(1) might be solvable with an online curriculum, but (2) requires an evaluation or end-game credential to force me to do it.
Other than that, as you mentioned an even bigger benefit was social, the shared experiences with others, and the cross pollination of ideas from these other people
Disclaimer: I am self-taught in CS, but also have an Engineering degree. I entirely agree that the social aspect of university is the largest benefit.
A person who learns well from books in a solitary setting is at a huge advantage compared to someone who needs a social-kinesthetic style.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth...
[1] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-sty...
Instead, racists use their platforms to intimidate at-risk minority groups and intimidate them into silence. White supremacists are actively trying to silence those they disagree with, often with violence, not trying to have an intellectually honest and open discussion.
Read about Karl Popper and The Paradox of Tolerance.
Therefore, a black person prejudiced against white people (as an example) is meaningless because black Americans have historically had very little power in the United States.
Racism by white americans has historically been backed up by the power of every institution in the United States, which often has meant state-sponsored violence against people of color.
It's probably better if people used "structural racism" to define what you mean here. Similar to how "sex" retained the original definition of sex, and "gender" was used for the social construct. If people tried to say "There is no such thing as being born with a binary sex, because sex is a social construct" then it would be equally confusing.
Today we understand that that kind of stereotyping is a universal attribute of human cognition and therefore not explanatory. That is, you can't get from that definition of "racism" to the society we see around us today. Every human does it--everyone is "racist" by that definition--yes, including black people. And yet black people are still far worse off, on average, than whites in American society.
So that definition of racism is useless. It doesn't explain why things are the way they are, and we can't change the way our brain works at such a fundamental level anyway. It has even become a joke--see Stephen Colbert's riffs on "I don't see color."
So yes, the concept of racism has evolved to include power. Without power, stereotypes don't have an opportunity to cause actual harm. You have to consider power to understand why American society, on average, treats white people and black people so differently.
The academic feeling among people who study these topics (socioloists, anthropologists, philosophers) is much closer to what GP defined as racism than the definition you (probably) had in mind.
Conflating racism with the power to put the supremacist wishes and ideas into practice is somewhere between pointless and negligently dangerous.
Another example is how people of color in the US are far more likely to be incarcerated than white people are, especially for non-violent offenses.[2]
There's a reason the George Floyd protests have been so intense: His death was no isolated incident, but a pattern of continuing discrimination against people of color in America by those who control the power structures.
Sources:
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/protests-sprea...
[2] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-just...
My feeling is that a "platform" on Twitter where you abuse and troll people is very different from a platform where you have to step up in public, make a speech, have people challenge your points and so on.
People are pretty susceptible to passionate speech by charismatic figures; much more susceptible, in fact, than they are to facts. This just seems like an opportunity for racists to win hearts and minds.
And anyway, there's tons of open and free debate on college campuses (at least, there was, when they existed in The Before Times), but generally it's debate about methodologies, not ideas. Everyone's more or less on the right (which is to say, left) side of history, they just have different ideas about, how to, for example, dismantle systemic racism, or end homelessness.
Though probably the more frequent topics for debate are more along the lines of beer pong strategy.
The unstated assumption of this premise is that some people (never us, always others) cannot be trusted to make good decisions, and thus need to have their decisions made for them, for their own good. It advocates for human subjugation.
You can make good decisions if you have full information and you put a lot of time into it. I hope you're aware that not all racists are dedicated to the search for truth. Sometimes they tell partial truths, mislead, and lie.
ok pal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debate...
It’s like letting the flat earthers continue to teach science classes even though we know the earth is round.
Sure, but there are many racism-adjacent topics that are not so clear cut. For example, affirmative action is a "racist"--in the sense of discriminating based on race--policy, but there are serious, intellectual arguments made both for and against it. I put "racist" in quotes there because there's also presently a debate on the changing definition of racism: is it racist if a policy or stereotype is race-based but well-meaning and positive? Is "power" required, and does this immunize minorities from being racist? Is it racist to criticize a long-held cultural belief or practice such as circumcision?
I think all of these topics are worthy of open and honest debate. (Incidentally though, I think that the best way to shut down flat earthers and other conspiracy nuts is also through open debate...)
Also, I would love to see a single example of serious flat earther changing their mind.
> The "debate" on racism was lost a long time ago.
