Mixed Signs On the State of IT Education 257
snydeq writes "Advice Line's Bob Lewis comments on the mixed state of IT education in the US, which sees some students graduating with computer-related degrees despite never having written a line of code. And while some institutions are emphasizing the value of teamwork in their curricula, an approach that fosters specialization in lieu of uniform standards, others are simply advertising their 'success rates' in graduating students. 'Education is a marketplace, and if you have the money and want to buy, you can find someone willing to sell,' Lewis writes. In other words, 'If you want a degree that indicates you know something about computers without having to actually know very much about computers, you can get one.'"
Lesdyxia? (Score:1, Informative)
Sure you don't mean "MCSE"?
Re:Or you could get an MSCE (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? That hasn't been my experience. Most fresh-faced college graduates in my experience tend to be extremely nervous and well-aware of their lack of experience.
Re:Coding and computer-related degrees (Score:3, Informative)
That's the problem with the computer science field. It's really two fields. Computer science which is more abstract and what your school focuses on. The other is software engineering. Those are the two broadest fields I can think of and even they have a decent amount of overlap.
It's getting better in some places (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest change is that you're now required to declare a concentration, ranging from pretty specific (Database Programming), to very general (Security), there are about fifteen of them and you can create your own with approval from your advisor. This means that everyone is still required to take the theoretical courses (which are useful, no matter what the curmudegons say: I'm a way better programmer than I was before I took algorithms and lambda calculus), but now has time to do tons of practical programming in their field of choice: many of the lecture classes now have 1- or 2-credit electives alongside them which are nothing but semester-long practical projects (for one course in particular, we actually have to find someone not affiliated with the CS department, who needs software written for them, and write it, with our grade dependent on the client's satisfaction- definitely not an academic cookie-cutter project), and in many cases these are now required rather than optional. In addition, while the low-level CS classes (which are taken by all kinds of people across the University, not just CS majors, and so sort of have to be dumbed-down) are junk like PHP and writing Swing GUIs with Java, we have to fight it out with C and Ocaml in many of the more advanced classes.
Again, before a million people complain about how naive I'm being, I'm not saying I'm going to walk out with my degree as a world-class programmer or that I won't have plenty to learn in the real world, I'm just saying that this trend towards easier programming languages and more hand-holding isn't occurring everywhere. And yes, most schools aren't the Ivy League, but if the market demands curricula like this from higher education, it will trickle down. There's hope yet.
Re:Job applicants have cookie-cutter knowledge (Score:2, Informative)
that's because comp sci isn't about creating software systems. that would be the "software engineering" major.
What training is required for "Advice Line"? (Score:3, Informative)
The original article is almost devoid of facts. What training is required to speak for "Advice Line"?
It's not at all clear what training is required for IT today? The Cisco "Rack Test"? How to fix broken Windows systems? J2EE programming? Linux server administration?
CS is even tougher. Robotics? AI? Machine learning? Graphics? Digital logic? "Cloud" programming? There are too many narrow niches. Pick the wrong one and you're toast.
Re:Or you could get an MSCE (Score:4, Informative)