Hey, Computer Scientists Stop Hating on the Humanities

wired.com

11 points·kiyanwang··6 comments

I wonder what could actually trigger this to happen? If companies are just going to choose the best software engineers they can afford in order to compete, why would universities have any market pressure to make an ethics course mandatory? I do like the idea, I just don't see the path there.

Universities have a higher calling than responding to market pressures. Teaching students to ethically evaluate more aspects of their lives is certainly an aspect of this calling.

If you want vocational training (and there's nothing wrong with that), go to a code boot camp. If you want an education, go to a university.

Yet most employers would prefer to see the college degree

The front page of HN has an article about Harvard Business School that claims the opposite of what you are saying. And in my own personal experience in the business world over the past few decades I've seen no evidence that university graduates leave with better understanding of ethics. In my own schooling, the focus was on learning computer science and little else. So while this "higher calling" might exist in theory I have serious doubts it exists anywhere in reality.

Business schools have always been on the more vocational end of the spectrum.

And that there exist many universities that fall short of some ideal of the university education isn't really an argument against the ideal. I'd argue that this is what happens when universities respond to market pressures.

You do realize most of the people running big corporations came out of elite business schools? I like the ideal. My entire point was that universities are responding to market pressures so at least we agree that is happening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com