When is the last time you asked someone who is a strident racist to explain their ideas in the form of a full essay or 30 minute presentation? Have you ever seen this done without the implicit or explicit assertion that the target of their animus is a lesser human or perhaps not human at all? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together -- including and ESPECIALLY impressionable young people raised in racist environments -- can see the absurdity of such an argument. The very act of exposing the ideas to open discussion and forcing the proponent to defend them with logic and reason is what ultimately undoes them. Will some still recalcitrantly cling to such ideas? Sure, but that but by that point it will be clear to anyone paying attention it's not for a reasonable purpose.
The problem with modern debates is that they are not honest representations of the subject matter. They are exercises in tactical bullshit, meant to be rapid-fire, points-winning pseudo-arguments instead of constructive, intellectual discussions of the subject matter.
The only way for such an absurd system of beliefs to exist is to either rely exclusively on morally bankrupt individuals, or to heavily lean on confirmation bias and reject any anti-racist ideas.
Simply said, own supremacism feels good. Even if you know it is based false argument it can still feel good. Compliments do feel good even if false. It is definitely not a threat.
Also, my own supremacism is practically beneficial to me. I gain from that even if if is based on false arguments. That makes the supremacist arguments much more easy to accept.
The current President doesn’t want immigrants from African countries but is ok with immigrants from Norway. Is that racist?
And so, the debate over racism won’t be over for a while.
Absolutely disagree, the appeal of racism is well understood, it's only effect on society is to subjugate people, separate along racial lines.
> healthy discourse over the politics and economics of the matter.
"healthy discourse" implies that there is some kind of equivalency between racist and anti-racist, to believe that is to be willfully ignorant of situation and power structures which exist in the US today.
Allow people to point at one of the nonwhite people in the audience and say, "I don't think this person belongs in the country, who's with me?"
Because that's what it is: for one side, it's a debate with no stakes, but for the other it's their exclusion from the university and all the things that are subject to gatekeeping by getting a degree. Potentially for being allowed to live in peace, or live in the country at all.
Letting that kind of speech be platformed is just a more subtle way of hanging a "whites only" sign on your university.
The opportunity existed to put statues of racists behind glass, for example, away from their positions of public prominence and celebration. I don't think too many people would object to the university of Oxford having a statue of Cecil Rhodes that they kept in a cupboard.
The purpose of a computer science curriculum isn't to train a software engineer, it's to train a computer scientist.
Do I regret it? No, it was fun, interesting and it's cool when this hidden knowledge does come up at work.
In my (limited) experience the answer is definitely yes. Not only do they have more exposure to the concepts we need them to understand (if not necessarily the specific tools), we have just had better luck with them as employees in general. They are more likely to do small things, like all the administrative overhead that's part of a job: responding to requests in a timely manner, having good written communication skills, showing up to meetings on time, etc. I am the first to admit this is a small sample size and a lot of the cultural fit could be that the workplace is already filled with college educated staff, but I'm curious what your experience is after the hiring process is over.
That said, I think the degree holders were better candidates usually, but I strongly suspect it wasn't because of the education. Colleges attract people who are good at carefully following complex instructions, have a healthy respect for authority, and can delay gratification in the extreme. They are also experts at navigating a system from within. The degree acts to filter out people who are too independent to fit well within a hierarchy.
I don't think I ever noticed much difference between different kinds of degree holders aside from a broad separation between analytical degrees and humanities degrees, which again might have had more to do with the initial filter than anything taught in the classes.
What does these qualities have to do with being a effective software developer?
> The degree acts to filter out people who are too independent to fit well within a hierarchy.
Wouldn't people that fall into the category of "free-thinkers" make for better engineers — or at least engineers that are more capable at creating novel solutions to hard problems?
Lack of healthy respect for authority typically means more fights about who will do which task and more likely to unilaterally refuse to follow random parts of code standards. It may mean refusal to close jira tasks or open them. It may mean that analysts have much harder time to convince that one person to do what is needed, again.
Software development is typically strongly team work and requires quite a lot of coordination among people with opinions. When one person decides he does not accept authority of analyst, architect or manager, yes there are consequences for whole team.
No. However "freethinkers" can launch their own companies. It is like people say that Steve Jobs would not get hired at Apple today as if it were some great insight. It is simply company is looking for a set of skills and willing to pay money for it. SJ would rather launch a new company "Apricot' instead of working at Apple.
Besides 'freethinker' is just an euphemism and part of linkedin cliches nowadays. And the definition of free is anyway restrictive and bound to cultural and societal norms.
There's a strong selection bias at work - people with good administrative skills and communication skills are much more likely to go to college in the first place. We need to be asking if those people needed to go to college to develop those skills.
