Computer science is a liberal arts degree

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 than for any particular job.

Vocational qualifications are extremely handy, but they have a bit of a bad reputation these days. Code academies are not seen as prestigious, despite being the authors ideal. The game assembly (TGA) is one such vocational studies program in southern Sweden with an excellent reputation in the local community for churning out quality (junior) game devs that are ready to work, but suffers with backend programming sections still; since most people who do game dev do not enter to be in the backend.

I would be extremely happy to return to apprenticeships, I would have killed for one going into this industry, but given that employers only care about getting new mid-levels or seniors and not investing in what they already have: it’s always going to be a losing battle as the invested talent atrophies and leaves to go to other places.

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.

> The bulk of software work today is about integrating computation into human driven tasks, predicting and anticipating how people think, what they need, how they react to new communication and work methods

Sure. But that is not what comp sci is about. If one wants better programmers then those aspect should be put in a different, more job focused, degrees like Software Engineering.

It’s should be a choice. If people want to focus on maths and computers, then let them focus on maths and computers without other fields. Degrees aren’t just about jobs.

But degrees are used as a gatekeeper for jobs, and the price of a degree, 4 years of lost earnings + $200K, means that the only practical reason to get one, for the vast majority of people, is to get a higher paying job. So in reality, degrees are about jobs, and universities should start acting like it.

I do share your sentiment that it shouldn't be this way, but if you tried to get rid of this system of degrees as job qualifications, the universities would be your main opponent. A degree not about getting a job would have to be more like 1 year & $20K to really get many takers, and that would be much less money and power for the university.