I really don't like the idea that education is a thing you do once in your late teens/early twenties and then finish. There are good reasons to do something then, but there's no good reason to stop.

Some sort of continuing education would be ideal, but once you settle into a career and the financial obligations of being an adult, stopping your income and ramping up your outgo to go back to school for a year or two becomes very untenable for most people. A master's degree isn't a particularly valuable credential, either, except in a few cases where it does directly unlock a higher pay grade.

A lot of the industries that do require continuing ed, it's often at best a rubber stamping process, or an excuse for junkets - at least from what I have seen from friends and family in education, law and medicine. What doctors do to get their continuing ed credits blows away even the fat old days of tech shows like Lotusphere.

With software, you can't just stop learning, but I'm not convinced that formal education is of much use. An RSS reader and a curated Twitter list would probably be a better investment of time.

I changed careers via a bootcamp. I've got VERY mixed feelings on how that industry works...

But just the idea of going back to school to sort of "retool" or expand your toolset for 3 months full time, or 6 or something and get something worthwhile IMO could be the future. The question is if employers will support it.

Granted going back for a more traditional school experience could be a very legitimate route too.

I don't like the bootcamp model. I also don't like what a lot of graduate programs have become, insofar as they're jockeying to become souped-up bootcamps by making ever more grand career promises while trying to minimize the amount of time it takes to earn a degree.

Just no. Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education.

To that end, what I really want to see is more schools than just community colleges allowing you to take classes without being enrolled in a degree program. Once upon a time I contacted a university to see about taking some additional classes to fill in some gaps I didn't manage to fill while I was getting my bachelor's, and they told me that I couldn't just take a few classes; I'd have to enroll in a bachelor's program, become a major in the school, and go through earning a second bachelor's degree in a field for which I already held a bachelor's, just to get access to one or two classes.

That's ridiculous. And anachronistic. It's a model that's designed for an era when postsecondary education was primarily reserved for children of a privileged elite class, and a very few people who were trying to break into the wealthy elite class. There's a huge gap between that model and what we actually need nowadays. In failing to adapt, the orthodox educational establishment is doing society a huge disservice, because the only other people to address it are a bunch of for-profit organizations who see the demand, first and foremost, as an arbitrage opportunity to exploit.

>Schools shouldn't be selling jobs. They should be selling education.

I think that is what we have now... the education is disconnected from the jobs in the sense that the price makes no sense.

I think a lot of what you describe is what happens when an education system thinks they're just selling "an education" without consideration that their student's are can't afford it.

This seems to really come down to a couple of factors:

- What program the student chooses

- Is said program at the University recognized

- If recognized does the program provide a proper mix of theory and application

- What opportunities does the program actively provide for the student

- Is the student willing to be an active participant in their education

- Is student and active participant in what resources the program offers

If yes to all of the above, then student really receives a proper well rounded education practical knowledge, and the resources to find a job. Along with that they have the tools to continue to be a competitor in the market and in their current employment.

Far too often it seems that a degree just implies employment and competitive salary. If properly used and taken advantage of it really implies being a much better competitor when all else is held equal.

In LA, UCLA Extension fills the bill of a la carte classes for working adults. They have a huge variety of courses available, and a number are offered online.

Totally agree. A career should be a constant mix between learning and working. But only a few get the chance to learn on the job and going to school while working on a job (and making needed money) is very hard.

Paying for education (and doing education full time) might well be things that you stop. They can be a good idea for a while without being a good idea forever.

Not by choice exactly I’ve done College -> Work -> Work/College -> Professional Job.

The first 6 months of my “real” career job in tech I learned almost as much as the first 2 years of college. I couldn’t imagine having a masters especially an MBA without having worked professionally, internships aside. I’m excluding the medical professions where the minimum to employment is a masters/doctorate. Even non-doctors have a lot of clinical/hospital experience before/during a masters.

I’m about to start looking at Masters or MBA programs in my area. I’ll have almost 10 years of experience by then and happy I didn’t do it straight after school.

The good MBA programs basically require professional work experience at a reputable firm. Generally, you graduate perhaps at age 21 to 23, then work for a few years, then go get an MBA, and finish around 26 to 28.

Edit: See Wharton class stats, shows a mean work experience of 5 years.

https://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/class-profile/

MIT/Harvard/Stanford show similar:

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/admissions/class-2020-profile

https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/defau...

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/class-pr...

That makes a lot of sense.

I worked with an MBA who couldn't seem to iron his shirts (or just didn't) for a while. Slowly his job duties were shifted to me... the guy he was supposedly help manage after he proved he couldn't figure out scheduling a 24/7 schedule.

He clearly had no experience beyond school and some internships.

I would actually assume someone with an MBA without professional work experience either couldn't get a (decent) job, and/or is not smart enough to research the difference between an MBA that's worth something vs another excuse for schools to make money.

Yeah this was during the height (well as far as advertising goes) of the situation where everyone was offering MBAs in every form.

Like this guy couldn't manage a taco bell... maybe that should be the barrier to entry, to get into class you have to manage a taco bell for a time....

Actually, that's a really good idea.

Funny enough, many years ago I had a very aggressive candidate for a mid-level technical development manager position who was insistent that his newly minted, no computer experience required, MSCE certificate or some such plus his handful of years managing a Pizza Hut qualified him for the job, because "a good manager can manage anything". I disagreed he was right for the job.

This is a quite solid concept. Especially regarding MBA's there's a lot of people management concepts where you can't really get the proper context without having seen in practice the environment in which they'd be applied, and you can't get that environment in a classroom. There are professional MBA programs which require a few years of work experience to join, and it makes quite a difference IMHO.

I'm not that certain about CS. If you're doing software engineering (or research on 'meta-SE' e.g. methodology, architecture, programming languages), then yes, it'd make all sense to get some industry experience between college and masters; however if you're going to grad school for theoretical CS or machine learning or cryptography or quantum algorithms or any other directions of primarily academic research, then industry experience is helpful but definitely isn't necessary.