In my experience at university, mostly the people who were the strongest - the people you wanted on your teams - were strong right from the start. They had some inherent skills which university developed and honed, but didn't create.
Agreed, but a university education reveals those people to me in a way that other evaluation criteria I have will not. I have lots of tools to evaluate whether a person has basic skills, but relatively fewer to determine whether they can do that other stuff. This is especially true as the reference and employment verification process is more limited than it used to be. Most companies I call can't tell me "don't hire this person" like they did 15 years ago.
It doesn't help that, working for the government, I have limited options once I do hire someone. I am under pressure to make the right decision the first time since unmaking that decision is a great deal of painful time and effort. I suspect a number of mid-level managers like myself are in that position, which is why the degree continues to carry so much weight.
I'm biased in some ways as someone with a philosophy degree, but I've easily run rings around CS grads, and seen some who have absolutely no capacity to program. Most of the non-cs programmers have A degree, just not a CS degree. Often technical, I've known chemistry degree, engineering, architecture.
I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads rather than they're better. Be interesting to hear if you do the typical American white-boarding algo nonsense that YAGNI.
This generation might be different as CS became an obvious choice for the sort of people that may previously have chosen a wider range of subject. I think it's a shame as ultimately I see a CS degree as a waste of time, I've studied the concepts myself thinking myself deficient and never actually found any value to the lessons apart from intellectual curiosity.
The parent post didn't mention computer science.
There's probably a survivorship bias of some sort.
You're probably not interviewing for someone to write a bleeding edge piece of software, so you're probably looking for someone who's capable of showing up, writing some code and not killing anyone.
I've found the reason people got the degree to be a bit more telling. The best performers were those who felt their knowledge was limited and wanted to gain more of it. The worst performers were those who got the degree and thought the whole programming part was behind them.
Far from American Universities to make any changes to their curriculum to support people's actual objectives though.
I'd go back and challenge original implication of the article, that university is absurd, like a CD. Characterizing a CD as absurd is pretty short sighted -- it's the standard buy vs. rent argument. If you've ever followed a sport that has been in the middle of a cable contract dispute, the downside of the stream is obvious -- broadcasting is awesome until it isn't.
I still buy music CDs or iTunes tracks. Access to an unlimited catalog doesn't do much for me, and owning perpetual rights is, to me, a better value, as it is for many things. That doesn't mean that streaming is "bad", just as online learning isn't "bad". But universities aren't obsolete because other options exist.
In other words, requiring a college degree (even in an irrelevant field) of applicants is a form of class gatekeeping for technical professions.
The real tragedy is when all the others who can't/won't/don't open the gate cry whine and complain about not being able to find talent. Sometimes, when they are really pathetic, they have the gall to go to their local economic development agent with their hands out for a subsidy for hiring assistance.
So those who adapt to the times end up paying taxes into a system that, in turn, gives that money (in part) those who don't. Perverse much?
Some classes are super basic and some classes are nintendo hard. The classes that are in the middle of the road are very few but those are the ones that are most useful.
Operating Systems, Data Structures, Parallel Computing and Software Engineering II (Basic Project Management) were notable for being interesting, difficult enough to make not slack and endlessly applicable for programmers.
The CS degree isn't for programmers as my old professor once pointed out in a high level class: "Computer Science is about Programming like Biology is about pretty girls and microscopes". Those looking to go into research can take the CS coursework and probably get more use out of it.
- Teaching people how to program for the first time. Most of us had never actually programmed before, so you've got to have the intro classes that both teach _how_ to think through breaking a problem down into steps, and also the specific syntax of expressing those steps in a specific programming language, moving on to the typical concepts like OOP and classes and whatnot.
- Actual CS. Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Compilers, and the various more math-ish / "fundamentals" content.
- Software Engineering. The practical, hands-on work of actually writing meaningful code, working as part of a team, requirements, using version control, testing, etc. Some classes like specific web dev topics or something probably fit into here too.
Granted, I was going through this almost 20 years ago, and I only have my own experience to base this on, but it seems like this is a reasonable broad description of what a CS degree is trying to cover.
I feel like that gave me a good fundamental background, but at the same time 99% of what I do on a daily basis now is all stuff that I either learned on the job, or in my own free time.
10 here.... your comment holds up.
What CS needs is an equivalent engineering program. It is amazing to me that Software Engineering is not considered a valid engineering discipline like Civil, Mechanical (which apply maths and physics).
