The Big Evil Question
-
In another discussion, elsewhere today, someone was defending their college education choices and to their credit had many good points. But all of them rested on things that colleges "might" do if you get lucky and none answer one fundamental question. I hate asking this question because it is the foundational question that pretty much ruins college for everyone in IT or software engineering. Remember, I went to college too, so this applies to me just like everyone else (that went to college.) But it is one that if left unanswered, really says something and is almost impossible to answer without making yourself look very bad. But here it is....
Just because you learned something in college doesn't mean that you could not have learned it in some other way. So, if you feel that college was valuable to you at an educational level, what did you learn in college that you could not have learned on your own faster, cheaper and possibly better?
And of course a follow up if they feel that there are such things: Why do you feel that the college was able to offer a better education than you could teach yourself using free or low cost resources like books, videos, research, etc.
-
Outside of IT I can come up with all kinds of things that colleges likely teach really, really well that maybe no book could help you learn. Mostly things around business and communications. Or things where the value of a classroom full of peers has a lot of value.
And outside of educational value I can find things like the social value of having bought a piece of paper in getting a job, making connections with other people able to afford school (which violates some social ethics in some ways), etc.
But from a purely "learning" and purely "IT" perspective, I've never had someone answer this question.
-
Well I think you know the general answer to that - it's nothing, or nearly nothing. Of course having access to some equipment might be easier for say chemistry, etc, but I'm really not counting those things.
I think the thing you need to consider here is - how does anyone trust that you know what you claim to know? Of course we (those of us here) understand that just because you graduated from college doesn't mean you actually know anything, but for the masses of hiring managers that's what they use a barometer.
Sure an interview is supposed to do this, but I've met more than my share of silver tongued devils that managed to make it through the interview, get hired and then management discovered they were pretty worthless (pretty sure this is management's fault).
So again we're back to a fast quick way to prove knowledge.
-
@Dashrender said:
Well I think you know the general answer to that - it's nothing, or nearly nothing. Of course having access to some equipment might be easier for say chemistry, etc, but I'm really not counting those things.
I hope that's the answer or I've been leading a lot of people astray for a very long time
But people keep arguing against my theories based on the great education that they have gotten. In theory, an education is only "good", let alone "great", if it vastly outpaces your ability to teach yourself. So, that people keep making this claim, I keep asking what this great education was. But no one ever seems to answer. -
@Dashrender said:
I think the thing you need to consider here is - how does anyone trust that you know what you claim to know? Of course we (those of us here) understand that just because you graduated from college doesn't mean you actually know anything, but for the masses of hiring managers that's what they use a barometer.
And likewise you as someone being hired can use the use of that as a barometer as a means of gauging the skills of the hiring manager. Do you want to work for someone for whom college is a confusing thing that was very challenging, they attended and yet know nothing about? That's a scary set of things. If the hiring manager found college hard, that's really scary. That they assume you would have found it hard too means that not only are they easily challenged, but they also potentially lack empathy and a good grasp on reality.
Using something as a barometer that indicated no direct correlation and often indicates an inverse one is really, really bad.
-
@Dashrender said:
So again we're back to a fast quick way to prove knowledge.
Keep the challenge, the worst thing is pretending we have an answer when we don't. I think a lot of places bury their heads in the proverbial sand and hope for the best. Using college as a guide would be worse than not bothering to try to determine who is good at all.
-
I think you can learn business from communities and other research online in the same way you can learn IT. Professors are generally out of touch with reality since they have been trapped in the classroom for X amount of years.
-
I have personally learned alot about business from SW and ML.
-
Community colleges seem to do a slightly better job, since many of their teaching staff don't teach full time, and instead work full time in the jobs for which they teach. i.e. my accounting classes have all been taught by people who work for larger firms in my area in the accounting departments.
-
@IRJ said:
I have personally learned alot about business from SW and ML.
One of the biggest failings of collegiate IT programs, IMHO, is not combining them with the college's business and communications departments (at least for class offerings.) They could be doing this stuff well but that's more effort than they care to do so they keep people in IT classes for IT and don't even know what IT is supposed to know.
-
@Dashrender said:
Community colleges seem to do a slightly better job, since many of their teaching staff don't teach full time, and instead work full time in the jobs for which they teach. i.e. my accounting classes have all been taught by people who work for larger firms in my area in the accounting departments.
We like SUNY Empire because NTG can step in and talk to the professors and be like "okay, they WILL be taking accounting and business communications and these languages and that database, etc." You have the option to "turn up" the quality of the program as much as you want.
-
@Dashrender said:
Community colleges seem to do a slightly better job, since many of their teaching staff don't teach full time, and instead work full time in the jobs for which they teach. i.e. my accounting classes have all been taught by people who work for larger firms in my area in the accounting departments.
