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Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

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Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#31

Post by defrost »

gailees wrote: post #2

I wrote the counterpoint, and although I really respect Professor Holloway's point, I really think his argument is stuck too much in the past.

> Counterpoint author: David Fontenot is a serial hackathoner and director of MHacks Hackathon from South Florida. He is studying Computer Science Engineering in his Sophomore year at the University of Michigan.

Is this you then?

What would be interesting is your argument for the case, ... obviously if you don't have one you might want to save some time and money and withdraw from UofM.

The existence of remarkable individuals, which is by no means a recent phenomena, demonstrates that for some a university education is not, in the strict sense, a necessity. That hardly addresses the issue of whether or not Universities as entities are worthwhile enough to be considered a necessity in a society.

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#32

Post by rayiner »

jtdaugh wrote: post #20

What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real world experience.

I had this opportunity about 10 years ago. I passed, and in retrospect I'm incredibly glad I did. Couple of years after graduation, I realized I had interests beyond software engineering, and while the lack of a bachelors can play in Silicon Valley, it doesn't pretty much anywhere else. Also, if one day you decide to go into the management route and want an MBA, the lack of a bachelors is going to be a deal breaker.

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#35

Post by chii »

jasonlingx wrote: post #22

An education is necessary. Some schools are good at delivering that. Some are crap and you are wasting your time and money. And of course, lots of opportunity outside of school to learn as well.

an education is necessary. Some people conflate education with credentials (or certification). WHile one is a proxy for the other, some people don't see it as so and insist that you must have the credentials - for example, HR departments in large corporations. Hence, to cover your bases, you need the credentials, as well as a good education.

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#36

Post by drivebyacct2 »

saraid216 wrote: post #30

It's really not that hard. The branching logic is simple. If you have a better, actual alternative to university, do that. Else, do university, which is an established default for those who can afford it. If you can't afford it, the debate isn't even relevant.

1. Look at current job market.

2. Look at unemployed graduates.

3. Define "established default", or better "establish good default".

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#37

Post by rayiner »

[deleted] wrote: post #33

[deleted]

> But I'm sorry -- if you're more than 10 years out of college (or ~5 years for a CS degree)

Silicon Valley is cyclic. It's not always going to be in a boom phase. Eventually Google, Microsoft, etc, are going to figure out how to get more H1-B's, get colleges to pump out more CS grads, etc, etc, to increase supply, drive labor prices down and drive competition for jobs up.

Which is not to say you should or shouldn't go to college. Rather, you should have a slightly longer perspective on the issue and not just ignore peoples' opinions because they're more than 5 years out of school.

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#39

Post by lsc »

jtdaugh wrote: post #20

What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real world experience.

Meh, maybe it's because I came of age during the first bubble... but I see life as a series of opportunities that open and close; they open and close in part based on your own attributes (e.g. you need to meet the minimum qualifications for the job, and you need to apply or otherwise make yourself available,) but also based on time, chance, and other things you don't control.

I got out of high school and got my first programmer/sysadmin job in '97 or so. (I had a few years of cable monkey and hardware/windows work in high school.) - But that was almost entirely timing; The minimum requirements in '97 were really low, due to the dot-com bubble; Pure luck, really. But then I was able to learn enough that I made the cut when the minimum requirements went way up after the crash. (There is no way I would have made that cut right out of highschool.)

If I had gone to college... well, it was really, really hard to find a job in my field with no experience, four years after '97. Maybe I would have learned enough in school to make the cut, maybe not. Maybe I would have been able to convince an employer that I was that good without paid work experience, maybe not[1].

Also, if someone else is paying for school? that's a big opportunity there, too, and it's possible that opportunity might not be there in a few years. (Is it a bigger opportunity than a job in the field you want? I don't know.)

But that's how I'd look at it.

[1] As a sidenote... if you are badass enough to go to school and have a job/internship in your field at the same time? that's best of all. Many of the best people I know did that. It's really difficult to pull off, though. I don't think I have what it takes to pull that off, not without stretching the school over 8+ years.

Re: Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student.

#40

Post by mountaingoating »

chriwend wrote: post #3
gailees wrote: post #2

I wrote the counterpoint, and although I really respect Professor Holloway's point, I really think his argument is stuck too much in the past.

I think you're young and ignorant, you should stay and school and gain perspective before moving to the real world.

What makes you think you know what's best for him? I guess you probably went to college, but maybe you didn't. What I do know, is that you didn't both go to college and also choose not to go to college.

If you did go, then you don't know what would've happened to you if you hadn't gone. You could have lived in Costa Rica for 3 years and decided to establish a charity, never thinking twice about the value of higher education. Maybe later you would've posted in this thread, and had the top rated comment about how much you learned on that trip in comparison to what your friends learned in college.

However, it's also possible that you didn't go to college, and are simply regretting that choice and trying to warn those younger than you not to make the choice that you did. But what if you had gone? Maybe you would've hated it, and dropped out after two years, thinking it was a completely horrible idea.

Whether or not you went to college, you don't have the full picture. You don't know what it would've been like to do the opposite. That's why this is not an easy question -- that's why people actually talk about this. If it were as easy as "I'm older than you, and I think you should go, therefore you should go," this thread wouldn't exist. So don't act like you have the right to tell others how to live very important parts of their lives. We all have to walk our own journey, and make our own decisions, and if we just listen to those more experienced than us, we will never get anywhere important. And we probably won't be very happy, either.

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