In speaking with many students and colleagues, one thing has struck me, which is that many of the current undergrads are enrolled because they want to get away from home. They want some true transition to adulthood, where they live on their own and develop into an independent adult with a vocation and adult identity. This is maybe what I've heard articulated here and elsewhere about being exposed to new ideas, etc. but maybe isn't quite the same. It's something I never really quite appreciated the importance of until recently, but looms large in their minds. Many of them, even though they're taking courses "off-campus" and online, are still in their college town living in their apartment, and so forth. They didn't go home, they just stayed put.
The analogy with books and music is telling because for awhile there too there was a lot of hype about how the internet would lead to some radical reorganization and disruption of those industries. And in many ways it did. But many of the power inequities, the monopolies, and so forth are the same, and the fundamentals are the same. We've migrated a lot from radio and physical media to streaming services, but the players are still there. I suspect something similar will happen with universities; we'll just see a lot more diversity in what form an undergraduate education actually looks like. For some it will involve 4 years in a dorm / on-campus setting. For others it might be more eclectic. There are also some things that just can't really be duplicated at home: an undergrad isn't going to go out and purchase a mass spectrometer for the most part, or PCR equipment, or have storage room full of embalmed anatomy specimens to dissect.
One thing that's important to be mindful of is that this on-campus experience many of us remember is in many ways evaporating anyway. I don't mean to say that's ok, or acceptable, or whatever, but sometimes we talk about the experience of being on campus and discussing things with others in person, forgetting that a major societal issue right now is how that that used to be the norm for everything and is increasingly not. So we have these chats online, on HN comment sections, or over IM, or videoconferencing anyway, even if you're not in college. Whatever might be lost from the on-campus experience is being lost everywhere to some extent; I point this out only to suggest that if we're ok with it in some domains, why should college be special? Or is college the canary that we should be paying closer attention to?
I agree with the perspective of the author of the article that something fundamental needs to change, but my guess is 10 years from now everything will look very different and the same at the same time. I also think there's many problems with universities and higher education that have nothing to do with the cost-benefit calculus in some abstracted sense, but rather to do with how it should be paid for, whether universities are funded well enough, whether they're getting those funds from the right places, whether administration is too top-heavy, whether employers and society abuse interpretation of degrees, and so forth and so on.
One can see where you are coming from since these desires are pretty normal around that age right? I think that the trade-off here, however, is two fold:
1) That lifestyle is expensive and puts many young adults into debt before they've even learned and lived financial independence.
2) It delays the inevitable hard work and time that we all must put in contributing as a net positive to the real world economy.
Add 1+2 together and the output in large numbers yields people in bondage lacking the mental fortitude to actually sustain and prosper independently as an adult over the course of their lifetime.
I don't necessarily think it has to be that way, and I don't necessarily think it's the best way, certainly not for everyone, but I think for a lot of people it provides one way. Right now I think it's a broken path, but I'm not sure what other paths there are to replace it at the moment, given that employers (for the most part, maybe not entirely) seem to be abandoning that role.
To me the bigger underlying subtext in a lot of these discussions is the vacuum that currently exists in terms of providing a safety net for people as they find their way. I think this could be provided by employers or something but I really don't think it is at the moment; colleges might also be flawed in being too expensive or not really delivering on their promises or something, and maybe we're at an inflection point. But if you think of spaces where society is ok with people figuring things out, or learning, or not really being fully developed yet, college is a major place. Outside of that it increasingly feels like people are treated as machines, interchangeable and replaceable, with little to no sense of potential or anything of that sort.
Believe me, I feel like universities are very broken at the moment in many many ways. I just don't really see them going away in the near future, even if they are remade, and I think there's a good opportunity for society to really remake them in a way that's more useful, whatever that is. It may involve restructuring what a college education entails, or paying for it with public funds, or whatever, but that opportunity is there.
The most valuable part of college for me (I can say now a decade later from graduating) had nothing to do with the content and everything to do with the experience and connections I made.
My professor helped me land my first job. My classmates ended up in the industry and helped connect me to opportunities and some became (so far) lifelong friends.
This would have been much less likely if I took online courses while living with my parents.
I read here that you're not talking about the pandemic specifically, but of the increasing digitization of society as socializing, work, entertainment and education all go online. and you're right, this is a huge social issue that connects to mental health, social cohesion, political life, social skills gaps and how we relate to each other. It's a change we are crashing into without any idea of the consequences. And yes, maybe digitizing our formative coming of age experiences is a step too far, or maybe we just need VR tanks.
Universities aren't tech schools; their purpose is not job training.
