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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

>What's sad is most of the entry-level work I see across most fields could be done with a minimum of training, even though employers insist on a college degree.

I'm in a graduate program now and I've become extremely cynical about "college" and "university". The mandatory degree("credentialing") is starting, in my opinion, to look more like institutional fraud than any honest attempt at teaching people anything.

Whoever figures that out, the credentialing part, could go a long way toward fixing that problem. Is anyone working on this?

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Your ire is focused on the symptom not the cure.

Take a look at india and china, they have this exact same problem, and it's a result of immense demand for STEM engineers, no matter what.

Marketing employees will have gone through a STEM education on a regular basis.

The way it unfolds is this -

1) If you aren't a degree holder, you aren't employable, there's millions of degree holders fighting for a job

2) you are a degree holder? Well there's 1000s fighting for your position, are you a hard degree or soft degree?

3) HArd STEM? What's your pedigree?

In short - allowing the system to take root (degree as pre requisite for jobs), sets of a vicious cycle.

This cycle only begins when you have a large group of unemployable humans.

To compete and be employed they increasingly turn to signaling. Eventually the old signal (actually interested In learning) gets overwhelmed with people who just want a job.

it's a jobs problem not an education problem.

One of my professors made a point about college: it's not about getting a job or not, but rather, being a button-pusher or understanding what you're doing. It's way too easy to become a "button-pusher". I am 100% confident that I could successfully perform a relatively complex cardiac surgery on a patient with about 2-3 weeks of training and some good staff. "Cut here, tie that together, done".

The thing is, there is a HUGE difference between what I described and actually understanding what one is doing, in the deepest meaning of that word. That's what you go to college for: to pass on that deep knowledge. You don't go to college to "get a job".

So the problem really is with employers: why do they insist on a college degree when they could ask for a technical school diploma, or whatever. There's nothing wrong with college per se, IMO, as I think you'll agree.

If the goal of universities is to pass on "deep knowledge", then I would argue that the vast majority of such institutions are utter failures at their mission.

We might have a definition problem, where some institutions that offer what amounts to a technical education (i.e. with almost no mandatory "theoretical" courses) call themselves "colleges".

In the workplace I definitely experience the difference between one who received a formal education, in the sense of raw theory, and one who studied how to "do" things. Both are useful, but they serve different purposes.

From my experience working in management over the past decade, I can say with some confidence that most computer science programs excel at pushing out people that can not, in fact, code in the real world.

Sure, they can solve ACM-style challenges and spit out Dijkstra on a whim, but I can't recall the last time I needed to deliver on a business objective that mapped to either of those things.

This is not to say that understanding computer science is bad! Having a deep understanding of the underlaying theory and technology is a requirement to attain mastery.

But being able to ship maintainable, well-factored, and properly-tested code in a collaborative environment is far more important to me than having memorized every algorithm in TAOCP.

I mean, if I can have both skillsets, I'll totally take both skillsets, but given the choice between the two, I know that a wizard-level software engineer with very weak algorithms skills will, in general, bring a lot more value to a project than a wizard-level computer scientist that can't write code that the rest of the team can maintain.

About the only time that a computer science wizard is useful to me, is if I already have a team of solid software engineers, so that they can mentor each other and lift the overall skill level of the team.

What universities really need to start doing is including a multi-year track built into their curricula whereby students build and maintain production software over the course of their studies, with quarterly rotation between teams.

Why not produce useful software needed by wider society as part of the course? Whether it's open source which will give them the github credentials or something like CodeForAmerica that fixes needed public works.

The problem is the dog eat dog narrow mindedness of seeing everything as a competition and not learning anything about collaboration and serving others. Something a lot of CS grads would benefit massively from, I know I would have.

Also a good idea.

Equally to blame is the industry hiring process. ACM HackerRank and Codility challenges are often the first stage before you're put through a whiteboard. As a result, a competent programmer has no incentive to actually continue training in best practice, rather optimise for the interview process. I flat out refuse to do any interviews with this silly competitive programming hoop jumping. As a manager, what is your hiring process?

I share your concerns, but I absolutely disagree with your last proposal: Universities should stay universities. There's a reason why civil engineers aren't pouring concrete and installing cables etc in a new hospital, for example. There are vastly more competent people for the tasks, and they all went to technical school (electricians, etc).

