Computer Science is classified as a liberal arts degree at William & Mary: https://catalog.wm.edu/content.php?catoid=24&navoid=3884 .
At UC Berkeley (#1 along with MIT, Stanfurd, CMU) Computer Science is a BA degree.
Computer science is a liberal arts degree
111–120 of 158 posts
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#112Purely semantics. Boring
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#113Ah, the ever green tradition of humans to define very fuzzy categories and then debating enlessly about what stuff belongs to what category.
I mean, it's an accurate characterisation of humans affairs, but I haven't heard any better ideas yet when it comes to figuring what goes into the categories of "good" and "evil".
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not really much of a debate. If I like the thing then it definitely belongs in the category I like. If I don’t like the thing then it definitely belongs in the category I don’t like.
Unfortunately whether paulcole likes something isn’t the only way we categorise things. However just in case it really catches on, could you keep us updated as your tastes change, so we can stay current.
I wanted to categorize everything as "categorized" or "uncategorized".
Nothing remains in the latter category for more than an instant.
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#115Ah, the ever green tradition of humans to define very fuzzy categories and then debating enlessly about what stuff belongs to what category.
I mean, it's an accurate characterisation of humans affairs, but I haven't heard any better ideas yet when it comes to figuring what goes into the categories of "good" and "evil".
Those are not binary categories. If stealing is evil, does it mean stealing food because you haven't eaten in 3 days belongs in the same category as genocide? If it doesn't, does it mean stealing is good? And that's just the easiest example.
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#116I think the author is conflating vocational education with university curriculum. It is often the case that universities offer courses that are much more theoretical than the practical application, even medical studies to some extent begin with very high level concepts and theories; the reason for this is because they’re attempting to optimise for better understanding of the underlying foundations of the discipline t…
I'm struggling to see where in the article the author suggests that her ideal is code academies, although maybe you get that impression from some other source. To me it seemed clear they she is advocating for a change in approach for academic education itself, and not in a "giving students more readily marketable skills" way, but rather almost the opposite: less narrow, technical focus, more critical thinking and multidisciplinarity.
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it's an accurate characterisation of humans affairs, but I haven't heard any better ideas yet when it comes to figuring what goes into the categories of "good" and "evil".
Those are not binary categories. If stealing is evil, does it mean stealing food because you haven't eaten in 3 days belongs in the same category as genocide? If it doesn't, does it mean stealing is good? And that's just the easiest example.
Well, they may not be binary categories but it's stange that you don't think your particular example belongs to one of the two categories.
You don't think it's evil for people to have to steal food just to avoid starvation? You don't think it's evil that people have to make the choice between stealing and dignity?
Weird.
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#118So CS has some special need for academic cross-pollination that math and engineering don't share. If so, I'm shocked. Bellotti asserted this several times without anything to substantiate the claim. Kill It with Fire was on my reading list. I think I want to read more reviews now.
Have you heard of Facebook?
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but that class is kinda dumb if 95%+ of jobs now will be front end javascript level work. I think this sentence sums it up more than relating it to publish-or-perish. It comes down to what is the purpose of university . Is it job training, as companies want it to be (because why should they train their employees when they can outsource it; this has led students to expect it to be job training too), or is it actuall…
Let's be careful about conflating the history of university curricula with the purpose of universities. The humanities are much older fields of study than the sciences, and younger still are the applied sciences and engineering. Universities in the 1600s had a mostly humanities focus because that was where the sum of human knowledge pointed us.
It depends on what you think the 'purpose of universities' is. To me, it's either preparing someone for further research in a field or to understand the human nature, so something more along the lines with what the history of university was. Universities should not be for vocational training -- that should either be trade school or on the job learning. But a lot of companies have realized they can outsource some stuff they used to teach on the job to universities, and students thus expect universities to cater towards that. It's a problem, imo.
Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree
#120I think the author is conflating vocational education with university curriculum. It is often the case that universities offer courses that are much more theoretical than the practical application, even medical studies to some extent begin with very high level concepts and theories; the reason for this is because they’re attempting to optimise for better understanding of the underlying foundations of the discipline t…
From the article:
"If the point of a CS education is to prepare people to work in software (and that assertion is debatable!)"
The author uses a premise, while acknowledging that the reader might not agree with the premise. That's not conflating anything.
And the author's suggestions are far from "vocational"... they just move out of the limited field we call computer science.