Do technical degrees limit you?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>"Sure, it clarifies your position. But you have yet to actually justify your position. For the average student, why is paying $4000 to sit in a classroom worth it over the same knowledge available via an online course or on the internet? "

  • As I have said before, in LA subjects, you need other people - peers and professors - to discuss the material with or else there’s no point. LA isn’t about stuffing facts down your throat, it’s about expanding your mental horizons. My contention is that all the self-study in the world isn’t going to expand your mental horizons, because if it’s just your thoughts and ideas that you think about, you’re never going to have different thoughts, or if you do, you will get them slowly.</p>

<p>In a data compression course I had in the mathematics department (it was actually alright, as far as not being too job-trainy goes… really more like a specialized information theory course) we finished about a week early and the professor asked us a question. “Do real text sources behave like our models assume they do? Can they?” This was a question I had never thought of, and one I should have thought of, but didn’t. I enjoyed the subject and studied independently. I had studied unrelated topics that came to bear on the question. But if he hadn’t asked the question, all the self-study in the world might not have made me think about it. My education is richer for having had a professor to ask the question and other students with whom to discuss it.</p>

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And you know this because…?</p>

<p>Somehow I don’t see how you can go from: </p>

<p>Uni. education might make you smarter
to
Anyone who doesn’t have uni. education is inadequate</p>

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<p>How is that weak logic? Your axiom is that you don’t need classes because of the internet; if this were true, classes would cease to exist by supply/demand. Plus, I never said that “the internet must not be good enough,” but that there is a reason to attend class beyond learning the bare minimum facts.</p>

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<p>amarkov:
I’ve noticed that your posts are generally concise and delightful. Bravo.</p>

<p>pandem:
I’m an admirer of Twain’s, but if you think that quote should be taken to mean that universities should teach only vocational subjects, I think you’re mistaken.</p>

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<p>The internet (in its relative current form) has been around for around 15 years. Widespread video has been around for about 5 years. Think about this: Youtube didn’t exist before 2005. Let me repeat that: Youtube is only 5 years old. </p>

<p>So, what’s more likely to be adaptive to change? The age-old university model, or the 5-year old digital model that’s already made a huge impact? Declaring that an extremely young medium is inadequate because it doesn’t compare to the centuries-old uni. system is childish.</p>

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<p>I don’t think that universities should only teach vocational subjects. I think universities should only teach classes that require their expertise and hands-on resources. 20 years from now, when every Psych 101 lecture has been filmed and published online, there will be no good reason for a student to pay $4000 to sit in a lecture hall.</p>

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<p>The professors have to get paid somehow, or else nobody is going to give lectures to videotape. Plus video lectures don’t allow for any discussion. Plus there is an element of actually going to class that I think aids in the learning process. I tend to learn more when I am dressed and awake and sitting in a classroom than when I am naked, curled up on my bed eating doritos and listening to Pandora. Different strokes I suppose.</p>

<p>Furthermore, a lot of people go to college for the diploma, which in my mind is a sad state of affairs, but I do think there is value in having your completion of a degree of studies certified by a reputable third party. Who would you take more seriously… naked curled up dorito guy, or somehow made it to class at 8:00 AM every morning and convinced grumpy old men in suits that he knew what he was talking about?</p>

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<p>It’s already being done. Search for “Psych 1 - General Psychology - Lecture 1” on YouTube. Berkeley has a bunch of them. What’s cheaper? Filming a lecture one time or paying a professor to repeat a lecture every semester? Nevermind that most profs would rather be researching than teaching Psych 101.</p>

<p>Also, “discussion” in a 200-person class is a joke. Random people asking questions doesn’t count as discussion. </p>

<p>And what’s to stop you from going to the library and watching the films?</p>

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<p>AuburnMathTutor,</p>

<p>As a former LA major, let me say that your view of LA courses is completely backwards.</p>

<p>For example, an art history course is not filled with 50 bright minds (we have at least 250 in my art history course), all passionate and dedicated to understanding the complexities of art. It is mostly comprised of freshmen and sophmores who are taking the class as a required course.</p>

<p>People show up late, sleep and don’t participate. There is very little discussion, it’s mostly slides and lecture from a graduate assistant. There is nothing inspiring or passionate about it.</p>

<p>Of course, smaller schools are different, but still…it’s a mandatory course for some that students just use to get an easy A and move on. Few have any real interest in the topic and clas discussions don’t get very deep. From my personal experience, the intructors basically have to “beg” for students to participate or you have 3-5 token butt kissers who answer all the questions.</p>

<p>I’ve experienced both sides, LA/Humanity courses and in person experiences such as the ones I provided about traveling abroad, and I can say, without any doubt, I learned much, much more by experiencing art/history in person. The APPRECIATION you get from seeing something precious in real life, something historic, beautiful and lasting is special. Classroom study doesn’t capture the reverance, the beauty. It doesn’t spirit, it’s like the difference between driving a 65 Mustange and watching one drive by on the highway.</p>

<p>I have NO issues with LA programs, other than they need to tailor their courses to become more vocational. I think you could find a mixture of general/vocational that would be more beneficial to the students.</p>