I actually think Universities do a disservice to their students if they promise them a curriculum that "leads to a job". You should go to University if you want to continue your formal education, not "to get a job". If you just want to get a piece of paper that lets you get a job, mentor with someone, go to a technical college, learn to "do" something. But Universities should teach how to think, that's about it, IMO. If you can find a job after should have no impact on the curriculum.

I am from Brazil, here people demanded that I should go to university to get a degree to get a job.

I can say now that trusting the adults was stupid idea, I ended getting student loans, got a degree, but no job. I am 29 now and my government job registry is still empty.

Then we need to build an entirely separate practical education track in the United States, similar to how things work in Germany. We could base it in community colleges to leverage existing mindshare and infrastructure.

I would actually love to see this, but haven't yet thought through in-depth how it would work in the US.

Because right now, nothing like this exists, and until it does, the primary focus of most university students is to indeed "get a job".

You mean like trade school? I'm not familiar with the German system, but the description of "practical education track" sounds a lot like trade school. Of which there are many in the US but are considered undesireable in comparison to college.

This.

There really needs to be a division in American universities between Computer Science and Software Engineering, the same like you would find between Physics and Mechanical Engineering.

Or clearly defined apprenticeship programs. Which may not be part of universities.

A part of which is the difference between information and experience.

Schools attempt to cram as much information as possible in as little time in the overworked and overwhelmed minds of the students. The result is low retention and studying for the tests.

Knowledge and deep understanding come with time and experience in the presence of awareness.

The experiential parts of medical training for example are closer to hazing than anything else. We have enough research to know that the brain needs rest to process learning. Having people work for 24-36h straight does not do anyone a favor, is not sustainable and presents significant dangers to everyone involved.

>There's nothing wrong with college per se, IMO, as I think you'll agree.

Yep, I'd absolutely agree. I suppose my problem here is cultural, in a way. I didn't mean to say that I don't think young people (am I old? Maybe I am) shouldn't have to take history classes that are exogenous to whatever they end up doing later in life. I think what I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of room to make specific skills that employers look for separate from the horribly expensive University system. This has to be possible, but maybe I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, IME, neither is "deep knowledge" gained by an average student during an average undergraduate education, despite practitioners' best intentions.

You are right. It is also my experience that some graduates from technical schools are much more knowledgeable than some graduates from college. But the point stands, the two types of schools are serving different needs. We need both.

>I am 100% confident that I could successfully perform a relatively complex cardiac surgery on a patient with about 2-3 weeks of training and some good staff. "Cut here, tie that together, done".

And what if something goes wrong?

I really wish someone would. I know too many folks who've been laid off after an otherwise very successful run, and will not be interviewed by new companies because they fall sort in the credential category. It's enraging, frankly, because they meet and usually exceed all other requirements and yet the credential is what stops the hire.

I hear theories that cite insurance (that power company case) and other reasons, and I think they all kind of stink. It's as if higher education is more of a gatekeeper than mobilizer. (In some industries.)

It would probably be quite difficult to hammer together some "agreed upon standard" for "levels" of proficiency in X_language.

That said, it's been done before...with spoken languages for the Military. Taking the DLPT will give you a rating on your proficiency, and then you get both the credentialing and then additional pay (Once upon a time I took it for Arabic and scored some 0+s). It'd be hard, but I don't think it would be impossible to do it for some kind of development credential.

http://www.dliflc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Generic-Fam... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Proficiency_T...

> I really wish someone would. I know too many folks who've been laid off after an otherwise very successful run, and will not be interviewed by new companies because they fall sort in the credential category

I wonder if that's disguised ageism. A lot more people are going to college in the last decade than in previous decades.

If ageism is hitting in our early 30s things are worse than I thought.

"The mandatory degree("credentialing") is starting, in my opinion, to look more like institutional fraud than any honest attempt at teaching people anything."

New age indentured servants.

There's a company thats working on getting there. https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/20/sigma/

It looks like they're solving a different problem.

Lots of analog credentials do exist that should be digitized (the SCUBA one is a great example that I've personally encountered), but I'm talking about a replacement for traditional, outrageously expensive 4-year Universities where a fraction of what you pay for is directed toward what you'll do for work - but more importantly, folks that wish to career switch from whatever they'd doing to a more technical field but lack that 4-year "degree".

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