My understanding is that employers used to be comfortable providing pretty extensive job training, and they probably should start doing that again. IMHO, it's wishful thinking to expect any kind of school to produce new grads that can "walk in the door with the needed skills," especially in a field as diverse as software engineering.
OK, maybe instructors are not up on what to do; for sure, I'm not. Maybe it is that the tech is not there yet; it all seems to me to be so static. But perhaps also the great majority of 18, 20, and 22 year olds aren't going to learn the same amount of material if they are at home also working at Target than if they are on campus with someone teaching them. I'll venture that certainly people who have significant socioeconomic and cognitive struggles are going to do worse in a climate where they are on their own. So I worry a lot about what would replace in-person college.
The top post about how a person can make and do wonderful things is ... wonderful. But very, very few people will do it. Not disparaging that poster at all, in fact quite the opposite, just making a historical observation.
> So that leaves the on campus experience, which I personally think is amazing. ... The new ideas from the classes are just a small part of the new ideas you get exposed to from other students and campus events. Plus with the increasing independence, it's a great gentle introduction to adulthood.
Yes, it is great to be given space to grow.
> employers often look for the degree
Yes, having access to a good job is an important part of what people need to get. Of course, there are other things. Some understanding of civic responsibility comes to mind in the current climate, for instance.
Even if we just focus on work, say with a CS degree, evidence to employers that candidates passed being expected to write well in a political science class, to understand something about data in a statistics class, and to have an overview of their field of speciality in a theory class, are things that they may be glad they have in an employee a decade from now. I get that many employers may be looking to what they need now, but I'm only saying that it is not dopey for at least some of them to be thinking along those lines.
Any other hiring managers have difficulties with Bachelor of Arts in CS versus Bachelor of Science?
The BA applicants don't seem to have the logic and concept knowledge that the BS applicants have.
I'll try a resolution of this dilemma: A few years ago I was talking with a university CS (computer science) prof, and his fast reaction was, IIRC, "The purpose of computer science is to identify the fundamentals of computing." I.e., make a scientific study of computing and find its basic laws.
E.g., there is the subject of computational time complexity that for a given operation tries to find the fastest possible algorithm. Turns out, this is not an easy subject, e.g., we are still struggling with the question of P versus NP; a lot of well informed people believe that solving that problem would be a biggie.
My guess is that the issue is cultural in that Einstein's E = mc^2 was seen as fundamental to the universe and other fields of research would like to get results also at that level of importance, fame, prestige, whatever.
So, apparently in computer science making a scientific or engineering study of software engineering mostly loses out to pursuing some version of E = mc^2 for computing. E.g., one such result was the Gleason bound (in the Knuth volume on sorting and searching in his The Art of Computer Programming) that shows that O(n log(n)) is the fastest possible worst case sorting of n items by comparing items (records, keys, ...) two at a time.
One response is that if medical schools were run like research university computer science departments, then no one would want to go to a hospital no matter how badly they hurt! I.e., a researcher deep into P versus NP might have never had occasion to use containers, Lisp, RUST, or even SQL.
Of course, in medicine we have some medical schools in university research teaching hospitals where some of the best medical research is done. And it is easy for a practicing physician to conclude that mere clinical experience is not enough for the needed progress and that fundamental research in biochemistry, cell biology, DNA/RNA, the immune system, etc. is necessary, crucial, and really the best hope for the needed progress.
So, it is fair to say that software engineering could be taught like medicine, not just as introduction to research but for practice, clinical practice, professional practice. E.g., if want to be the CIO of a large bank, insurance company, shipping firm, on-line retailer, etc., then how to manage an information technology (IT) department with 2000 employees to do well on data security, reliability, performance, software quality, software documentation, software system designs and revisions, growth, system management, etc.
As the linked article points out, employers often look for the degree, but do not believe it is much of an indicator of quality and don't expect new grads to walk in the door with the needed skills. As a former recruiter I think that sentiment is pretty spot on. I don't think I ever asked a candidate about the details of their education. It was just never relevant in comparison to their experience.
So that leaves the on campus experience, which I personally think is amazing. It's like living at a country club for 4 years, crossed with a huge expansion in your world from living at home and going to high school. The new ideas from the classes are just a small part of the new ideas you get exposed to from other students and campus events. Plus with the increasing independence, it's a great gentle introduction to adulthood. Unfortunately all that is not available during the pandemic.
So the content of the classes is in question, the value of the credential is in question, the cost is ballooning and the on campus experience is on an uncertain hiatus. If ever there was a time to disrupt higher ed, that time is now.