I view university education as poor-to-useless vocational training for software engineering as well as most if not all careers that aren't explicitly research-focused, and I say that as someone who's gotten a master's degree in computer science, intended to get a PhD, and for the most part didn't for financial reasons. I really enjoy and respect academia, but it exists to train researchers, and the more advanced a de…
I agree with some of the premise —- university education doesn’t focus on preparation for specific vocational skills. But you could say the same about high school. It doesn’t follow that reading writing and algebra are bad vocational investments, in fact the opposite because they support many possible vocations. As a CS professor, my goal is to push students to rewire their brains in ways that are better and more eff…
Re: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
#261I do say the same about high school, and would also argue that mandatory education as a whole is a massive failure except as a means to babysit small children and eventually give them an opportunity to socialize, something which could also be done more effectively without the enormous apparatus of laws, policies, and folk beliefs we have built around what it's supposed to do and how that can be done