I didn't do any IT at a CC but I did do other work and overall am very impressed with CCs overall and highly recommend them to people needing to try out college. Of course, the one I went to was ranked third in the US when I attended and was 33,000 students and trying to become a public ivy and inching their way toward four year programs. But it was a great experience.
-
I think motivation is probably the other huge factor with it comes to school - many, perhaps even most - people aren't motivated enough on their own to read a book and sludge through the homework problems, so going to school surrounding themselves with people who are doing the same makes it easier to create a little competition to provide the motivation.
This is starting to break down today since we have so many online resources and those resources have social aspects to them that allow interaction between people studying the same material. This social aspect also allows you easier access to others who you can help and whom can help you.
-
The big advantage of actual IRL college is networking. And getting laid.
-
I left college with a degree in Psychology. While I was there I got my first IT job working at the school's help desk.
In some ways I think the psych degree helped me in IT more than a computer science degree would, at least for the level I'm currently at.
It taught me good research practices, how to critically analyze statistical data and determine whether or not it was still relevant. IT moves quicker than psychology but there are definitely similar principles at play when it comes to citing good sources to make your point. It also helped cement the idea that people make mistakes with surprising regularity, but will go out of their way to avoid acknowledging that fact. It taught me the importance of wording when it came to crafting surveys, which has translated nicely into asking the right questions about a user's current predicament. I hated learning most of this stuff at the time but now that I have it's very helpful. In other words, college helped me learn the skills I lacked the intrinsic motivation to learn on my own. Plus, it would have probably been more difficult to get a job/references in the field outside of school since I didn't have any certs or job experience.
I went into school thinking I would want to eventually get my PhD and become a psychologist. By the time I graduated I realized I had done enough formal schooling... if I were to do it all over again, knowing I would be going into IT, I would have probably looked for an IT-based technical school or a local mentor instead. But as it is, this crazy twisting road I've taken has taught me some pretty useful stuff and helped me get some good clients on the side so I can't complain!
-
@scottalanmiller said:
And likewise you as someone being hired can use the use of that as a barometer as a means of gauging the skills of the hiring manager. Do you want to work for someone for whom college is a confusing thing that was very challenging, they attended and yet know nothing about?
Probably not - but then, is it the hiring managers making these requirements? Generally no, it's HR. Of course I'm only talking about larger companies here, not SMBs. My experience has shown that SMBs don't care about college degrees much if at all, so this only applies to larger companies.
The HR people who are doing level one interviews for these larger companies don't know the difference between a phone cable and an ethernet cable, so they can't possibly do more than check a list of requirements to see if you should go onto the next level. Sadly HR continues to put college as one of those requirements.
-
In my opinion grit and hustle are the keys, not a piece of paper. Someone who is determined to succeeded will do so no matter if they went to college or not. Also, someone who has no drive will not, despite having the best education money can buy. I think this article sums up the pros and cons well. I went to a 4 year school, though a cheap local school. The doors having that piece of paper opened up made it pay for its self quickly. I didn't have the drive at 18 to do it on my own, and paying money made sure I shut up and listened, so it was good for me. However, if someone puts their nose to the books and is good, they will do just fine without a degree.
-
@Dashrender said:
i.e. my accounting classes have all been taught by people who work for larger firms in my area in the accounting departments.
Accounting is one of the things that colleges do well. How often do you get an IT class and say "This IT professor has a job that I am envious of, I hope I get that job someday?"
I only once had a professor that even had a respectable job in IT, and it wasn't great, just okay. The only difference between him and other professors that I had was that he was brave enough or confident enough to ask me for a job.
-
HR seems to be a mess of itself though, they make these requirements and even fuss when people don't stay at jobs more than 3-5 years. Yet, most HR people I know do not last at one job longer than 1 year. Makes no sense to me.
-
I've harped on this a number of times on here and on SW. I got a bachelor's in IT from a local Community College (that was part of the SUNY system). The IT education was terrifyingly bad... to the point where I was teaching most of the technical classes outside the classroom to several students who were in the same track as I was but weren't grasping the material. The good thing they did was make the degree itself part of the business department and we were at a 10/1 business to technical course hour ratio.
I took entry level accounting (and a few other courses while I was still in High School). I took a behavioral psychology in business course. These gave me a leg up when I went for my Master's degree. I even took "liberal arts" courses like Anthropology and Sociology. All of which I deem had more value then the actual technical courses I went to school for.
Overall.. I place a no net gain in value that I received in college. The courses I attended for were awful, but the ones that I originally scoffed at ended up being much more helpful.
