Re:Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some ...
by gizi on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:00AM
(#11017993)
The reason why universities do not teach welding, is because it would become too clear to everybody involved that the teacher is not particularly a good welder. If he were, he would be welding and not teaching. The same holds true for programming.
Re:Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some ...
by asQuirreL on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @03:39AM
(#11018282)
It is possible that some people teach for the enjoyment and gratification of it. Some of my lecturers are excellent programmers.
Good programming skills are not necessary to teach CS, but that does not imply that teaching CS is a sufficient condition for having bad programming skills. (Propositional Logic 101, taught by someone who may or may not be good at programming).
Re:Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some ...
by repsilat on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @05:23AM
(#11018614)
> It's vary rare that a graduating mechanical engineer can weld, for example
Funnily enough, the software engineers from my university (U of Auckland) are all taught how to weld, because all engineering students are (were?) sent to the technical college across the road for a short machine-shop course.
I'd say it was useful for the mechanical engineers and related disciplines, maybe civil engineering, but for most of us it was a bit of a non sequitur (though interesting to some.)
Re:Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some ...
by eru on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @02:15AM
(#11018028)
Though it might still be a good idea for an EE to know how to solder, or a civil engineer to have at least visited a construction site.
Re:Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some ...
by spacecowboy_lon on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @03:56AM
(#11018338)
In the UK To get Chartered status as a civil engineer you have to have time on site managing a project.
In Australia we have a clear distinction between Universities, which typically teach the underlying theories and ideas of things like engineering, biochem, etc (the why) and TAFE (Technical and Further Education), which typically teach how to do stuff like welding and being a lab technician (the doing).
It's vary rare that a graduating mechanical engineer can weld, for example, because the University doesn't teach them that.
I personally think programming falls into the category of doing (like welding), but in this case it's difficult to teach the why of computer theory without having done some programming, but it's perfectly easy to teach the physics and math of building a bridge without ever having used a welder.