Another topic is that many students take the wrong degrees to be useful at all. I majored in computer engineering.
My school covered various theories about how a computer in general is usually architected. How a specific example computer’s bytecode operates. Various labs and assignments where you had to write small programs in assembler and a half dozen languages. How to analyze where the slow step probably is. How to translate a truth table to boolean expressions to logic gates.
Ironically, pure math procedures like “truth table to boolean” is the most useless because a software tool will always exist I can just get to do that, for as long as I am employed.
I would say that all that linear algebra stuff they had you do will turn out to be similarly useless, they should have spent the time having you write programs in python to solve the problems. (or JUST teaching the one structuring of the problem step that scipy/numpy doesn’t do for you, etc)
Some useless courses in topics like theater were required as part of the ‘core’, hey I got to see a live play but yes, there went a tuition payment and some hours of my life.
But in general I would say about 2⁄3 of the topics are used somewhere in my actual field, and maybe 1⁄3 of the knowledge I have definitely used as an engineer. Even if it ended up being just a starting point.
Could a set of compressed ‘boot camp’ like courses have gotten me almost as good for a fraction of the time and money? Maybe. I would want to see data on this, not just average joe opinions on whether or not these various tech skill boot camps work or not.
Certainly a more efficient structure exists. If as a society we actually cared we could shorten college and make it optimize towards quantifiable outcomes. Though one issue is that we don’t know what those are. It may be that in my career everything I learned stops mattering because we develop an AI agent that can architect computers better than any human alive.
Similarly, 30 years ago electrical engineering was obviously superior to being a programmer but today it seems that most of the jobs are in software, and most of the $.
Another topic is that many students take the wrong degrees to be useful at all.
I majored in computer engineering.
My school covered various theories about how a computer in general is usually architected. How a specific example computer’s bytecode operates. Various labs and assignments where you had to write small programs in assembler and a half dozen languages. How to analyze where the slow step probably is. How to translate a truth table to boolean expressions to logic gates.
Ironically, pure math procedures like “truth table to boolean” is the most useless because a software tool will always exist I can just get to do that, for as long as I am employed.
I would say that all that linear algebra stuff they had you do will turn out to be similarly useless, they should have spent the time having you write programs in python to solve the problems. (or JUST teaching the one structuring of the problem step that scipy/numpy doesn’t do for you, etc)
Some useless courses in topics like theater were required as part of the ‘core’, hey I got to see a live play but yes, there went a tuition payment and some hours of my life.
But in general I would say about 2⁄3 of the topics are used somewhere in my actual field, and maybe 1⁄3 of the knowledge I have definitely used as an engineer. Even if it ended up being just a starting point.
Could a set of compressed ‘boot camp’ like courses have gotten me almost as good for a fraction of the time and money? Maybe. I would want to see data on this, not just average joe opinions on whether or not these various tech skill boot camps work or not.
Certainly a more efficient structure exists. If as a society we actually cared we could shorten college and make it optimize towards quantifiable outcomes. Though one issue is that we don’t know what those are. It may be that in my career everything I learned stops mattering because we develop an AI agent that can architect computers better than any human alive.
Similarly, 30 years ago electrical engineering was obviously superior to being a programmer but today it seems that most of the jobs are in software, and most of the $.