<p>However, your vision is handicapped by a false impression of what makes one “cultured.” Culture doesn’t come from reading lots of books, or dicsussing lots of books with other people. It comes from experiences, living it, putting yourself inside the box and understanding why it is/was important and carrying that experience with you through out life. </p>

<p>For example, I’ve been to Pompeii, it’s AWESOME. I’ve also read, discussed and been lectured on Pompeii in histry courses. Which do you think I remember? Seeing it in person, experiencing the history? Or dicussing it in class?</p>

<p>Obviously, seeing it in person. I don’t remember anything we talked about in class, because none of it really mattered. But seeing it, spoke volumes.</p>

<p>The point is, culture is not found in a classroom. As Pandem has explained, you can learn just about anything independently with books, internet, and traveling. If you want the knowledge, go find the source.</p>

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<p>Lectures change. Most courses I’ve taken have included some (not all, but some) fairly recent material. If peopled stopped giving introductory psychology lectures, the videos would likely become obsolete fairly quickly. How similar do you think psych 101 lectures are today compared to what they were 5 years ago? 10? 20?</p>

<p>Perhaps I had the benefit of going to a school with a less-than-super-massive enrollment of only a little over 20k students, but I never had a course with 200 people in it. Of course I was in the honors program so my experience was a little different, but I might have had only one course with more than 30 people in it, and that was an upper-level CS course that happened to have a lot of people retaking it when I was in it.</p>

<p>Well, there were some courses with shared lecture hall scenarios… special speakers would come and talk and more than one course would go listen, but I don’t think that changes things.</p>

<p>In any event lots of courses and colleges do have reasonable class sizes (or ways of getting reasonable class sizes) and going to class and being with other people is the only advantage of going to college at all, as opposed to self study. What an advantage it is.</p>

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<p>BIGeastBEAST:</p>

<p>I’m not saying it’s not important to go out and live. I’m saying that the world is the place to go out and live, and universities are for studying academic things. Both are important, at least if you want to be cultured (in the go-out-and-live and in the academic sense). The solution is not to eliminate academics in universities… I don’t see how that’s a solution to anything, really. There are things you can learn in the world that you can’t learn in academia, but there are certainly lots of things you can learn in academia that you can’t learn outside of it.</p>

<p>Granted, academia isn’t for everybody. My solution isn’t to abolish vocational training. Far from it! Keep it, and separate it from LA. LA and vocational programs will become stronger for it.</p>

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My point is that the status quo already includes a number of schools offering more theory-focused curricula. That number would not change if you separated out libarts-style CS because the demand would be no different.

I’m willing to rescind some of my previous statements and grant that CS may be a bit of a special case because it is both an art and in demand. The solution to that specific problem may simply be offering a software engineering major for the more vocational end as well as the real CS major in ArtSci. Some overlap might still exist, but that isn’t a bad thing.

  1. I was referring to duplicated effort on the university operations end. You would need faculty for both.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>How on earth can you expect a high school senior to know that they want to work in industry? How can you even expect them to know that they want to study engineering rather than pure science? Look at how many college kids change their major.</p></li>
<li><p>Your idea isn’t inherently bad, but it would take way more than a change at the postsecondary level. You would need a more comprehensive secondary tracking system along the lines of what many European countries have.

Is your issue with course requirements or course availability?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Either way, if you want a purist liberal arts education you should go to a liberal arts college. There are some less-expensive public choices (SUNY Geneseo, UMN Morris, Truman State, etc.). I realize that the choices may be more limited in Alabama… but it comes down to supply and demand. There already are choices commensurate with the existing demand for such offerings.

The answers are fairly clearly “yes” and “no”. This thread provides plenty of debate on the matter.</p>

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<p>The ACM provides for various majors and there are majors that are technical but the technical there has a different meaning than the technical that we’re talking about. It’s technical in that it teaches skills with current products to do very specific jobs.</p>

<p>The CS major learns how to program but it is a technical skill that also encompasses some amount of theory. IT programs may or may not require programming courses.</p>

<p>My feel is that universities have been reluctant to go with the Software Engineering degree because the industry has been used to the CS major as the major that they shop talent for. CS jobs span a very wide variety of types of jobs and there are a lot of schools that want to sell graduates into industry and they need to name their major Computer Science to do that. And there are many companies that want their CS recruits to know some amount of theory.</p>

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<p>"Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to become a technical vs. liberal arts “which is better” debate. I just wanted to know if technical degrees really do limit your job prospects and if liberal arts degree (i.e. English) is really as flexible as people make them out to be. "

  • Yes, this discussion did get a little out of hand. Even I admit that if you want better job opportunities and starting (and heck, probably mid-level and retiring) salaries, technical/vocational majors are the way to go.</p>
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<p>The point is you do what you love. It might be easier to find jobs with a technical major, but it’s very possible to find careers with a liberal arts major as well. You just have to be more willing and dedicated to look long and hard. You’ll probably go through more crap jobs than anyone, just trying to work your way up and meet people, but it’ll be worth it once you finally find that one amazing opportunity. Then your career can just take off. It takes a LOT of work, but if you go into college thinking the world’s going to be nice, kind, an welcoming to you when you step out into it then you might need a serious reality check. Success is possible- for any major- but some people might just have to work a little harder to find it.</p>

