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How exactly does this square with the UK CS grad unemployment crisis?

https://www.studyinternational.com/news/uk-computer-science-...

http://blog.hefce.ac.uk/2015/07/08/unemployment-among-comput...

“For a long time we wondered why more people didn’t major in computer science,” Alex Aiken, chair of Stanford University’s Computer Science Department, told Times Higher Education. “Everyone in the field believed it was the future and that [it] represented an important way of thinking. Now the world believes us, and we have an overwhelming number of students.”

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Simply because you have a CS degree doesn't mean you're qualified enough to be hired. Companies don't just hire based on a degree, they want demonstrable skills.

I've seen 3rd year students unable to fix a basic java compilation error in their own program. No reasonable CS graduate I know is unemployed.

Demonstrable skills? Of course, here you are the results of my 100 exams, that I passed sucessfully. In an officially certified document, easy to authenticate.

Its called curriculum, and is comfortably standardized for all students so you can find the best easily. Otherwise you would need to compare among random arbitrary sets of skills, different for each one of your candidates and this would be for companies basically like playing blind chicken to hire a candidate.

You need still to show demonstrable skills is often a way to say "I expect you to work for free until you realize that this is the real game here. I will replace you with the next hungry guy in the queue". Is just a mean to obtain the same cheaper, or free.

A CS degree isn't 'comfortably standardised'. Each university has its own curriculum, its own exams, and its own standards.

If I could prove to you that I was awarded a CS degree from a UK university, would that be sufficient for you to agree to employ me?

If your scores were high, probably yes.

Recruitment should be put in the right context. The best recruiter have an evening, or a few hours to figure out if you are a good fit or if you have any skills. If you have a bad day, your recruiter don't liked your face or he/she wants to remain the big fish in a small pond; you fall under the radar.

Your teachers instead had four years for "recruit you". They have see you performing in solitary and in group; know if you have any real skills or not or if you have problems with the other studens. They understand you much better that any recruiter; is their job.

The job of a recruiter is having the position filled at the lowest price possible. They need the psychological tricks to make the process random again and put pressure on the candidate. To be able to cheat the tests or to seduce your recruiter is not a skill that the company needs. Is just smoke. Unsusprisingly a lot of those swans turn into ugly ducklings just after being hired.

ropiku: Simply because you have a CS degree doesn't mean you're qualified enough to be hired.

pvaldes: here you are the results of my 100 exams, that I passed sucessfully. In an officially certified document, easy to authenticate.

me: If I could prove to you that I was awarded a CS degree from a UK university, would that be sufficient for you to agree to employ me?

pvaldes: If your scores were high, probably yes.

So it seems that you and ropiku _agree_ that a CS degree _isn't_ enough.

Where you differ is that you want to see scores above some threshold (although I can't imagine how you'd standardise those across 100+ UK universities), and ropiku wants to see someone write some Java code. Both seem reasonable approaches, but the latter seems a little easier and more reliable.

> I can't imagine how you'd standardise those across 100+ UK universities

Is Python a different language if written in Cardiff, Liverpool or Plymouth?

> Is Python a different language if written in Cardiff, Liverpool or Plymouth?

No, but that has zero relevance to the comparability of scores between universities.

Has Python zero relevance to have a job?

For some jobs yes, of course; for other I don't think so.

If you have a soft spot for elitism and want to have universities ranked by categories you can have it. Is universally standardized, as I said before. You could hire people only of universities ranking in prime number positions if you want. Is your choice.

If you want simply to hire somebody able to code in the language X, you could just take a quick look at the curriculum of your candidate and see if that language was teached in his/her university, what contents have been teached (can find it in the web of the university) and how the guy/girl scored, so... what is the problem exactly?

Do you think that to make them repeat the same tests is a good way to spend the money of your company and your time as employer? Is your company a wannabe-university? Do you feel better qualified to score correctly a candidate than the teacher that spent 30 years doing exactly that job?

You're arguing against points that I didn't make. I had only two points to make in this sub-thread:

- CS degrees are not standardised, i.e. you cannot directly conclude anything based on the graduate's degree grade or individual scores, without additional information (e.g. the institution where they studied).

- Just because someone has a CS degree, that's not enough for you to decide to hire them. You need additional information.

Do you disagree with either of those points?

> CS degrees are not standardised

In most countries they are, by law. Is the basis of the educative system. Degrees are certified and strongly regulated by the government. I can't just print and flash one without a license to emit degrees. This would be to falsificate a public document, wich is a crime in most countries in the world, if not all.

In those countries you can't discriminate something for a public job based only in their university, this would be also illegal. Any degree of type "X" emited by a valid institution must de accepted if you ask for an degree of type "X". All are equivalent. In many fields, physicians for example, you can't work without a degree. But you can work as physician in UK with a Spanish or Chinese degree for example, because this is regulated. Private companies of course can lie themselves in any way as they want. Is their money after all.

Your reality may be different.

> You cannot directly conclude anything based on the graduate's degree grade

If your candidate show a CS degree, you can directly conclude that this people have skills related with computer science, and related with having a CS degree. You don't know if he/she is able to drive a truck, this is true.

> or individual scores

Also standardized.

> Without eg. the institution where they studied.

Information casually written in big fat letters in the CS degree.

In the UK, degrees and individual scores are definitely not standardized.

The standard to achieve a given degree grade (e.g. Upper Second) varies between institutions.

As for individual scores, these are often not even on the same scale. Some universities use numerical scores; others use alpha/beta/gamma.

If you accept the above, but still believe that UK CS degrees are standardized, then it's likely you and I assign different meanings to the word 'standardized'.

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