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I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

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Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#31

Post by pgeorgi »

eddieroger wrote: post #21
nmjohn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You articulated perfectly exactly what I was thinking. I realize it is a popular idea among society - that college is a career training center - but that is patently false. It is an unfortunate idea too, because it leads to lots of people wasting thousands of dollars on an education they won't ever use in their career just for the sake of having the piece of paper they get at the end. > Besides, if you're not doing a…

It'd be really interesting to go back and see when people started to shift towards colleges being a training ground and not the typical apprenticeship path that was the real training for generations. The way you learned to be an electrician was by being someone's apprentice, then working your way up the ranks, and this went for nearly all trade industries that I can think of. This statement has come to sound incredib…

Germany is still strong on the apprentice model, but even here there's a shift towards universities.

Now companies face an apprentice-shortage and they started actively recruiting university drop-outs to fill the ranks. At least it's not an expensive experiment for those kids, given that tuition costs max out at about 1000 EUR/year.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#32

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

smackfu wrote: post #14
throwaway283719 wrote: post #4

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" I studied engineering, not English... ") or perhaps computer science (" ...graduated at the top of my class in computer science... ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light…

Penn State has a college of engineering and a college of business. It seems like it would be pretty easy to tell which one you were in, and if you went to the business school, you wouldn't say "I studied engineering." Although to be honest, the only place it says "engineering" is in the headline, which editors often mess with.

The article itself gives a strong implication that the author graduated with a CS degree: "I’d worked hard, graduated at the top of my class in computer science and managed to acquire lots of experience with the sorts of industry software that I was sure hiring managers were looking for. I’d even chosen a STEM degree." So, apparently there are people who seriously think business MIS degrees are STEM?

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#34

Post by mordocai »

jerf wrote: post #28
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

"Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers." Maybe it's a crazy idea, but they are equally not intended to be places where you go and learn nothing of value to anybody. I mean, I get the whole academic focus thing too, but the described education wasn't focused on academic computer science either. It was simply useless. Moreover, the idea that academics…

The problem is, you are thinking Computer Science == Computer Programming. You are wrong. Computer Science is more math than programming, if you want to learn marketable skills get a different computer degree. Most colleges offer a more practically oriented degree.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#35

Post by ducklobster »

kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

"Besides, if you're not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career."

I really dislike this mentality and it unfortunately seems to be the expressed by a lot of engineers (at least ones that have an internet presence). Just because you don't spend all of your time hacking away doesn't mean you aren't cut out for this career nor does it mean you can't be a great engineer. This kind of mindset is only going to deter potentially good engineers from entering into the field.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#36

Post by athenry »

kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

"Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions."

Very true. If you want job training, go to a technical/vocational school, or enroll in a certification program. Those are both perfectly legitimate things to do, and there should be no shame in either.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#37

Post by cafard »

kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

I am very sympathetic to this point of view: my undergraduate degree prepared me very well for nothing in particular.

However, if you go back to the medieval roots of the universities, you find the Parisian model, which prepared one to be a cleric or a teacher of the same, and the Bologna model, where you learned law. Think of the account of the founding of Harvard: "One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust".

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#38

Post by mordocai »

ducklobster wrote: post #35
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

"Besides, if you're not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career." I really dislike this mentality and it unfortunately seems to be the expressed by a lot of engineers (at least ones that have an internet presence). Just because you don't spend all of your time hacking away doesn't mean you aren't cut out for this career nor does it mean you can't be a g…

If you are serious about getting a job, you damn well better be hacking in your free time if you don't currently have a job in the field. The OP didn't specifically say but, at least for me, if you are in school/unemployed looking for a job you better be hacking in your free time if you expect me to hire you.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#39

Post by cafard »

throwaway283719 wrote: post #4

You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" I studied engineering, not English... ") or perhaps computer science (" ...graduated at the top of my class in computer science... ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light…

Thank you. I found his post baffling for that reason.

Re: I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job

#40

Post by adamc »

nmjohn wrote: post #17
kyllo wrote: post #5

"Maybe it’s a crazy idea, but if you’re going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn’t you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they’re doing?" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for t…

You articulated perfectly exactly what I was thinking. I realize it is a popular idea among society - that college is a career training center - but that is patently false. It is an unfortunate idea too, because it leads to lots of people wasting thousands of dollars on an education they won't ever use in their career just for the sake of having the piece of paper they get at the end. > Besides, if you're not doing a…

I think universities could do more to educate the public on this, but it isn't really in their best interests, at least in the short-term. And there is a lot of political pressure for public institutions to be career training centers, since nothing else is really filling that role.
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