College Education

[while1]

I went to a small university that had a pretty shitty CS program IMO.  It wasn't nearly as challenging as I would have liked.  Most of my ability to program has come from my own self-teaching, own work ethic and pursuit of knowledge.  Post-secondary education does help in that it provides an underlying motivational force for one to study material that they might otherwise not, however, for me, I found that I could have done my current job as a software engineer almost as effectively as I can today had I not gone to college. 

However, I wouldn't have not done it any other way (that is going to college and getting my CS degree), because having that symbolic degree has weight, especially in a technical field.

[Ender]

I'm in my 3rd year of undergrad in Computer Engineering at UT Dallas and so far I think the college experience has been more valuable than the actual courses I've taken. Living away from home taught me how to talk to and meet new people, how to manage my money, and also how to manage my time (I work part time along with taking classes full time). I've definitely grown up a lot more in college than I did during high school, but maybe that's due to me living away from my parents? I don't know.

But as far as how relevant my courses have been, I would say hardly at all. Here's why: I did a technical internship with Fidelity Investments at their Dallas data center last summer, for which I was to help implement and manage tools for their storage division. Everything was completely new to me, I had no clue what a SAN or NAS was or how to work with them because those terms never showed up in any of my courses. I literally had to sit in my cube and read books for a week straight to learn this stuff, all my co-workers there also had similar degrees such as CS or EE and they all told me they had to start from scratch when they first got there as well.

Maybe I'm just in the wrong place, maybe If I landed at Intel or AMD I would actually get to use the stuff I learned about crystalline structure and energy band gaps of semi-conductors. But so far my courses have not been very useful to me.

That's interesting. I know exactly what you mean - the college experience has put us on our own. For me, I actually moved to my university when I first got here. I was kicked out of home senior year of high school. So now I live here year-long, not going back for vacations. It helps to have an apartment in the area - and it's nice that students here tend to get apartments as upperclassmen.

I also learned how to talk to people and make new friends. I made some very good friends, too, who moved with me into my apartment, and some of whom will live with me in my next.

My one problem was that due to all the drama toward my end of high school, I got derailed from my career track, the math/comp sci/physics emphasis I took on high school, and majored in English literature because I thought it would make me better, help me internalize my experience. It maybe did that, but I am much farther behind in my career right now than I would be had I not gotten off-track.

So now I will continue to work IT jobs (and hopefully programming jobs) while finishing college, (it's nice they pay well), and then afterward see what kinds of software dev. / systems admin jobs are out there and whether I need to go back to school to get a Master's in CS. I would also like to study some thorough EE and CS sometime after I get out of college. It's an experience that I always wanted of which I kind of robbed myself.

Falcon, I think what matters is not that you didn't apply things you learned in school to your job, but that you got the job in the first place. You likely got it from a result of your studies, your classes taken in CE. When you get your degree you will have employers take you on because of that degree. But there are A LOT of other college students who aren't getting any jobs at all after they graduate. These are people who didn't get a technical degree or develop a lucrative skillset, or plan on going to grad school. So even if you don't apply what you learn, you will still get the jobs because of your degree, and that's why a career-guided degree matters so much - it separates the people who can get the jobs from those who can't. So you should be happy that you have that degree, because eventually you and your friends will all be graduated and you'll be the only one with a job.

Also, the circuit stuff related to computers is extremely cool, and there are so many software engineers / IT specialists who wish they knew about it, but never studied it. Even if you don't use it, it's still great to know, and really informs the Big Picture.

[Sidoh]

I'm in my 3rd year of undergrad in Computer Engineering at UT Dallas and so far I think the college experience has been more valuable than the actual courses I've taken. Living away from home taught me how to talk to and meet new people, how to manage my money, and also how to manage my time (I work part time along with taking classes full time). I've definitely grown up a lot more in college than I did during high school, but maybe that's due to me living away from my parents? I don't know.

