhaps another topic like Botany may seem useless to you but are valuable to farmers, landscapers, and your local gardening shop.

Quote: but to expect that 40% or more of the population can spend years going into hock to study non-practical fields is not a tenable proposition.

Just because YOU are not interested in those fields and YOU would not use those skills to get a job does not mean those fields are not practical.

Those are very good points, frob.

Here's something else to consider...

Shocking: High School Grads Twice As Likely To Be Jobless Than College Grads – and Right-Wingers are Profiting From Their Pain (Note that most of this article is political. The info from the article relevant to this thread is in the quote).

Quote:
...
Among college graduates, the unemployment rate for October was 4.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF). For people with some college or an Associate's degree, the rate is almost doubled, at 9 percent. Among high school graduates who never went to college, 11 percent are unemployed, while high-school drop-outs show a whopping 15.5 percent unemployed.
...
(Among African Americans, the unemployment rate for October was 15.7 percent, according to BLS, compared to 9.5 percent for white people. According to a 2003 survey by the U.S. Census, 17 percent of blacks had college diplomas, compared to 27.2 percent of whites.)

A poll released last week by ABC News and the Washington Post found that 30 percent of Americans say that either they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past year, a finding the pollsters present as a new high. But, because it's an average, that figure tells only part of the story. Those losses are not evenly distributed across the economy; pollsters found that people living in households with income of less than $50,000 were twice as likely to have experienced a job loss by a member of their household than those with earnings above that threshold.
...

Quote: Original post by rian carnarvon
People go into 6-figure debt and come out totally unable to find a job in most cases.

I can't really call that anything other than hyperbole. I graduated from a 4-year degree from the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign, which is quite highly rated in CS, accruing a total debt of about $30k. That's not anywhere near 6-figures, and is highly manageable. I got a job right out of college, and it took a total of about 5 years to pay it off.

I did have a friend who was unable to find a job, but she did community college with a part-time job, then transferred into the same university. I think, all told, her total debt was something like $8k.

You certainly can rack up a 6-figure debt if you go to an exclusive school, don't apply for grants/scholarships, don't get a part-time job, etc. In other words, if you go for a high-cost education without attempting to mitigate the cost, then it will be expensive. But there are numerous avenues available to people who want a low-cost education, and I've seen many friends and colleagues manage a college-level education despite tight economic situations.

Its also not a huge surprise that you can't walk out of college straight into a job. A college education is evidence of qualification to an employer, but its not proof. While important, its still a bullet point on your resume. If you want to get a job, you have to put effort in. For CS students, that usually means at least attempting to do interesting things and challenging yourself at university. An example based on my limited experience: students who did a senior project typically faired better with recruiters than those who didn't.

Quote:
Original post by capn_midnight
Degrees don't prevent incompetent people from wasting the employer's time and they certainly don't prevent socially retarded people from disrupting the work place.

I don't know how many times I've heard this, but it never gets old. Something doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. No-one is claiming that a degree-holder cannot be incompetent. What they are claiming is that a degree is evidence that the person in question may be competent. That's why they don't hand out jobs with a degree, but actually make you sit in interviews.

And really, the degree stops being important after the second or third job you hold. The degree is mostly useful for getting those first couple of jobs and building up experience.

As I may have said, my main bugbear is written exams.

Seriously, what's the point? You have vast swathes of material to learn, plus any appropriate background reading. Along comes the exam, and you sit down to discover only 30% of everything you have learned is actually being tested.

If it's a special interest filler subject (e.g. in your final year), what incentive is there to remember everything you've learned after the exam? Why bother learning all that stuff when you'll likely just forget it as soon as the exam's over? You'll still be able to say on your CV that you've done the course which is a joke in itself because, in reality, you can remember jack shit of the exam or course content and will die horribly in an interview if anyone asks you about it.

Exams are a deeply flawed means of assessment yet everybody seems to swear by them in terms of gauging academic performance. That, IMO, needs to change. Education these days seems to be a case of how well you can pass an exam as opposed to how well you know and understand your subject.

If they're going to be worthwhile, at least consider the following:

• Continual micro-assessment in class at each stage, instead of one massive exam at the end. It encourages you to learn as you go as opposed to cramming at the last minute once the coursework is out of the way and it also means you can have an even spread of questions and assessment instead of asking random bits and pieces in the space of two hours


• Don't ask non-theoretical questions in exams. Don't ask me to write "code fragments" for stuff I've done a million times in coursework already. Ask me conceptual stuff, not implementation details


• Consider making the exams open book with harder, harshly marked questions so you're testing understanding and application as opposed to being a stupid memory game like exams currently are. Anyone can cram, it takes a bit more to apply and understand plus I've even had lecturers admit to me that they can't remember certain things and have to look them up. Stuff we're expected to learn by rote, nonetheless


• If not open book, allow us to see the questions or tell us what topics will be coming up so we can revise what's relevant instead of scattergunning through everything. Too many times exam success comes down to gambling on what might or might not come up, and gambling shouldn't be the key to perceived academic success.

It's a really, really stupid system. Have always thought that, always will. I suppose I'm fortunate that education in the UK is now being dumbed down so far that I can honestly see exams being phased out within my own lifetime.

Education needs to change. Luckily, I only have about 8 hours of compulsory exams left in my entire life and I'll miss it like a hole in the head.

Quote: Original post by WazzatMan
The problem is, my Country, and I think a lot of other not-fully-developed-but-still-quite-advanced countries are kinda taking advantage of this gearing up during the information revolution, so that they can transform their economies into something Service based.
...
What happened? Job Market exploded with people who knew how to write a small-scale C# program, but who had no idea what C# actually was. Then what happened? Of course, a lot of people, myself included, started shelling out money, and time, to get REAL education in Computer Science. While working in jobs involving software.
...
I know a lot of University Graduates here don't remember half the stuff they learned in CS.

It can go worse. Like having universities that manipulate data to show you the advantages of getting graduated and then hide the fact that, after 40 years, there's still no industry.

By the way, I always assumed Portfolios were still somewhat important. Am I wrong?