This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
This comment is elitism at its worst. Even if you completely accept the validity of self-learning, there is still a place for formal education.
Some people can learn a lot about a complicated field on their own, but there are still plenty of people who would benefit from some pedagogical help.
This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
This comment is elitism at its worst. Even if you completely accept the validity of self-learning, there is still a place for formal education. Some people can learn a lot about a complicated field on their own, but there are still plenty of people who would benefit from some pedagogical help.
Pretty sure the kids paying 60k a year to learn CS at Swarthmore are more elite.
this is one of the pathologies in academic institutions: they need teachers, but they evaluate researchers. the people who make the cut for researcher also have a lot of other options, and the institution ends up with an undersupply of teachers.
Tenure track implies research.
tenure is likely a good thing for people doing research. why is tenure necessary for people specialized in teaching?
Why do US colleges over-admit like this? In the UK you apply to do a computer science course, and they have 50 places or whatever for that course, and so they admit 50 people. You can't get into the college and then be told that actually it's full. If they do accidentally over-admit it's their problem to solve, not yours.
The US university system is quite unusual (I believe Canada also has a similar system): at the undergraduate level you typically don't apply to a specific program; all students are expected to take a variety of classes (confusingly called "courses"), only some of which apply to a specific course of study. Domain-specialized classes become an increasing proportion of your overall classes after the first or second year…
It's important to point out the underlying reason for this: a US high school diploma is absolutely worthless garbage, so you need to continue generalist studies in university to bring people up to the standard of other developed countries.
E.g. someone with a French baccalauréat or enough British A levels can usually skip the first year or two of university in the US.
I'm not convinced people aren't just legitimately working a lot harder. When I went to university graduating in 2007, so just before the crash but not really very long ago, everyone was pretty chilled out about their courses. Nobody did internships. As long as people weren't failing they were relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Getting a 2:2 was a bit of banter rather than a serious threat to your ability to ever get a g…
It was already fairly clear by then that major employers require a 2:1.
Can someone explain what that means to me? Is this a kind of grade?
This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
This comment is elitism at its worst. Even if you completely accept the validity of self-learning, there is still a place for formal education. Some people can learn a lot about a complicated field on their own, but there are still plenty of people who would benefit from some pedagogical help.
It's not elitism because learning how things work "under the hood" at the age of 20, when you've been using tech your whole life, it shows a lack of curiosity. Tech is inherently obfuscated, nail-biting debugging, and a crap ton of reverse engineering. CS is a subset of mathematics. Software development is a lifestyle and an ethos. No degree will provide that in full capacity like being a curious kid who wrote game mods or hacks, and looked into how the things he loves actually work. With something as accessible as software, you don't need privilege or thousand dollar lab equipment. If you don't know how things work under the hood because you waited for college...you're gonna have a bad time...
>Aafia Ahmad, a sophomore computer science major at U.T. Austin, had hoped to take an elective course in computer security this semester. But when she tried to sign up during early registration in November, the course was already full. I know this doesn't refute the point the article is trying to make, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me that an underclassman might not get into a highly sought after elective.…
At my uni the class sizes were huge, usually 1:300-400, and they only offer 1-2 possible class times. It feels like staff are dropping left and right so the profs that stay on are forced to do this. Many cs/engineering kids cant take the intro classes for a couple semesters, many upperclassmen can't take courses which are only offered in spring or only fall.
We appear to have a 20-ish-year boom/bust cycle in CS enrollment; Eric Roberts (and some others in CS education) have been working on this for a while; there's a ton of resources at https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/ResourcesForTheCSCap...
I think this is a little different. American schools now court more foreign students than ever to populate these programs. Domestic students that would otherwise go into EE or CE have fewer job prospects compared to 20 years ago and are better off in CS too. Previous booms were more faddish. Now it's basic economics.
This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
It doesn't work this way for everyone. It was priceless for me to have my CS101 professor walking around the classroom when we were doing our assignments. When my C code wouldn't compile, he could spot the error with just a glance. I can do that easily now but I never forgot that.
This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
This comment is elitism at its worst. Even if you completely accept the validity of self-learning, there is still a place for formal education. Some people can learn a lot about a complicated field on their own, but there are still plenty of people who would benefit from some pedagogical help.
It's only elitist to the extent you believe people who teach themselves are somehow superior. Actual elitism is prioritizing the candidates who can afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars at top schools. That's... I mean, it's classic elite. Access to education is a core part of an aristocracy or upper class.