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Statistics On The Degrees People Earn
Xzzy writes: "Over on NASA's space science page, they recently posted a link to a PDF file with a bunch of numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics, focusing on geekly-type jobs. Interesting numbers noted were ones pointing out that over the past ten or so years, degrees earned in electrical engineering have steadily declined.. while degrees focused on fitness studies and recreation have sharply increased."
because getting your electrical engineering degree is ALOT of work. You have to really love science and math to stay the course and finish.
With such a boom in the telecom and computer industry in the last few years, companies are accepting more and more technicians, and in Canada, technologists, (like myself) for traditionally "engineer required" jobs. I personally know a few very bright people working for Nortel and Alcatel doing R&D who are technologists.
Why take 4 years to learn all your math and physics when you can make nearly as much money being a tech?
Why hire an expensive engineer when you can get by with a tech?
BTW, I have the utmost respect for engineers, and plan to get my degree within the next couple of years. For now, I'm content being a 1/2 engineer.
Wow, all of these fitness and recreation degrees, and we are still the most obese nation in the world. What a waste of time.
> Computer sciences: ... spending a day in a classroom filling your head with the old stuff actually robs you of the time you need to learn the new stuff.
Good sir, I fear you have confused a degree in CS with a certificate from a trade school.
If they are teaching the right "old stuff", it's every bit as valid today as the "old stuff" they teach you in mathematics, chemistry, physics, or any other field of science.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Computer sciences: Whoa, has this stuff changed.
How much has Djikstra's algorithm changed in the last 4 years? Floyd's? What about dynamic programming in general? Integer programming? Let's go even simpler - how much has recursion changed in the last 4 years? Or even object oriented programming? What about regular expressions or formal language specification methods like EBNF? What about the various bit operations, like shifting, and, or, two's complement, and what they're good for? How has the basic maths behind perspective transforms changed recently? What about the major standard Unix development tools, like gcc, make, and cvs?
These are just the things that I can think of, off the top of my head, which I've learnt in my CS degree, which will be applicable for a long time to come. The most valuable thing you get out of any degree is not knowledge, but methods and ways of thinking.
Don't say "Computer Science" when you mean "Technology". Technology outdates, Computer Science matures.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
These are just the things that I can think of, off the top of my head, which I've learnt in my CS degree, which will be applicable for a long time to come. The most valuable thing you get out of any degree is not knowledge, but methods and ways of thinking.
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I agree. I find that too often, geeks seem to come off with a "it advances so fast, college is worthless", not realizing that in less than five years, a CS degree is going to mean the difference between (what will then be) blue collar assembly and maintenance and engineering teams.
Being a "computer guy" who can fix things verses someone with a degree in CS will be like the difference between a garage mechanic and a mechanical engineer working in Detroit...
And it's funny, the geeks are laughing at the VC's and stupid e-flops now for being short-sighted.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.