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by tathougies 2451 days ago
> And that 4 years computer science education is both expensive and difficult?

Exactly. As a point in favor of this worldview, I'll use my mother. She completed her economics and English degree in India (undergrad). She also completed her liberal studies undergrad and a graduate teaching credential again in the United States (they would not accept her foreign undergrad, so she had to repeat). She said that the teaching education was mostly a joke and her classmates absolute dunces. This was at a public university -- cal state fullerton, to be specific.

Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.

1 comments

> Ultimately, teaching education, even graduate education, is not difficult and mostly a joke, which is what is reflected in their salaries.

Flip side: not enough people would put up with going through a "serious" teacher ed program to fill the demand, unless pay went way up. Not even close to enough.

Flip side: intellectuals tend to like intellectual pursuits. Having a dumbed down teaching curriculum means turning these people away, not for monetary reasons, but for lack of stimulation that is easily accessible in the private sector.

My mother, and many other people I know who wanted to go into teaching, wanted to do so because they wanted to be teachers, not the pay. What turned them off to the profession is the incompetence demonstrated by most teachers, professors of education, and school administrators.

Sure, I get that, but you're not gonna replace all the incompetent people in education with competent ones just by making the relevant degree programs tougher. That's a lot of people. Pay would have to go up, probably quite a bit.
I see no reason we can't do both. Remove the requirement of a teaching credential to teach and raise salaries for teachers who deliver results.