College for all? Experts say not necessarily
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
"Whatever his or her claims of solidarity with the Third World, each American college graduate has had an education costing an amount five times greater than the median life income of half of humanity."
- Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1970)
For the most part it requires a great deal of skill and expertise, but not necessarily so much education. Practice is the most important thing, the amount of actual book-learning you need is quite small. This is why twelve-year-olds who have read a few books are quite capable of becoming halfway decent programmers; and I'm sure a lot of us here were once those twelve-year-olds.
I'm not quite sure how to distinguish between jobs that require skills and those which require education, but I do know that a doctor or lawyer needs years of filling their head with facts about a particular field of expertise before they can start producing useful work, whereas a programmer doesn't.
There may be some virtuoso programmers that can write astounding software without any prior experience. However, there are aspects that take most people years to learn, due to the time it takes to release a project and see it's failings. This is different from learning physics, philosophy, or the academic aspects of law and medicine which can be learned in a classroom setting. However, the practical aspects of law and medicine cannot be learned without years of experience in the field.
So yes, to be able to start practicing software the required body of knowledge is much smaller than medicine or law -- however this is somewhat artificial. There is monopoly control over licensing for doctors and lawyers. If there were monopoly control over licensing for programmers, they might have to spend years in the classroom before practicing as well. I believe that apprentices could start practicing medicine and law much earlier in their careers and learn the facts they need along the way. This would be a lot more affordable for students, but it would lower the wages of lawyers and doctors, so it's probably not going to happen.
As a medical student that just today finished his first year, I take a little offense to that ;) Namely, there are already fields for exactly what you describe: nurse practitioners, and to a lesser extent, physician assistants. They are taught general patterns of a small set of diseases, and can only diagnose that small set of diseases that specifically follow the course (i.e., pattern) that they were taught.
After a year of schooling, I am nowhere near ready to practice internal medicine or family medicine, let alone specialty fields. I can spot your garden variety shingles, ear infection, etc., but anything more requires experience - and knowledge - that I do not yet possess (even after a year of grueling studying!).
And no, it's not true just of programming. I'm currently working a job that I would get paid more for with an Associate's in the field... my four years of Ivy League education is totally worthless.
Basically, the only use of a 4 year degree is a stepping stool to a professional degree. For the vast majority of folks, it's completely useless.
http://www.millionairedropouts.com/millionaire.php/The_Milli...
A lot of white collar work is requires no real thought only the ability to concentrate. I think this is why so many people hate their jobs.
It's no big deal at better places. If you don't get a degree, you can spend less time learning at least as much relevant stuff.
Because "big companies with dumb management" hire a lot of people and pay them well?
Most people aren't fortunate enough to have their dream job quite yet and their number one priority for work is just getting the bills paid.
BTW if you're going to take semi-lame jobs, you only have to get hired a few times in your life. Optimizing the job search part isn't a great use of time -- even if no college doubles your lifetime job search time, going to college would still be a loss in that respect.
Some people are incredibly driven towards a particular set of goals, but the majority of people just sorta drift through life figuring things out as they go.
And college is extraordinarily boring if you aren't already strongly interested in what you're studying. To get a good value out of college at minimum you need some initiative, and some understanding of what you want to get out of it. You need goals or you will just drift through completely pointlessly -- as many people do.
Of course one can try a variety of things at college. But one can do that outside of college too. Shrug.
I'd agree that if a kid leaves school and doesn't know what he wants to do then going to university may not be the best option at all. Taking a few years off to do something else is a great idea and shouldn't be stigmatized as much as it is.
Heck, if you really want to shake up the education industry then perhaps it should be compulsory: have a university that won't let you in until you demonstrate that you've spent eighteen months in the workforce doing something impressive.
There are so many people making incredible contributions to humanity without college degrees, and so many people simply fretting away their lives in cubicles making slightly more money than they would have without a degree.
"But federal statistics show that just 36 percent of full-time students starting college in 2001 earned a four-year degree within that allotted time. Even with an extra two years to finish, that group's graduation rate increased only to 57 percent."
Technical education has a much more certain payoff. Bookkeeping, welding, plumbing, nursing, all are possible with 2 year degrees and are ways to get a good job and a good career.
A 2 year nursing degree is a relatively fast way to get into a good income and relatively flexible schedule, allowing further study.
And economists are backing up the 'Don't even waste the money, just go straight vocational' approach.
None of this is good.
Academia is insular and has adopted the extremely broad mandate of "making better citizens" which has resulted in a lot of degree programs that are utterly useless. There was a post on HN just a few days ago from someone who was about to get a CS degree and who felt they had no idea how to actually program.
That's the problem and what this article describes is a trend in which those useless degrees are losing favor while more specialized education gains it.
Perhaps, though academia has been specialising in the teaching of mostly-useless knowledge since at least the days of ancient Rome, so it's not likely to be a transient phenomenon.
The solution should be to integrate alternate forms of education and preparing for the job market (ie starting your own business or apprenticing for a job) into the college track.
I know there are several pretty glaring differences, but ultimately what are the difference in goal between being a founder in a company and say getting a "Masters in Entrepreneurship".
On a separate note, I know the family of the girl in the article. GO BRUINS!!!