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Comment by tinokid | Hacker News Reader

Could there be a clearer sign that the quality of higher education in our time is in steep decline?

If, one hundred years ago, Oxbridge had floated the idea of sanctioning a student to embark on a program of study designed to anticipate questions that might arise in a job interview, it would have been as preposterous as suggesting that the Queen should take her meals in a pub.

And yet today, we have one of the preeminent universities not just of the United States but of the world offering a course that appears to amount to Kaplan for a tech job.

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Oh, come on. I think you are exaggerating quite a bit here. This is a single pass/no pass unit out of 180 units required for graduation, and, as a Stanford CS student, I can assure you the other classes are extremely rigorous. I don't see a problem with a one-unit class designed to help build confidence and demonstrate your skills to an interviewer. If you think that such a class shouldn't be necessary, then blame the current interview system, not all of higher education. Higher education has its problems, but this is hardly grounds to claim it's in "steep decline."

I doubt this is a sign of a decline in quality of higher ed, and more a sign of the popularity of CS as a major and software engineering as a career.

These kinds of courses and prep has existed in similarly popular fields for many yeas: law, medicine, finance, etc.

1) Those are professional schools 2) Even so, no respectable law school offers a bar prep class. Nor does any med school offer "How to ace the USMLE".

But do most law school grads take bar prep classes?

Yes, but good law schools aren't squandering the value of their most cherished currency on them - the reputation of their course credits in the world of academia.

>1) Those are professional schools

And a computer science degree is deliberately, emphatically NOT a professional training regimen towards a career in software engineering.

> Nor does any med school offer "How to ace the USMLE".

Some medical schools will use NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners) subject exams as final exams for various third year clinical rotations. Through a combination of experience on the rotation and studying material from textbooks and review books, the exams serve as good preparation for the USMLE step 2 exam since the test style is largely similar.

40 years ago, my mom took a one credit course in undergrad for her cs degree that was on resume writing, interviewing, and negotiation. Is this so different?

Did your mom go to Stanford?

No. Another american university. The point is that this sort of thing is neither new nor an indication that the education system is failing.

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