But as far as how relevant my courses have been, I would say hardly at all. Here's why: I did a technical internship with Fidelity Investments at their Dallas data center last summer, for which I was to help implement and manage tools for their storage division. Everything was completely new to me, I had no clue what a SAN or NAS was or how to work with them because those terms never showed up in any of my courses. I literally had to sit in my cube and read books for a week straight to learn this stuff, all my co-workers there also had similar degrees such as CS or EE and they all told me they had to start from scratch when they first got there as well.

Maybe I'm just in the wrong place, maybe If I landed at Intel or AMD I would actually get to use the stuff I learned about crystalline structure and energy band gaps of semi-conductors. But so far my courses have not been very useful to me.

CE and IT are pretty different fields, and I'm sure your education would be more directly applicable if you went somewhere that was hiring a computer engineer and not an IT person.

All three of my internships demanded the knowledge I gained in my classes.

[while1]

Falcon, I think what matters is not that you didn't apply things you learned in school to your job, but that you got the job in the first place. You likely got it from a result of your studies, your classes taken in CE. When you get your degree you will have employers take you on because of that degree. But there are A LOT of other college students who aren't getting any jobs at all after they graduate. These are people who didn't get a technical degree or develop a lucrative skillset, or plan on going to grad school. So even if you don't apply what you learn, you will still get the jobs because of your degree, and that's why a career-guided degree matters so much - it separates the people who can get the jobs from those who can't. So you should be happy that you have that degree, because eventually you and your friends will all be graduated and you'll be the only one with a job.

Exactly this, which I alluded to in my previous post.  The degree, whether learned anything or not, is arguably the surest way to get your proverbial foot through the door in terms of employers.  The graduating class of 2009 had the hardest time finding jobs due to the tanking of the economy.  IIRC, late summer of 2009 the statistics were that only 20% of the spring 2009 graduates had jobs in their field of study.  I was among that 20%, despite having received my CS degree from a university little known outside of Virginia.  Not many of my friends and fellow graduates had jobs at all, and those who did were mostly other CS graduates.  I chose a field where I will have relatively good job security and more options than most.  It's fortunate that I'm good at what I do and I enjoy it enough that I don't wake up every day wishing I was doing something else.

Of course there are a lot of other important factors that come into play than the degree, especially internships, research, and significant practical experience.  And of these that I had the opportunity to partake, would not have had if I didn't pursue my degree.  i.e. the summer research programs at Texas A&M, Notre Dame, and internships developing ASP.NET web applications for internal use by my university's IT department.  I would say the research programs I partook did give me the opportunity to apply things that I had learned in my studies.  i.e.  The summer before my senior year of undergrad, I was at Notre Dame and the research I was doing paired me with another undergrad who was a rising junior.  This guy had not yet taken OS, and so when it came to implementing a prototype of our research in pure C using POSIX threads, I had to teach him about things such as mutual exclusive, context switching, critical sections, etc.  I even printed out my multi-threaded dining philosopher's solution for him and sat down and went through it with him.  The summer before that, I was a rising junior and was doing research at Texas A&M, where I was again paired with someone a year/class behind me.  She was bright as hell, but what I found is that was even though I was more confident in my practical experience and knowledge- areas she lacked in, I found that the quality and difficulty of her university's coursework made me jealous and feel a bit insecure about my own.

[Newby]

I'm in my third year of a physics/computer science double major. It's a blast, although I sure as shit have no idea what I want to do with my life. Lots of things point towards me winding up in business, but with a strong math/science background and an intricate knowledge of computers, I figure I won't have too big an issue finding a job. Finding a job I turn into a career... that's up in the air.

[Rule]

I guess it's a practical consideration, but I don't like thinking about a degree as a way to get a job.  That's not what university or academics is supposed to be about at all.  For example, I don't think business should even be taught in university.

