Do technical degrees limit you?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>How many leaky faucets, sinks and toilets have you fixed?</p>

<p>The nice thing about being a rich engineer is that you can just quit when you want to
and do anything that you want to. There are a lot of other nice things about it to.</p>

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<p>Rich engineers can do any of these.</p>

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<p>“Do you think your undergrad prepared you adequately for a theory rich grad program”

  • As well as I could have expected from most programs, yes. That is to say, somewhat but not entirely. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to notice not the lack of theory, per se, but the fact that there was a lot more to the theory of CS than we were being led to believe. Of course it’s not reasonable to expect to learn everything in undergrad, especially when you are also catering to industry, but oh well. I supplemented pretty heavily with self-study and I feel pretty comfortable with theory, at least so much so that I feel I could learn theory if it were taught to me.</p>

<p>"should you decide to go down that path ? If not, was class choice a limiting factor ? "

  • Class choice, I would say, was a limiting factor, and it probably is for most people. No university can offer a class in everything. That being said, I probably might have been better served elsewhere, but like I said I was more… naive when I started my studies. And I would like to say again that I have nothing agaist my home institution or the CS program there… really, I owe a lot to them, and I do tend to exagerate from time to time. I learned a lot of theory there, definitely more than many of my peers. I got a lot more out of the theory classes than was required. A lot of what you get out of a degree is what you put into it, but not all of it.</p>

<p>Somebody mentioned that fixing supply won’t help unless demand changes too. I meant to say I agree before now. I do agree. I think we need to fix students so they understand the importance of LA, and I think we need to fix society and industry too. We put too much emphasis on STEM fields in the first place, and of STEM, TE is where most of it goes because that’s where the good money and stable jobs are. I’d love to see the government backing programs to increase enrollment in English, History, the Arts, and Philosophy. Oh well.</p>

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<p>What’s nice is where an engineering degree gets you to the wealthy state where your kids can afford to get a liberal arts education.</p>

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<p>Well, we go back to redistribution. And then politics.</p>

<p>Do you think that the average voter in the $40,000 median household income city cares about liberal arts? Or paying the heating bill? Or their local schools.</p>

<p>State Funding for higher ed is going down. The constituents for lots of other things easily trumps higher education.</p>

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<p>-In response to trout-</p>

<p>Economics, political science, philosophy, and psychology do require critical thinking and problem solving skills.</p>

<p>I’m sure engineering does too - but it is probably more rote. Advanced mathematics is obviously very formulaic, once you understand the concepts.</p>

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<p>“…and once again you overreact and show your academic inferiority complex. Re-read my post. Read it again. Read it one more time. Then respond.”

  • Hey man, don’t make this about me. I was just pointing out that you don’t have any answers, you don’t have a line to God or anything. You want to convince me, you prove it with arguments, you don’t just tell me it’s right. You want to tell me that it’s a weak argument, tell me why, don’t just tell me it’s a weak argument and tell me that’s the answer. There’s more to it than that. Come on, man. I have to think this is a smokescreen or something.</p>

<p>“By the way, aren’t you the one who wished your education was less technical and more academic/theory-based?”

  • Yes, that was the gist of my first post.</p>

<p>“If so, doesn’t that mean you haven’t actually had a “liberal arts” education”?"

  • I would say that I haven’t, no.</p>

<p>“How could you possibly discern the benefits of it when you haven’t actually had the education?”

  • I know about the education and have come to the conclusion rationally, as I made clear in the first post to which you referred earlier. I have had courses outside my major and I treasured them and made the most of them. You’d be surprised how many technical majors suffer through English and Philosophy and Public Speaking. I like to think I got enough of a liberal arts education to know when somebody is throwing around ad hominem attacks as well.</p>
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<p>Why are you sure? Have you worked in engineering?</p>

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<p>Obviously? Have you studied advanced mathematics?</p>

<p>I’ve taken the courses that you mentioned. They’re considered easy fillers in engineering programs to keep your GPA up. I think that a lot of engineering students take psych and econ to meet GE requirements. Philosophy and political science, maybe to a lesser degree.</p>

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<p>“How many leaky faucets, sinks and toilets have you fixed?”

  • BCEagle, I like you, but I really want you to take away from this discussion thread that this kind of argument is a logical fallacy and makes you look silly. It doesn’t matter who I am, just stick with the arguments. We’re all just little insignificant people leading insignificant lives. We can have good thoughts and make good arguments though, and that’s what we should be doing, not quibbling over personal experiences. It’s not just you, but I know you’re better than that.</p>
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<p>Uhh…advanced mathematics is far from rote. FAR from rote. </p>

<p>-from a non-math person</p>

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<p>You made an assertion about what you’d like in life without living your life. So your Copi is pure bull.</p>

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<p>peter_parker, I’d advise you to be careful. Math is a LA subject if any are. It’s basically a branch of philosophy. And by basically, I mean exactly.</p>

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<p>You’re right. I’m not sure. Perhaps your opinion is opposite mine - you think that engineering does not require critical thinking skills.</p>

<p>I have studied advanced mathematics, if you’ve read the thread. In the vast majority of cases, if not all to my memory, every probably only had one complete and precise answer. Thanks for asking though.</p>

<p>If you didn’t find the social science and humanities departments up to scratch, you must have went to a very poor university. My condolences.</p>

<p>*ps I have the utmost respect for advanced mathematics classes. Engineering hardly even goes beyond multivariable calculus, however.</p>

<p>And yes, large elements of philosophy and large elements of math are interconnected if not the same. I wouldn’t equate the entire fields, however.</p>

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<p>"You made an assertion about what you’d like in life without living your life. So your Copi is pure bull. "

  • Dude, no it’s not. You can’t tell what I’m thinking, you don’t know what’s in my head. You don’t know me. To insinuate that my point is invalid because I would do otherwise from what my argument would require is a fallacy of logic. And clearly the exact profession doesn’t matter here, the point is that I would rather be educated and work a menial job than miss out on an education and have my choice of job. That’s another problem with fallacies… really the only problem with fallacies… they distract from the original intent.</p>
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<p>And I have a PhD, an MD, own Apple and MicroSoft, am 10 feet tall, and play a wicked violin.</p>

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<p>Took a while to find it - Philosophy of mathematics, Benacerraf and Putnam. Anything but formulaic.</p>

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<p>Lots of mathematics does lead to problems which have one precise answer. However lots of mathematical problems don’t have just one precise answer, or any precise answers. Some mathematical problems aren’t even about getting answers. Some problems have provably no answers.</p>

<p>Logic is really a special branch of mathematics, and if you throw logic out of the LA then where does that leave philosophy?</p>

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<p>Not all philosophy is based in the analytical school. Look up continental philosophy.</p>

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<p>No, it isn’t.</p>

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<p>Did you study theory of computation?</p>

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<p>Quite the strawman you have there. Do you consider economics hard? Do you
consider psychology hard?</p>

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<p>Have you studied language theory?</p>

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<p>“Not all philosophy is based in the analytical school. Look up continental philosophy.”

  • I wish you would stop assuming I didn’t know things.</p>
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<p>I have life experience. And I know the life experiences of a lot of
people. Kids say things when they are children. Most do grow up at some
point. If you are one of the few that plans to never grow up, then I
guess you could be part of that small exception. But I don’t think so.</p>