Half the classes they make you take at universities are worthless anyways. They're just there to keep you 4 years and get more money. A CS major doesn't need to learn about Greek Mythology.
Universities are not intended to be vocational schools or trade schools. That's why electives are required to graduate. That's why CS programs teach theory more than practice.
It's always worth being a well-rounded person. The most successful software engineers I know are not the most technically proficient. They are the ones who understand how their customers and their employees and their managers view the world, and they can use that understanding to prioritize the engineering work that will have the most impact. They are good at explaining what they are doing in terms that non-engineers understand, they can take requirements from non-engineers and turn them into realistic engineering requirements, and they can talk to corporate executives without seeming like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. These are all good skills to have, and none of them are taught in CS class.
Ok but in reality you need a degree to get a decent job so they are de facto trade schools whether you realize it or not. Your assumption that electives somehow make someone more 'rounded' is also laughable. That comes from being curious.
Agreed, but how much debt should one take on to learn these other skills? (Scott Galloway has been talking about this a lot lately - university degree cost inflation, which has skyrocketed without a commensurate increase in the quality of the product/service.)
There are other ways to pick up these skills, which are much more cost effective.
I assume your comment is made from an US perspective. Other countries manage to give students education without burying them in debt... maybe there's a lesson, somewhere...
It’s hard for me to express how deeply I disagree with this philosophy. I started out in the hard sciences with a MS in biochemistry, so I certainly don’t use any of the direct “skills” I learned in my major-specific courses in my current career as a programmer. Micropipetting, mass spectrometry, and gel electrophoresis have yet to come up in writing software (at least in the jobs I’ve had).
What is continuously useful are three main categories of skill: general critical thinking, analytical writing, and empathy. The first is helpful when solving any problem at all, the second when proposing solutions to new problems, and the third when understanding what problems need to be solved, both at a code level (what does the user need, what documentation do my coworkers need) and at an interpersonal level (how should I focus pairing sessions with this colleague, what projects and teams would they function well on, how can we help to ensure their professional growth).
I have to say that, on average, the humanities courses I took did a much better job of teaching these skills than the science courses.
Of course, even outside of immediate practical benefit, I learned a lot of really interesting stuff in those classes! A lot of them helped to shape the way I still see the world today.
Sure, we can try to pare down “higher” education to what has historically been called vocational school (in the US) or similar, but I think we’re potentially losing a lot along the way.
I have to disagree with that. I came into college as an engineering student with a strong interest in humanities. I really wanted to get a lot out of some sociology, philosophy, and psychology classes, and signed up for more than required. But the reality of it was, they were complete wastes of time and ended up turning me off of humanities.
For me personally, I'd have been much better off just following some curricula and reading the material on my own, not fussing with memorizing arbitrary details for a test and working on team reports with other disinterested students.
I think there's something to the apprenticeship thing, and would love to see this succeed. Even if it's not for everyone, I think it's good for lots of people. Six months seems a little short, for sure, but maybe 18 would be enough to learn the main algorithms, learn some project management, and push to be a productive team member. And I think working on "real work" is much more motivating than classwork for the average 18 year old, so that's going for it too.
The goal of the university is to give you wide angle of view and most importantly teach you how to educate yourself. I've studied physics back in Soviet Union's university ages ago for free and consider it the best ever thing. I later moved to Canada do just fine and can never thank enough my tutors.
..for free. Would you have paid $60K - to $100K plus for the same? That is what students are facing now.
Very few would disagree with the intangible benefits of a university education. They question is, how much is it worth, and how much debt should you take on to obtain those benefits?
This is coulda, shoulda, woulda type of question. I was raised in former Soviet Union and as a consequence was able to get great education without having to pay for it directly.
What it would be for me if I was born in the US - no slightest idea. I could've been rich or poor. It is useless to speculate.
There are a lot of other ways to broaden one's horizons that don't cost tens of thousands of dollars. Or that do, but broaden the horizons in other ways.
This seems like more of a problem with our system of financing college than with the idea of college itself. Plenty of places manage to make college education more affordable than in the US.
They are worthless from a cost-benefit analysis. You could join a social club for free and broaden your horizons in ways that would be vastly better for your career.
But I agree that it's not obvious what's the direct immediate benefit of a Mythology class, versus Medieval History or Classical Literature. But I do believe they all share a long term indirect benefit.
The fundamental skills I expect a college grad to have are the ability to learn new concepts fast, be able to ingest and process a lot of -often unstructured- information and synthesize it clearly. That's something you'll get from studying unrelated subjects (at least, at a decent university). Often these courses forces you to read a lot of material and write about it.
To be fair, I'd probably hire the programmer with the knowledge of greek mythology over the one without.
Personal preferences aside, great programmers are very rarely one dimensional
That may vary well be true, but why does one have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to learn it from a university when they are there to get a degree in computer science?
I don’t know how it is today but when I went, you had to take a certain number of credits in humanities, social sciences, etc, no matter what your major was. So while they didn’t specifically mandate “Greek Mythology,” they mandated a certain number of credits from courses in that bucket, which stretched the time commitment for the degree at least a year from what it would have been if I focused on just my major requirements.
CS requires some humanities and CS requires mythology is pretty different. And ideally CS would include some relevant topics for understanding how tech can inadvertently mess up people's lives.
It's always worth being a well-rounded person. The most successful software engineers I know are not the most technically proficient. They are the ones who understand how their customers and their employees and their managers view the world, and they can use that understanding to prioritize the engineering work that will have the most impact. They are good at explaining what they are doing in terms that non-engineers understand, they can take requirements from non-engineers and turn them into realistic engineering requirements, and they can talk to corporate executives without seeming like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. These are all good skills to have, and none of them are taught in CS class.