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That's sad, because English, history, and philosphy could be great programs.
I remember I was struggling to get decent grades on my history papers. I was running out of patience and decided I just wanted to pass. So I just wrote what I thought the professor wanted to hear (far left BS) and started getting B's and even an A-, with little effort.
I thought I was making a mistake choosing that degree path over CS; but CS was making me miserable with the crazy workload — which ended up being a bunch of busy work that got abstracted away by new languages / frameworks by the time we all graduated (we started in a world of esoteric mainframe architectures, C++ and perl and ended in a world of java, php and python so to be fair a LOT changed). But I don’t regret the philosophy degree at all.
I have friends from university with degrees in history, classics, theology, that make 3x what I do as a software engineer with a PhD. They work in things like corporate intelligence, risk analysis, planning and operations. Really high-powered serious stuff that makes what I do look rather trivial. They get hired as their companies want diversity of thought and the main job requirement is just being smart, switched-on…
I have a philosophy degree, and I believe it’s a big part of why I’ve been successful in technology. It taught me to think in patterns and layers upon layers of abstraction; while giving me general-purpose tools that can be applied to problem solving in complex, interrelated systems. I thought I was making a mistake choosing that degree path over CS; but CS was making me miserable with the crazy workload — which ende…
Didn't you have to do a load of reading/essays in the philosophy course?
I have History and CS degrees. The CS experience (at a top engineering school) felt fairly vocational. But being rigorously taught how to research, construct arguments, and communicate ideas in my Liberal Arts degree has been what made me successful past my first hire. I definitely recommend double majoring in a Liberal Arts degree. Also perhaps there’s a lesson here about the CS curriculum being too vocational at mo…
US colleges could absolutely drop the fourth year tomorrow if they wanted to. Many excellent European universities get it done in three and get results just as good.
The real waste of time is the US PhD - doing in seven years what could be done in two or three.
The main problem with the humanities is that they have been consumed by the political far left. That's sad, because English, history, and philosphy could be great programs. I remember I was struggling to get decent grades on my history papers. I was running out of patience and decided I just wanted to pass. So I just wrote what I thought the professor wanted to hear (far left BS) and started getting B's and even an A…
I have friends from university with degrees in history, classics, theology, that make 3x what I do as a software engineer with a PhD. They work in things like corporate intelligence, risk analysis, planning and operations. Really high-powered serious stuff that makes what I do look rather trivial. They get hired as their companies want diversity of thought and the main job requirement is just being smart, switched-on…
When people quote Silicon Valley stars like Reid Hoffman (philosophy, Stanford and Oxford) and Benedict Evans (history, Cambridge) look at the school too.
Communicating clearly, and thinking systemically are very important. I’m just not convinced that most colleges and universities teach those anymore. The people who have it get it elsewhere.