What you're proposing is a bit counter to the current European trend. That doesn't make it wrong, just thought I'd point out that the countries that do have the strong vocational systems you're talking about seem to be having second thoughts about them. Many European countries have traditionally had dual-track higher-education systems, with strong vocational programs as one of the two tracks. But in the past few decades employment and earnings figures have diverged greatly between the two tracks, much more than used to be the case. Today, the university graduate clearly earns more, by a bigger margin than was the case in the '60s-'80s. As a result, there's some worry about the future viability of the vocational system, and some movement towards increasing the proportion of students who go to university.

I think this is more about the case for turning some universities into traditional grande ecoles. Engineering and business schools with a practical emphasis and a minimalist approach to theory.

I'm an engineering student and by now my brain has learned to tune out whenever the words "rigor", "proof" or similar are uttered. I really, sincerely don't care about the formal stuff. If I get the intuition then I'm satisfied, and I'm sick of the formal stuff. Someone's got to do it, but I don't want to be one of them. This doesn't mean I don't want to learn about advanced stuff; it just means that I'm fine with a shallower treatment with an emphasis on implementing and intuitive understanding rather than proving. I would like a school more to my tastes, but university is where all the smart kids go, so I go there as well. I would like an alternative, and I think I'm not alone.

I had a similar frame of mind when I was a student. I didn't pay too much attention to the formal details; I didn't brush it off, to be fair, and I think I paid more attention to it than most of my colleagues, but I still massively underestimated how much I really needed it.

Reality kindda bitchslapped me later. Turns out the theoretical understanding of even the most basic and otherwise fundamental aspects of my slice of engineering (EE) is pretty much essential whenever you need to design something that is non-trivial and not previously implemented by someone else and available on the Internet. All those circuits I tweaked and combined were great study material, but when it came to doing something on my own that I couldn't quite find elsewhere, which had to respond to actual hard requirements (no more than this many mV of ripple on this signal and THD below this margin), it wasn't an enjoyable ride. And then there are whole branches of EE where you don't really get to prototype stuff on a breadboard; at one point I thought I wanted to get into microelectronics (programming got the best of me though). There are literally thick books about how transistors behave, and you literally need to understand that stuff if you want to make anything slightly more reliable than a 741.

To this day, I still value intuitive understanding more than the bland math. It's the idea percolator that makes you come up with clever designs and lean, elegant solutions, but it's the bland math that actually enables you to turn it into something that can be reliably manufactured and exploited.

Analog electronics is a unique, not representative case.I think it depends greatly on the field and application. Some applications are too complex for math, so you just have to create really good simulations, like for example in wireless communications.

In other applications , value comes through integration, managing complexity ,smart component selection, and rapid development and combining multiple knowledge domains.One such example is smart watches. Some of the theory is less valuable there.

> Some applications are too complex for math, so you just have to create really good simulations, like for example in wireless communications.

Understanding the math behind those simulations is absolutely crucial to not getting bit by them.

> One such example is smart watches. Some of the theory is less valuable there.

The experience of working on low-power devices with engineers that do not understand the theoretical fundamentals of the devices they work with is an experience I can only describe as very, very painful. Smart watches are an excellent illustration of this, yes. "Smart" component selection with no understanding of the underlying complexity of the technology is a sure way to ensure you end up with crap that's 30% more expensive and 50% more power hungry than it should be.

> "Smart" component selection with no understanding of the underlying complexity of the technology is a sure way to ensure you end up with crap that's 30% more expensive and 50% more power hungry than it should be.

Can you please expand on that ?

Actually, I almost feel, that in the czecho(-slovak) tradition, it almost is that way. There is a pattern, where often you have at least two universities, and one of them would be branded "technical".

I.e. Charls University and Czech Technical University in Prague, Masaryk University and Technical University in Brno, Kommenius University and Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, and I think I'd probably find more examples.

Usually, the technical ones brand themselves as being more "practical". For example, I studied CompSci at regular uni, my friend at technical and while we had a mandatory two semster algebra course and mandatory two semester discrete math course, they had these two combined in one course, first semester only. But it was more of a rule of a thumb, I know that their math-analysis course was as rigorous as ours. They still had better partnerships with local businesses.

I have to admit, that I was reasonably fond of all the theoretical stuff (although not very good at it :) The two semesters of group-theory certainly made my decision to do my masters in kryptology and information security much easier :P

In regards to your second paragraph, I think you would love starting a hardware startup. :) That's what I did. Although I did study CS in school, in terms of electrical engineering I'm almost entirely self-taught, learning by "implementing and intuitive understanding" as you put it. It works really well actually, my team and I have been able to pull off some pretty incredible feats of engineering, working this way.

I can imagine such "practical engineering" online degree being formed, which will give one the ability to create systems that combine multiple domains of knowledge.

Having people with such capabilities is highly useful in many startups, especially at the early stages, and startup access is percieved as a chance to wealth, so it seems such a degree would have significant marketing value and differentiation, maybe to a degree that would surpass it being online.

The trend you're describing is because employers are adopting the same attitudes as in the States, not because the vocational system is bad.

That's true to some extent, but I think market shifts are also part of it. At least here (Denmark) globalization has affected them quite differently: white-collar jobs are booming, while skilled blue-collar jobs have been hit hard. In the '70s, you could get a good, middle-class job at Maersk (the country's largest company) with either university or vocational education. With a university degree, you could work logistics and similar jobs in their headquarters; with vocational training you could work skilled-labor jobs in their shipyards. But the shipyards have all moved to Asia, while the Copenhagen HQ location has turned into a nearly 100% business-and-logistics office. Still a ton of work available, but almost none of it blue-collar, as Denmark is rapidly de-industrializing.

