Is the first year of a degree a waste of time?

Post by stoney » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 1:36 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #30

stoney wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it's also likely that the students are living away from home for the first time, which takes a bit of getting used to for some. It's difficult to strike a balance between not boring the brightest and losing the less bright completely.

The less bright should not be there in the first place . University isn't supposed to be merely a continuation of secondary education.

Wherever you draw the line on who to take and who not to take, you will end up with a spectrum of abilities being accepted - there will always be the person who just made it in and there will always be the person who could have done it in their sleep. I meant "less bright" as a relative term (relative to the rest of their group) not as a euphemism for being objectively stupid.

Though I do agree that there is a case that too many people are going to university these days. But maybe that's just because I have a degree so I want to create scarcity!

Post by ecaroth » Fri, Nov 05, 2010, 3:12 PM UTC

andrewingram wrote: post #13

ecaroth wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how much were you able to actually get into CS your first year?? I was limited to mostly programming 1 & 2... you couldn't get into any higher level CS studies until you had those two classes completed, and you couldn't take them at the same time. That led to a lot of fun side projects, no doubt, but that was when I wasn't falling asleep in my under-water basket weaving class. I often wonder if a technical program…

Hm, if i recall correctly my first year had: - A basic mathematics course, took us through some of the harder A-Level (pre-uni) stuff and a few more advanced things - Discrete mathematics, set theory and all that jive. - An introductory programming course, it covered basic Java programming and introduced OOP. Coursework was to write the algorithm for solving a maze - A basic hardware and lower-level concepts course -…

Wow... you were already in discreet math & shell programming in your first year. I was stuck with calc 1 & 2, and didn't get to touch a unix shell until my second year "networking" class where we spent two months setting up subnets. I didn't get to touch on any harware stuff until year 3, where we mapped out ALUs, RAM chips, etc. Sounds like your universities CS program had it's shit together a little more than mine. Oh well though.. the lack of interesting topics for the first 2 years only drove me to learn on my own and do side projects, which ended up ok in the end.

Re: Is the first year of a degree a waste of time?

Re: Is the first year of a degree a waste of time?