| 1) Free college tuition for anyone who wants it, along the lines of what Germany does. 2) Cancel existing student debt up to, say, $50K. (Eg, see Warren's plan) 3) Start treating trade schools as an equally worthy pathway as a college, and stop promoting the myth that college is the best way to succeed in life. 4) Organize actual trade schools for software development, with accreditation, full-time staff, etc. Again, with free tuition (and again, see Germany's V.E.T. programs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system ). There are many pathways through life, and 'programming' is a wide topic. I can think of any number of programming careers where a four-year degree would be useful. Foremost are those who want to write software for specific field, where knowledge of that field is essential. I imagine it's much harder to write something like Mathematica without a pretty deep background in mathematics, and getting a mathematics degree is likely to help more than going to a code camp. Replace "Mathematica" with "quantum chemistry" or "aerodynamics" or "astrophysics" any number of other topics. Or, perhaps someone, you know, wants to be a programmer but is interested in other topics as well so wants a broader education instead of a deeper one. |