"What "we" really need is less stigma against vocational schools and related college alternatives. Not everyone likes sitting still at a desk and doing abstract symbol manipulation"

Amen. Not everyone is good at it, or suited for it, either. Some of the 'blue collar' workers I know are earning more than the college-degree holding workers in my circle, but societally somehow we 'look up' to the office-y professions, regardless of the value/merit of the job.

It would also help to reduce the "path dependence" problem by increasing the ability to tranfer courses between "vocational" training and "academic" training. Not to say you should necessarily get credit towards a B.S. degree for, say, a Welding course... but to the extent that it's possible, the English, Math, etc. should be as easily transferable as possible.

Why? So if you chose one option you aren't so tightly "locked in" later in life, if you desire a change (in either direction).

I happen to be a boiler-maker / welder by trade. My last non-fabrication job was at an ISP doing project management, programmed maintenance, and fault response. I got the job because of my trade background. I've had to move to a ~100k population centre in another state so I'm back doing fabrication and getting paid a lot more for it.

Yea, that is so true. When I was in my 20-40's the thought of sitting at a desk doing Anything felt like I was wasting my life. My father always said, 'I want a job where I spend the first hour at a desk--the next seven anywhere else.'.

It's the Ragusnik problem on a different scale.

never having heard of that before, I did a search and came across this wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker_(short_story)

I'm guessing this is what you're referring to, I found the idea interesting. Do you know where I can get access to this story? I'm willing to pay if necessary.

It appears to be part of the book Nightfall and Other Stories.

Amazon has it: http://www.amazon.com/Nightfall-Other-Stories-Isaac-Asimov/d...

A PDF seems to be available online as the first Google result for it: https://www.google.com/search?q="Nightfall+and+Other+Stories...

It's in the book 'nightfall'. Should be still in print.

In some circles, the notion that students who are not already financially independant should consider earning potential when choosing what their college experience will be is considered offensive, or even politically incorrect. Some people honestly seem to believe that any college education should be highly valued, and that it is unjust that some programs have poor placement numbers.

This may explain why some articles fail to mention that the value of a college degree depends on the nature of the degree.

I think that the notion that "we" (working- or middle class) are so well-off that we can really consider a higher education as mostly a broadening of horizons, and life skills being kind of something that comes automatically along with it. We've already spent around 13 years in learning institutions at that point - what do people find so horrible about then looking for some kind of education/training that is more directly applicable to, um, surviving?

I think you are right. Taking on several dozen thousand dollars of debt right after highschool to backpack around Europe for 4 years would nearly universally be seen as wildly irresponsible, but at the same time doing the same to get a degree with low economic value is somehow seen as not irresponsible. However when we call it irresponsible, people freak out and act like that is wildly unreasonable.

It might be symptomatic of a cross wiring of people's sense of what should be, and what is. They believe that a college education should be free, so they behave as though it is. Where a college education free, then getting a relatively worthless degree would be perfectly fine. However since college is currently very expensive, getting a worthless degree is a very poor decision unless you are already wealthy.

Asking people to separate their beliefs about how reality should be from their knowledge of how reality currently is, tends to make them angry.

> They believe that a college education should be free, so they behave as though it is. Where a college education free, then getting a relatively worthless degree would be perfectly fine.

I don't know. I'm getting my university education for free, but I still have living costs (which may be mitigated by a part-time job) and "losing" five years that could be invested in some relevant work experience. So if I was going for a useless degree, career-wise, I would be at least be a little worried.

I guess some people think that people like me should be living it up while they can, and not worrying so much about the future. But there might be a mortgage to worry about in 5-10 years, and buying your own apartment/house is becoming more and more expensive (which might change in 10 years, for better or worse). And even though I am well-off by world standards, the future seems more unsure then ever; having some sort of economic independence seems like something that is worth working towards.

I'd almost actually argue that we need to put better weight on certificates and audited courses for people who aren't necessarily chasing a degree program, but who are taking advantage of the numerous and cost effective educational opportunities available through the community college systems in the U.S.

A resume with a huge number of course hours for somebody basically didacting their way through their interest areas doesn't get anywhere near the weight of somebody with a degree that's composed of many fewer study hours, but the degree holding person will likely get the hiring advantage.

It is worth acknowledging that education tends to be an easy major at US universities because the public supporting public universities has an incentive to firehose students into a steady supply of new teachers. It's a wide funnel optimized against false negatives because the profession has a high attrition rate among recent hires.

I was talking with a freshly minted math teacher yesterday at the soccer field. He was as enthusiastic as one might imagine a 23 year old would be after a year spent with middle achieving suburban Atlanta kids in a 10th grade math class. His first response when I asked how he liked teaching, 'It's a job. It's not like my internship [in a university town] was.' He likes math; teenagers not so much.

We have a similar situation here in Japan too. Vocational schools are looked down but engineering vocational schools are considered top tier, and at least a quarter or less of the best schools in Japan are considered vocational.

Vocational schools are stigmatized because they're generally shitty. If they pumped out out top-quality vocational grads -- mechanics, metal tooling, plumbing, construction, etc. -- people would be far less inclined to lump them all in together. There would be good and bad, just like the varying quality of state universities.

I never went to University- I got invited to do marketing for a startup right after I was done with my mandatory military service- and it's been great for me.

I have pretty bad ADHD and I'm certain that I would've repeated my patterns of poor performance, procrastination, etc. if I had gone to University.

I much prefer working in an environment where I get immediate and direct feedback, and I work directly on things that make sense (in terms of relating how what I do puts food on the table, a roof over my head, and makes a difference to others).

If I could've skipped junior college and started work earlier, I'd have done that instead.

You now now a new subscriber to your blog. I found it incredibly refreshing, interesting and rather unique.