Bailout U. - A college degree certainly doesn't mean what it used to.
spectator.org
spectator.org
For example, my girlfriend and I both having writing degrees and make a six figure income each. We both know how to script, direct media production and do a variety of things related to technology production -- things we would not have learned with a cs degree. We focus on, as jobs put it, the intersection of the liberal arts and technology. I produce apps on the side that help teach writing and logic for students.
To be perfectly honest, at work we often spend our time directing cs and engineering majors who "don't get it" and never take the human interface, overall purpose, or business and social impact of the product into account. But we don't insult them, because we respect that they are very smart people who focus on other complex problems.
All of us want to be assured that we are all complete masters of our own destinies, either by working harder or tackling something more challenging, et c. bad luck will not befall us.
However the reality is we simply don't.
We were always told that a humanities degree was just fluff, liberal arts degrees were real degrees but you could only work as a teacher with them, and science/professional (such as engineering, medicine, law, etc.) were the only degrees that would convert to money.
It's nothing new but reading this article, you'd think we only just discovered this?
In reality, I think the boomers would have had an easy time getting jobs no matter what they did. I don't think employers ever cared about the degrees. But it was convenient to rationalize all that time spent in school as the reason you have that cushy desk job.
Many start in Computer Science, or Engineering, or Physics, or Pre-med. They get weeded out because of a combination of poor teachers, poor pre-college math and science preparation, and a lack of study skills or scientific ability.
Well, you have a year in, you're stuck in the sunk cost fallacy (Well, I've already spent a year in college, I'm going to have all this debt anyway, so I should get something...) and they enjoyed that French Literature elective.
I think it's more the case that, in our headlong rush to get as many people through college as possible, the standards plummeted. 50 years ago, a liberal arts degree probably had much the same academic rigor as many science degrees have today, and so it at least demonstrated one possessed intelligence, education, and a work ethic. Back then, you majored in French literature because you were interested in French literature.
Actually, a lot of that might even still be true today--a liberal arts degree from Harvard might be of value, but only because not everyone gets into Harvard and completes a degree.
I can't tell you how many times during my college years I had conversations with Arts/Humanities majors like this:
Me: I'm taking CS, probably gonna get a programming job after school, what are you taking?
Them: Humanities/History of Art/Whatever
Me: Oh, that's cool, what are kind of job will that get you once you get your degree?
Them: ??!!?? I'm getting a college degree.
Me: Riiiight.
So, I'm baffled as to why this particular article exists. What does this add besides a kind of half-assed recycling of the same articles every journalist has been writing? It's not even a particularly analytical or insightful spin on the topic, just the same stuff we've read about many times: college degrees are expensive, may not guarantee you well-paid employment, may not be worth the cost. I thought that was the lead-in to the article, setting the tone with a quick recapitulation of what we've already read elsewhere, but then... the article ended and there wasn't anything else.
Do not for any moment think that a hard technical field is necessarily superior. What we study and how we fare is actually an adaptive feature. Just as natural selection isn't about survival of the fittest, rather survival of the best adapted; whether some one is employed or not is a not function of whether they studied "hard" skills or not, but rather whether their skills are adapted to present economic conditions.
Unfortunately, the economy is fickle. Enjoy your time in the sun, and I hope it lasts long.
To a certain extent, what you study in college and what you eventually pursue as a career are generally not the same. Anyone with more than a few years in the field will understand that. Experience trumps a degree after 2-3 out in the field and you can set your own course.
Feel free to disagree, just let me know how many years of work experience you have.
While people with degrees/diplomas may not be good at programming, they at least have something tangible to show potential employers, while people without one need to be more ... creative.
It reminds me on the focus on grades - ALONE - in my country. An absolutely atrocious metric, but a metric the institutions can understand, at least.
"they at least have something tangible to show potential employers"
Maybe, depends on the organization. I worked for a startup where we passed over a lot of CS resume's b/c they had no tangible experience, no interesting side project, nothing they were hacking on, nothing that stood out, including people with Ivy league CS degrees.
Did you get a job by responding to a listing or something more out of the box?
Also, a programmer's having a CS degree is much less likely to come up. You note his degree--which is similar to so many others--and don't think of it again, unless, perhaps his performance is poor. Poor performance doesn't match what you expect--or, more likely, what you think others expect--of a CS major, so you remember that it was a CS major that wasn't particularly good.