That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company. Yes, I'm advocating the modern equivalent of "Java Schools".

>"That's exactly what I am saying. I think we would be better off if we treated Software development like a trade that had a two year up to date curriculum that actually prepared people to be hit the ground running at a company."

So you see no reason for schools to produce people with well-rounded educations? You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like literature, philosophy, history, art and non-computer science?

Also the OPs comment and this entire discussion is of general secondary education and not software development.

> You don't feel its important for society to have adults who have a wide-ranging perspective on things like literature, philosophy, history, art and non-computer science

If you can’t teach the necessary fundamentals of that in high school that’s a problem with you’re K-12 system.

The idea of a “well rounded education” is the result of the middle class trying to ape the leisure classes, who went to college to learn things they didn’t need to support themselves financially.

It's amusing that you view 4 years of college as excessive when your profiles states you are a lawyer. This means that you yourself spent between 7 and 8 years working on a degree.

Also your email address is as @northwestern.edu, a university that very much promotes the important of a well-rounded educational experience.

If I wanted to be a lawyer from the outset, I'd say the 8 years I spent in post-secondary school was about 5 years too long. That's not how they do it in England, for example, where law is a 3-year undergraduate major. I'm pretty critical of the fact that legal education has been taken over by academics--there is large and growing disconnect between the three years of mandatory schooling and anything you need to actually know as a lawyer. Shortening law school to one year plus a few years of apprenticeship would be vastly preferable.

My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering, and you do really need a 4-year degree to do that. You can't learn aeroelasticity on the job. But the traditional engineering disciplines (aero, chemical, mechanical, etc.), along with medicine and pure sciences are the exception. The vast majority of people don't need 4 years of post-secondary education, including many "professionals" (bankers, lawyers, etc.).

How is that amusing? If he wanted to be a lawyer, he didn’t have a choice. Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be than someone who has it? I think I have more credibility to state that taking 6 courses of Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, etc. was a waste time for co outer science as someone who has been in the industry for years than someone who has not gone to college.

>"Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be"

Which is a very different statement than saying pursing a well-rounded educational experience is nothing more than "trying to ape the leisure classes."

There's an argument to be made that "liberal arts education" and "trade education" should be separate degrees, and that force-mating them makes both worse.

In college I took:

  * 1 literature class (shakespeare elective)
  * 0 philosophy classes
  * 1 history class (history 101)
  * 0 art classes
  * 2 science classes (physics 1 & 2)

I don't believe these gave me a wide-ranging perspective on these topics. I think my experience is pretty typical for technical majors.

The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth.

I majored in electrical engineering at a good school, and had to take ~8 humanities and social science credits, so that is surprising to me.

I went to CMU and majored in ECE (minor in CS). In addition to the above I took a humanities concentration in economics which was 3 classes so that's 5 humanities classes total. I think? I graduated in 2000 so I might be forgetting something, but I don't think so.

Did you actually believe at some point that taking 0 philosophy and 0 art classes would give you a wide-ranging perspective on those topics?

>"The idea that most students develop this sort of thing in college is pretty clearly a myth."

So based on your own anecdotal experience core curriculum contributing to a well-rounded education is a "myth."

Also the idea isn't that you immediately "develop this sort of thing in college." It's to provide a foundation for thinking about things for the rest of your life.

Isn't that what they are doing in high school?

And it's not just about software development, most college curriculumns could be more focused into a two year degree.

>"Isn't that what they are doing in high school?"

To some degree yes but a much more limited scope than what's available at the university level. I don't think most public high schools teach humanities, political science etc.

Two year schools are basically vocational schools. I don't doubt there is a place for that but I think they are different products.

Unfortunately, having a two year degree with experience still gets your resume thrown in the trash at the first step of the funnel. Ask me how I know. Doesn’t make sense fir most jobs but there it is.