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Comment by delecti | Hacker News Reader

Many things being taught in college today will be out-of-date by the time a current college student dies. But I think you're overstating the proportion which that applies to, and discounting the usefulness of that knowledge between now and when it's no longer useful. Most of what's really subject to change is the stuff on the outer edges of fields, which is mostly only being taught to people specializing in those fields. Most of the rest is in relatively new fields (much of computer science) and people in new fields are going to have to work to keep up anyway.

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I agree with you when it comes to fields like mathematics, physics where knowledge is basically cumulative and a basic understanding goes a long way.

Then for instance Freud is still studied in philosophical classes, history as we learn it is so basic and biased that the most important parts (the ones that directly affect how we see the world and plan the future) need to be completely reviewed as an adult to have any acceptable grasp of where we are and where we go.

For instance what I learned about the cold war that still stands today could be summarized in a A4 sheet, and we spend a few months on it. The rest just turned out to be mostly propaganda, unbased assumptions and half truths.

Even going back to the greeks and the romans, actually learning about the subject gives a completely different impression that what we got at school. It might be because I'm an adult now, but then what was the meaning of these months spent on it ?

Basically I feel that subjects closely related to humans and society are not well fit for a 3 or 4 year generic program, to be almost useless if it's the only time someone study them.

Is computer science really that subject to change, though? Especially given what most CS graduates end up doing in industry? The tech stack may change, the syntax of the language may change, but the underlying math/theory mostly doesn't.

I think most decent CS programs are roughly the same as they have been for decades.

It should include a lot of math including a few semester of calculus, linear algebra, probability, etc.

Should be forced to take a few of the CE beginner courses like digital logic. And of course, learning low level OS development, networking layers, which includes C and assembly. Algorithms and some sort of numeric computing course using the learned math.

It wasn't until my last year where I had electives that I needed an IDE for dealing with high level languages and frameworks.

But I have a feeling that a lot of CS programs - especially those in lib arts instead of under the engineering schools - have really become watered down and glorified boot camp, and for several reasons.

* need more women and diversity to pass the program.

* colleges are addicted to the foreigners who pay full tuition. Who cares of half of them cheat, can't speak English, can't complete the work - they're paying $100k for that degree. And the smartest ones can be used as indentured servants in the grad school since they can't stay otherwise.

Anyway, when I do interviewing, I have noticed a decline in candidates even if they have a fresh CS degree. Many of them know things like React and Javascript, but are clueless with most of the subjects I wrote about above.

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