I also agree with CrAz3D that it's stupid having to do pre-law, or some undergraduate degree, prior to law.  I also think the same about pre-med.  Yes, I can see cases where it might be useful -- more maturity, more confidence in the ultimate 'medical career' decision, etc.  But it mostly ends up as people wasting 4 years of their lives -- and a lot of government/university money --  trying to 'play the system' to enhance their chances of admission, ultimately taking a bunch of bullshit courses, and learning more about how to become insincere and vacuous than about anything that would enrich their lives.

It's a good example of taking a degree just for a job; while it may be practical (although I definitely do not think ideal) for certain people, I think society as a whole would be a lot better off if we didn't think this way.

[Falcon]

Ender I agree that I should be glad I got that job. I actually applied to at least 20+ companies for that summer and they were the only one that got back to me, so I guess I got lucky that someone picked out my resume from the rest. I still keep in touch with some of my co-workers so hopefully I can get a job once I graduate.

And Sidoh yea thats true but the problem is that the companies that are hiring actual CEs are so selective, they either require masters degree or 5-10 years experience in the field. So the chances for someone like me with just a bachelors and no prior real work experience to get hired are pretty slim. I'd rather be doing something related to my field but a job is a job and you have to make money somehow.

[CrAz3D]

I also agree with CrAz3D that it's stupid having to do pre-law, or some undergraduate degree, prior to law.  I also think the same about pre-med.  Yes, I can see cases where it might be useful -- more maturity, more confidence in the ultimate 'medical career' decision, etc.  But it mostly ends up as people wasting 4 years of their lives -- and a lot of government/university money --  trying to 'play the system' to enhance their chances of admission, ultimately taking a bunch of bullshit courses, and learning more about how to become insincere and vacuous than about anything that would enrich their lives.

It's isnt that you have to do pre-law...you can do anything so long as you graduate with a bachelor's degree (yeah, leisure studies...if that existed).

Again, the entire system of education is 100% a fucking scam.  You get very little out of it, but are required to pay out the ass just for a shitty piece of paper that says you amount to something...then you enter the real world and learn how to do your job.  Universities have nothing to do with "pursuit of knowledge."

[CrAz3D]

Interesting follow-up questions for yall:  (1) What did you paid?  (2) Was it worth it?

My undergrad was "free."  New Mexico pays for undergrad for all NM high school grads that go directly to a NM university and maintain a 2.5.  Money comes from our lottery.  So was it worth it?  No.  Even though my tuition and (most) fees were paid, I still had to buy books, and my "education" was surely not worth it.

Law school at Texas Tech is about $12k per semester.  I figure it will only be "worth it" if I can start working somewhere around $80k per year.  I'm gonna be honest, while I do enjoy law, I am not going into law to help the fucking tree dwellers that cant help themselves.  With approx $120k graduating debt, I need a friggin job.

[Sidoh]

I also agree with CrAz3D that it's stupid having to do pre-law, or some undergraduate degree, prior to law.  I also think the same about pre-med.  Yes, I can see cases where it might be useful -- more maturity, more confidence in the ultimate 'medical career' decision, etc.  But it mostly ends up as people wasting 4 years of their lives -- and a lot of government/university money --  trying to 'play the system' to enhance their chances of admission, ultimately taking a bunch of bullshit courses, and learning more about how to become insincere and vacuous than about anything that would enrich their lives.

It's isnt that you have to do pre-law...you can do anything so long as you graduate with a bachelor's degree (yeah, leisure studies...if that existed).

Again, the entire system of education is 100% a fucking scam.  You get very little out of it, but are required to pay out the ass just for a shitty piece of paper that says you amount to something...then you enter the real world and learn how to do your job.  Universities have nothing to do with "pursuit of knowledge."

Speak for yourself, mr. liberal arts major.

[Rule]

Interesting follow-up questions for yall:  (1) What did you paid?  (2) Was it worth it?

Well judging from how you formulated (1), I guess your answer to (2) would be 'no' .

Seriously though, my point is that (ideally) you shouldn't be paying for a piece of paper.  Ideally the priority shouldn't be getting a job and making money.  That's not what academics is supposed to be about.  