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<p>Sounds like a ringing endorsement. And that was the vast majority of your post.</p>

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<p>Actually I was going more for encouragement. Sorry that you fail to see that, but I just get so frustrated when most of what I see on this site is people saying that if you don’t major in engineering or some kind of science then you’re insane and throwing your life away. That’s just flat out not true so sorry if I choose to give people that reality check.</p>

<p>But you’re probably right. This world would just be SO much better if we started telling people to stop following their dreams.</p>

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<p>That’s of course not true. But definitely don’t [99% of the time] go into debt for a degree in women and gender studies…</p>

<p>Ideally, don’t go into debt for school at all, but if you must, it’s safer if it’s in a vocational field with a clear path to a job/career.</p>

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<p>Maybe I will get back on :slight_smile:
I sat here and, regretably, read all 18 pages that I missed the last few days. Needless to say, I got a lot of comments. Some of them are on past topics that the conversation has shifted from already but I want to beat the horse a lil more.</p>

<p>Tech vs. LA
-Post 244 is the only way to increase enrollment for technical majors. There are several threads in the engineering forums about that very topic.</p>

<p>-Post 250 is excellently worded in why LA is not as important as Techies. (remember I still think LA has its place though) This is a point that emphasizes it:
“However, your vision is handicapped by a false impression of what makes one “cultured.” Culture doesn’t come from reading lots of books, or dicsussing lots of books with other people. It comes from experiences, living it, putting yourself inside the box and understanding why it is/was important and carrying that experience with you through out life.
For example, I’ve been to Pompeii, it’s AWESOME. I’ve also read, discussed and been lectured on Pompeii in histry courses. Which do you think I remember? Seeing it in person, experiencing the history? Or dicussing it in class?”</p>

<p>-Post 252 crushes any engineering sterotypes/stigmatism.</p>

<p>-and all of that leads to post 256. Very nice way of wrapping it up. And “LA majors, last one out - turn off the lights, thanks!” is priceless. That cracked me up. I don’t have that strong of a hate for LA but it is very good nonetheless.</p>

<p>-Post 334 sums up the fate of LA majors IMO.</p>

<p>= Salaries
-Post 265 sums up nicely.</p>

<p>The Educational System and Fixing It
-Post 259 makes a good point on why we all disagree. Its a flip of the coin. I believe college is for getting you a job, which indirectly preps for life.

Me too! Yeah I think there needs to be tweaks for those who can’t be pigeonholed so young but otherwise I think it beats our current system. Goes to further prove my point that even though we like to think we’re all equal, we are NOT equal. There will always be a superior class and a lower class.

I agree 100%. It was brought up that our schools would turn into test taking machines but let me go ahead and remind yall that we already are. SOLs anyone? Thats why I think the idea of having the parents vote on what schools get the money is a decent idea.
-Which leads me into another point. Education and politics is intertwined because the government is the only entity that can change schools effectively/quickly.

exactly!<br>
-random political quote I believe has current AND philosophical merit:

Once again this goes back to my other point. Its nice to think we are all equal but we ARENT. Some people don’t have the will power/ability/intelligence/craftness/whatever to deserve what is handed to them. </p>

<p>OK, all out :stuck_out_tongue:
Good job to those who made posts that I quoted/referenced. Those are quality remarks.</p>

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<p>If you can’t cut it in academic work then you’re put on a vocational track</p>

<p>That’s TERRIBLE! Kids change all the time! Study habits can even change up through college! We have no right to tell students what they should or shouldn’t do. Just because someone might not be so academically focused in middle school or early high school doesn’t mean they can’t get their act together by senior year. </p>

<p>Not to mention a lot of students don’t have academic motivation because of the environment they’re in. At my high school, for a lot of kids it was a joke if you mentioned college. I was literally laughed at for it. But I didn’t care what people thought so I focused on college anyway. Think of other kids, though- so many of them go with what their friends think and do. </p>

<p>Not to mention a lot of high schoolers don’t have the support from teachers and parents that some people do. They don’t have someone to say “how about we work harder at English this year so we can get that ACT score up?”. They’re lucky if they have someone to say “how about taking the ACT?”. So much of this talk about college is never put into these student’s minds so we can’t punish them for not knowing their options. Just because someone doesn’t have the ability to do well academically early on in life doesn’t mean that they can’t be helped. I knew SO many people whose parents would have just given them blank stares if they mentioned college, and they were never pushed to do well in school and therefore didn’t care about doing well. Another story would be that they would laugh because they thought they could never afford college and therefore didn’t care about doing well in school. </p>

<p>That theory just makes absolutely no sense to me. We don’t need to be placing kids into these groups and labels. We need to work on a way to better our academic system so that we don’t have so many students ignoring school and thinking that’s okay.</p>