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College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

nytimes.com

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Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#431

Post by ocfx »

shaftway wrote: post #171
aarongough wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a degree and honestly have never had any issues with recruiters or interviews for intermediate/senior 'software engineering' positions. I never represent myself as having a degree, but I don't go out of my way to point out my lack of degree either. Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be meri…

I don't have a degree and it almost never fails to come up. Ultimately I flunked out (for a variety of reasons). I've done a lot of A/B(/C/D/E) testing with my resume: - Don't include education - I'm asked about it. Every. Single. Time. - Include the years I attended college - Asked why I didn't finish. Every. Single. Time. - Include college in a misleading way - I did a summer extension program for 2 years while in…

I put that I went to school, never put a graduation date or anything. People just assume I graduated I guess, nobody has ever checked.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#432

Post by vorg »

econochoice wrote: post #425
vorg wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, instead of using the metric getting a job as a Software Engineer , you used building and deploying quality software in a timely and cost-effective manner , then a CS and/or SE degree may be very important.

> building and deploying quality software in a timely and cost-effective manner, then a CS and/or SE degree may be very important I've yet to see a correlation between the two.

When I worked in IT, I noticed a correlation between the absence of each. Those who get jobs as programmers without prior study and/or training tend to be more likely to slip up on quality delivered, deadlines met, and/or resources used. Of course, measuring those things is tricky. Some programmers ship software full of bugs so they can make more money fixing it up later, which is charged to some other account in the company.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#433

Post by bjourne »

replicatorblog wrote: post #330
bjourne wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, not everyone, but for most that's reality. You've been watching to many American Pie movies. College students are insanely focused because they know how tough the competition is. No one has time to party.

At Ivies and other top 20 schools, I'd agree. Maybe even the top 50. Beyond that, I think the American Pie stereotypes are closer to the norm than you might think.

Can you give me an example of an American Pie university? Because I don't believe you.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#434

Post by rixrax »

mgkimsal wrote: post #413
rixrax wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the mouth of John Cleese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU I realize I am not in tune with times, but it somewhat irks me that a lot of (generally) younger folk at work want to blog about every single task they've accomplished or assigned to. Often turning these seemingly routine tasks into heroic efforts described in the blog postings. I guess it's called career growth. :)

last full time job I had, I blogged almost daily, on an internal system I installed. I was laughed at a bit. Mgr asked for weekly 'status reports' but they always either had too little info, or outdated info. The blog was my daily/hourly notes. Initially I just said "read my blog" for the status update, but that didn't go well, but it helped me summarize. Meetings? I had the discussion/outcomes in the blog. Tricky SQ…

Right. What you did is you documented (internally) what you did, and related decision chains. Before we used wikis, and way back we just wrote it up on paper and archived in folders. Good job and shame on your co-workers seemingly not engaging to similar activity.

What I was referring to though were public blog postings in teh interwebs. And because they are public, you can’t often include details that would make them usable as a documentation in a way internal blog like yours would work.

As an internal tool for documenting what’s been done, or for debriefing. I think blog etc. is just as good as other methods. It’s the public ones where I sometimes wonder how much they add to pool of noise and useless information which makes it so much harder to find good information.

Or I just need to improve on my googling-fu! ;)

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#435

Post by johnhassan »

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Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#436

Post by bluGill »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #45
bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the problem with politics: the unintended effects are always an issue. Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.

Not in America, at least. Many European countries have government-paid, top-tier public education for free to the students.

Yes, but they have their own unintended consequences. As an outsider I have no idea what, but I've been around long enough to know they exist. They might or might not be worth it.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#437

Post by scoggs »

jrumbut wrote: post #336
scoggs wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I advise any young people I get to talk with about post high school education to not jump head first into a degree program. Life won't pass you by if you take a year or two to formulate a plan. I applaud you for this. There's often so much pressure from every single direction around a young adult to attend college including internal pressure. After having been the first from my immediate family and older to graduate…

Reading your post gave me a greater empathy for the frustrations that our education system inflicts by not getting into specifics about how to develop a realistic structure and plan for life that is flexible but has an age appropriate level of detail. Just the exercise would be useful, but even more so some feedback. But then that raises the question, who is equipped to give that feedback? Should an educator tell som…

>When I was young my father stuck me in front of a publication from the bureau of labor statistics that gave the long term outlook for every occupation they track. It was really great advice that every kid should see

This is more of the kind of thing I wish kids were shown.

Not only show them and teach them skills they'll need the very second they graduate high school, god forbid they are on their own or have no family to rely on. How are we expecting newly graduated 18 year olds to be true participating adults in our society when education teaches them nothing of value?

At least if public schools took a more vocational approach and showed students career tracks with all sorts of options and branches for people with a given set of skills they could at least tuck that information in the back of their mind, they'd know their options and they'd likely gravitate toward working towards the things that they feel they are best suited for.

When they aren't sure that's when teachers, guidance counselors, professionals in different markets (who come in and do assemblies / talks) and parents come into play to help guide a student who isn't quite sure. It's not easy for a pre-adult to decide their career but what I'm really saying and really wanting to see is at least some more emphasis on reminding those kids that life's not all about college. More important that college is creating a comfortable life for yourself and potentially your family and to do that you need to learn how to create value for an employee or society (if you start your own business) before you graduate. Not many companies want to hire people to pay and train them if they have no skills and experience and things like that are becoming more and more rare outside of the trades -- and even then a lot of the artisans and tradespeople seem like a closed off wall if not the type of career most students have been "brain washed" (for lack of a better / less devious word) that blue collar service jobs are below them.

Maybe work study programs for all high school juniors (16/17) and seniors (17/18) in different sorts of service and white collar jobs to give them an idea of how a business works with both blue and white collar workers forming together in a company to make products or offer services. Something to give those students some insight into the way things really are.

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