Comment by treehau5 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by treehau5 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Then everyone is university'ing wrong!

Hey hey! I tend to agree!

Finding students a job should be a secondary byproduct of first giving them a world class education where you prepare and enable the student for society through being able to learn. Universities are to teach students how to learn so they can learn and be more aware and active about what is happening around them in society. Universities gives you exposure to a wide array of subjects for a purpose. It isn't random, and if you are attending a university where it does feel random, then find a better university.

"The goal of university education is to help build a fairer, more just society" - Steven Schwartz. [0]

Indeed this aligns with Plato's view on education -- "Plato regards education as a means to achieve justice, both individual justice and social justice." [1]

[0]: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/columnists/the-...

[1]: http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations/AAI9517932/

I agree with you, philosophically.

But when I apply this philosophy to concrete curriculum design questions in CS, I end up caring about placing students at internships and jobs.

First, internships are a form of education, and I find that students who complete internships come back the next Fall as much more mature programmers. I can then leverage that maturity in programming to dig deeper into interesting theory. Because I'm not helping debug for loops, I can students debug proofs or design more complex algorithms. So I consider internship placement a major goal for the first two years of a CS curriculum, even when my goal is to teach pure theory.

Second, I have a hard time justifying the situation where students are debt slaves to banks. How does that achieve individual or social justice?

Third, your work output is an enormous aspect of your contribution to society. Someone who can build a software platform that helps rural poor in Nigeria get access to micro-loans under a fair terms is making a much greater impact on the world than a philosopher with a perfect understanding of what it means for the world to be just, but without the means to act on that knowledge.

The problem is that it is awfully hard to be a "life long learner" if you are unemployed, desperate, or working a shit job just trying to make ends meet.

Imagine all that extra time college graduates could spend learning if they were easily able to provide for themselves because college prepared them for the real world and they were able to get a good job.

Okay nice goals. But we face a problem today will a shortage of low skilled jobs. The few low skilled jobs that remain often still require university training. The rest offer terrible working conditions and pay.

It's nice to have a society that has people who are more aware and active about what is happening around them in society. But what about the average worker that's been unemployed for six months and just want's to be able to afford to raise a family?

We need to meet our basic needs first. Universities used to be for the upper few, but as they are required more and more for the majority of jobs, either the universities need to change or the job requirements need to change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com