Comment by wanderingmoose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wanderingmoose | Hacker News Reader

As a mid-90's graduate who started in chemistry and accidentally found my way to computer science... Oof. The promise of a well rounded education where you can explore and find out for yourself what you enjoy and where you want to study no longer exists.

I took CS classes because I wanted something fun to do outside of what I was officially studying. About the time I finished up, UCB was already limiting upper division classes to CS majors only. And this was thirty years ago.

I ended up in my career because I married the thing I thought I wanted to do (chem) with the thing I really enjoyed and was good at (programming). I met a lot of grad students who wanted help programming and I got to do a lot of cool work with different research groups in chem/phys/bio that did protein folding, data visualization, etc. I ended up getting a job at Industrial Light and Magic because I had a lot of experience programming OpenGL on Irix(SGI).

Where is the room for that kind of experience now? You need to test into the major before you even enter campus? I guess the college experience is getting a piece of paper stating that you can jump through a set of hoops.

This is disappointing. I've been fortunate enough to work in an industry that combines art and tech and know the benefits of working with people who come from a variety of backgrounds and expertise. I want to live and work in a world where you don't need to match an algorithm to have a chance. And unfortunately, many people conflate a university degree with that chance.

> You need to test into the major before you even enter campus?

That's how it works in Germany and I believe a majority of other European countries as well. You don't apply to a given school, you apply to get into a specific program at a given school.

Works like that in Sweden as well. However once you are in, there is nothing stopping you from applying to courses outside of your program. For example I was in the mathematics program, but took 'extracurricular' courses at the philosophy, economics, computer science and electrical engineering departments. It is also possible to apply to change program once you are in.

Same in Finland. Actually you can even try to get courses done in other Universities.

On other hand even to get into university you probably need to know where you are generally aiming at beginning of High School.

In Poland you apply to a major and that's it, you can't even choose which subjects you want. You have a list which you have to take and that's it.

>The promise of a well rounded education where you can explore and find out for yourself what you enjoy and where you want to study no longer exists.

Ideally, you want to figure out what you want to do with your life /before/ you saddle yourself with debt going into college (assuming your dreams take you that way).

If the tides are turning such that you need to have a decent idea about your life's prospects before entering university, I say that is a very good thing.

Expecting people to confidently pick their life course by 18 is pretty silly. The ability to flex and explore as you grow into adulthood in college is very valuable. And you can do it while learning very useful skills and topics (as the above commenter did).

The time to "grow into adulthood" is during your school years. If you don't have a decently clear idea of where you want to go in life, it's probably not a good idea to take on a 5- or even 6-digit debt.

Once you figure out what your life goal is, /then/ see about going to college if that's on the way to achieving your goal.

The widespread notion that everyone must go to college, including for no good reason, is nonsense. College isn't the end all be all to life.

Ideally you don't need to saddle yourself with debt to go to college.

I strongly agree with you.

I went to berkeley in the 90's. Tuition was ~$2k (usd) per semester. I lived in a shared house for $300/month. I paid for everything out of pocket by working for a campus job (which paid $8/hour vs $5/hour minimum wage). So I was lucky and walked away with no debt.

I feel for the current generation that will need to take on debt if they feel they need a college education, and I know the amount I've been saving for my kids.

I can't change anything about the monetary policy that allowed student loans to be so large. But I do try my best to do outreach and recruiting from candidates with non-standard backgrounds and who didn't come from one of the big CS schools.

>You need to test into the major before you even enter campus?

This is how it works in most of the world. There is no major/minor system, you just study one thing at university for ~3 years.

Things are different than the mid 90s. There are plenty of schools teaching computer science well. I think a school has a responsibility to its current/incoming students to give a quality education, and the UC system does that at a greater scale than any other top universities.

I graduated this past May, and let me tell you that TAs are struggling, pulling 40-60 hour weeks of pure TA work plus whatever classes they need to be taking to handle the sheer scale of these CS classes (800-2000 students). 15% of the undergraduate population (32,000 students) is graduating CS or EECS. You can't just keep scaling up class sizes and undergraduate populations forever, and the fact that Cal is getting this criticism for doing it at a level far above any other top CS university is surprising honestly.

> You need to test into the major before you even enter campus?

As an EECS major of roughly the same period...yes? The Cal engineering majors have been direct admit for ages, precisely because demand is always higher than capacity. In our day, the CS path was neglected because most incoming CS kids wanted the EECS guarantee. Once demand rose and the L&S admission advantage obviously outweighed the value of the EECS major guarantee, it was all over. The "backdoor" IEOR major (ORMS) has the same issue and is also going "high demand."

That said, the last plan-of-record I have seen involves a "discovery" path that will take a few undeclared L&S majors each year. So today's you would still have a chance. But you would be ineligible for the "discovery" path if you had declared "intended CS" during admission (i.e., were actually rejected from the direct admit path).

Initially I felt similar to you, but then I considered the potential impact on accumulating student loan debt both from the perspective of paying for classes that don’t contribute to a major and rising tuition costs in the name of giving every student a reasonable chance to explore all available classes (not saying either is true for UCB).

Also I feel like it creates a new opportunity for some other entities to help students “test their major” without incurring the same costs.

could be that freedom still exists, just not in the hyper competitive realms. I'm starting to contemplate exits when things get too competitive--that it may be time to shift focus to some other area that gets more return for hours poured into something. I'm not entirely sure about that however.

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