Yes, it's nice to be employable, and to make money.  It's something worth thinking about.  I'm glad that I didn't become a philosophy major in my sophomore year, which I seriously considered -- it's more of a dead end than math and physics, at least in my situation (and in retrospect I don't think I would have liked it more).  Unless you're already rich you have to be somewhat strategic.  But it would be a bit uplifting to see more people take a genuine interest in some subject and go to university to learn more about that subject.  I want to remember my undergraduate years as a meaningful experience where I learned useful things and improved as a person, not as some way to get a job.  We only have one life (so it seems ).

Here's an interesting question:  Hypothetically, if you were guaranteed that you would make the same amount of money regardless, would you have gone to university?  And if so, would you have studied something different?

[Sidoh]

Here's an interesting question:  Hypothetically, if you were guaranteed that you would make the same amount of money regardless, would you have gone to university?  And if so, would you have studied something different?

That is an interesting question.

For me, "definitely" is an appropriate answer.  I love learning, and I think I'd supply the same reason for attending university classes that you supplied earlier: I don't think I'd have the discipline to learn something like math or computer science on my own, and university gave me the structure I needed.

I don't think I would've studied anything different.  If anything, I would've studied more.  I studied math and computer science, and regretfully left behind physics.  I would've loved to completed more coursework in physics, and I think it's a shame I didn't get the chance to do so.

Computer science is definitely the field which interests me most.  I think that this is because it's just the right balance of theory and application for me.  Math is often too abstract to be interesting in the long term, and things like physics and biology are often too empirical for my liking.

[Falcon]

Here's an interesting question:  Hypothetically, if you were guaranteed that you would make the same amount of money regardless, would you have gone to university?  And if so, would you have studied something different?

I would still have went to college, but I definitely would've picked another major, something that doesn't require me to study my ass off all the time and still barely pass. I would go to college to have fun and meet people, taking less intense courses.

[while1]

My undergrad wasn't "free" per se, my parents paid for my tuition and fees, and with that came plenty of sacrifices when it came to decisions my parents had to make when raising my sisters and I.  But I wouldn't have had it any other way.  I was responsible for paying for my books and essentially I paid for my room and board all but my freshman year (of course I didn't have to, I did out of gratitude and because the opportunity to do so presented itself).

I don't take for granted my graduating without debt, with no student loans.  It's a shame that so many do, or compromise their aspirations because of the financial burden higher education requires.  That's why if I ever have children, I will be sure to afford my child/children with the same opportunities that I have been fortunate to be given.  Being adopted, it's hard to imagine how vastly different my life would be had my birth mother decided to keep me as an unwed mother in Zergland... or abandon me in an alley... or worse.

I always saw college as the optimal path, I knew what I wanted to major in by the time I was a junior in HS.  To me, college was never a question.  I've often thought that if I were to ever win the lottery, I'd casually be a lifetime student for the rest of my life.  I'd pursue bachelors degrees in anything that interests me because without the financial anxiety, pressure to graduate, fear of failure, etc. I could pursue intellectual growth at my leisure.

[CrAz3D]

Interesting follow-up questions for yall:  (1) What did you paid?  (2) Was it worth it?

Well judging from how you formulated (1), I guess your answer to (2) would be 'no' .

haha...I had it as "what did you pay?" or something, and changed it...oops?  haha

[work,] That's not what academics is supposed to be about.

So then universities should be free...?

I always am amused by "liberal arts" students who graduate with an English degree, dont want to teach, bitch about loans, and then cant find jobs.




as for your hypo, if I could make the same amount (in whatever career I wanted), then yeah...fuck college.  I never learned shit (about my degree) from going to class; I learned about shit from reading on my own.  If I want to learn something, I'll do it.  So I guess in that regard, I might take a few classes, but college can go fuck itself with all its rules of "you MUST take this, that, and the other" and the red tape.

/I'm slightly bitter about wasting time learning very little I guess?