[ma2rten]

I don't know.

I attended a regular computer science program and I am glad I did. The goal of university is not to prepare you as best as possible for working life, but to teach academic thinking.

Class projects usually have a specific purpose, like teaching computer vision, operating systems or building compilers.

You'll spend the rest of your life working. There is no need to rush into it, in my opinion.

Then again, I didn't study in the US, so I didn't have the tuition problem.

[wcarss]

For you, university was a means to the end of learning academic thinking. For me, it was a means to the end of attaining a decent job.

There are certainly arguments to be made that university is by definition, in original intent, and in theory solely a vehicle for teaching academic thought, but I think the pragmatic counter to them is a poll of "why are you here?"[1] , and should be considered valid.

The end result is that university is in practice not one or the other but both: it must teach some academic thought, and provide some job-readiness.

I wish to digress for a moment into why that is not just a failing of many students to understand school's true purpose: many people (hi) do not come from a background where lifetime economic security is a guarantee, and while programming is a rare example (at least in North America) where if you spend the time, you can probably do it, and if you can do it, you can probably be paid well for it, there are unfortunately still gatekeepers. HR departments frequently resort to very base credentialism to sort through candidate resumés, and those with schooling typically come first and get higher base offers of compensation. Not to speak of the network social effects of spending years with other entrants into the field, and the opportunities for extra-curricular pursuits which also are well regarded by those gatekeepers.

These among other things have forced many people with mere occupational goals to pursue university degrees. I wish it were not like this, because my professors universally did not feel that that was a good reason to be there, and occasionally avoided very useful practical topics on principle, but I (and many within my cohort) felt there was no better alternative for a successful outcome in life, and it has mostly worked out.

1 - I of course have not conducted this poll, but I do strongly believe that at least a plurality would respond with job-attainment as their primary goal, and would not be surprised by an even greater response.

[cmplxconjugate]

Well then, might it be wise to realise that “why are you here” is a question that is based off perception?

A generation of financially secure parents have pushed the mindset of Degree==Job. An understandable choice, based on the idea of attaining the best start possible in life.

Whatever reasons, whatever perceptions, the role of the University is unchanging and should remain steadfast; A University is there to create new academics.

[wcarss]

I feel that the perception is in fact material to the reality, because if people do go to university not to become academics, and do leave it not as academics, and do feel it has met its purpose in those cases, then clearly it is not presently there solely for that cause.

But I think we actually agree -- I would just amend your statement to be an aspiration rather than a description: "A university should be there to create new academics."

I feel saddened that in practice (in great part due to the reasons we've each outlined), it is not.

[crdoconnor]

>The goal of university is not to prepare you as best as possible for working life, but to teach academic thinking.

Because academics don't work on projects? C'mon.

Except for a few things (like math) I wanted a lot to be taught in a project based fashion at university. There was a lot of CS stuff that we learned where the professors were super unclear about why it was important or when the correct time to apply the knowledge was. That not only made the teaching less useful it seriously sapped my motivation.

Years later I was surprised a lot by the applicability (or not) of some of the knowledge taught to us and I think probably the lecturers could probably have guessed that I would run in to these situations - they just didn't put much (if any) emphasis on bringing it up.

Now I'm teaching (as an amateur and not in a university, but still), I'm teaching in a project based fashion because it's how I wanted to be taught.

I do this partly because I'm trying to present every topic as a problem first in a context that seems realistic. I feel like getting students to recognize and 'feel' the problem themselves before teaching them the solution helps with their motivation and the applicability of that knowledge - wherever they decide to use it.

[matwood]

I had actual part time coding jobs for the majority of the time I was in undergrad. My family didn’t have much so I had to work.

Even though I was forced to work out of necessity, it turned out to be the best move. Learning how to balance theory with “we need this done in a couple hours to try and land the next client”, has been so valuable to my career (even through grad school). Engineering at every level is about trade offs, and nothing makes that more apparent then working a job.

[Ensorceled]

I'm pretty sure you don't understand how co-op programs work at universities. You actually take the exact same courses as the "academic thinking" students, you just also alternate with work in a relevant industry.

Can you explain why you think taking courses and working flipping burgers or some other summer job is better than taking those same courses and being mentored by practicing engineers, programmers, scientists, poly-sci, <professional in your chosen field>?

[ma2rten]

I am assuming that those 18 month of work experience will be at the expense of coursework.

[schoosi]

No, you take the exact amount of courses as anyone else would. You can do a 5-year program with 3 co-ops or a 4-year program with 2. Of course, you also don't have summer breaks and there is less time off between the fall and spring semesters.

I'd also like to point out that if you argue college should be about creating academics, plenty of my friends went to my school and went on to become one. They simply used their co-ops to do research, either on campus, for another university, or for a company.

[adjkant]

This is not the case at pretty much every co-op school I know of, including my own. Usually the programs utilize summer breaks and take 5 years, though you can often do 2 co-ops in 4 years or the like.

[sevensor]

> The goal of university is not to prepare you as best as possible for working life, but to teach academic thinking.

This is a well-worn false dichotomy. It sets up scientific understanding of a field against job skills. Scientific understanding is important because it saves you months or years of flailing around in the dark, trying to solve problems without understanding them, or worse, producing half-baked work that could be so much better if only you had a clue. But without context, it's very hard to make knowledge stick, and projects provide that context.