[cosmojg]

At least as far as a career in software engineering goes in the United States, the field moves so fast and is so thoroughly differentiated that it seems like it might make more sense from both the student's and the employer's perspective to replace the current university-to-job pipeline with an apprenticeship program of sorts. Given the emphasis placed on internships in college Computer Science programs, this seems to already be implicitly understood and inefficiently implemented on some level.

Come to think of it, the current socioeconomic equilibrium where students take out loans (or pull on their parents' purse strings) to fund their own education to provide more value to future employers than they ultimately get back seems woefully inefficient, not just for software engineering, but for most academic and industrial fields more generally.

Why not run application cycles or even scout students directly out of high school and enroll them in professional programs run by the organizations themselves in exchange for some number of months or years of discounted labor? Obviously, this isn't happening because it transfers risk from individuals to organizations, but it also seems obvious that, were it subsidized or enforced in some way (insurance?), it might lead to better, more equitable outcomes.

Has anyone else had similar thoughts? Or thoughts to the contrary?

[theyinwhy]

Universities are not meant as incubators for office bees. They are meant to allow yourself being curious in whatever field you signed up for. They are meant to be places for critical discussions. In some countries that's working fine. In others, not so much. Anyways, universities are not schools.