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Northface University - Computer Science in Half the Time?
prostoalex writes "Associated Press runs a nationwide story on Northface University. The school, founded by a pair of venture capitalists and former technology chief found a niche with its highly intensive curriculum and corporate software development specialization. For example, a BSCS degree can be completed in a little over 2 years, and it comes with IBM's WebSphere and Microsoft's MCSD certification. Northface is also promoting its corporate partnerships, which allow current students to feel more secure about future employment. Grady Booch from IBM is quoted to be 'jazzed up' about the program, although there are many who oppose such approaches to college education."
Half the time
Half the money
Half the college experience.
So? Is it accredited? I got a BSCS plus math and a thorough liberal arts education in 6 semesters. I'll be impressed when they teach you something other than another fad technology. As too many people here know: a degree is not only not everything, but it's hardly anything in this field.
That's nice and all, but don't confuse it with a 4-year university, unless they're doubling up everything. A technically intensive degree doesn't produce the same kind of individual that a normal 4 year degree, with a variety of disciplines and experiences, provides.
Taken in that light, 2-year technical schools are nothing new. Any university could get you through in 2 years if you took nothing outside your major.
As if it wasn't hard enough for computer people to learn social skills. There's gonna be a new crop of CS people graduating from a total-immersion CS program with nothing to talk about except computers. Wait, that's what we do now. Hooray for nerds!
12:50 - press return.
Well it sure is an interesting idea...and I'm sure many will jump on it. But in my experience, turboing a CS course of study is bad. There's a lot to said for maturity and experience. I know I had a lot of trouble keeping up with a normal program -- it just moved so fast and skimmed so much -- but now that I have time and experience under my belt, it all seems so much easier and more clear. Sometimes taking your time is a good thing, and I think that getting a degree is one of those things that should take a while -- experience is often the most valuable asset.
Moo.
Oh my god, another Devry
...can be completed in a little over 2 years, and it comes with IBM's WebSphere and Microsoft's MCSD certification.
I've said this before, and will again. A collection of certificates is not the same as a computer science degree.
Learning to program or to operate a specific set of programs if valuable, don't get me wrong there. But that is not the same thing as understanding the workings of a computer (which I consider Computer Science).
Learning a set of skills is very job-applicable, and very practical. But it should not be called computer science.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
these kids are going to come out of school with a CS degree and very little of the knowledge that a COMPUTER SCIENTIST should have.
Now Im not saying that there isnt a place for a 2 year degree that is focused on programming for corprate america. corprate america needs more programmers, especialy ones that have been custom made for the type of work that corps need, but to call them CS majors? I have a hard time beliving that they will realy learn much of the science side of CS in 2 years, while also training in 2 certifications.
Perhaps Im wrong and this cariculum will teach excelent data structure usage, and algorithim analysis and AI and compiler design and low level architecture. But at this point i kind of doubt it.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Just taking my experience of job hunting just out of college, a CS bach. degree is not that desirable to businesses.
Unless changed in the last few year's, the 'Big 6' liked anything but CS majors. EDS (I know bad example) even went so far as to prefer MUSIC majors. Their argument was that anyone can be taught to code - the 'free thinkers' in the BA degrees were where their employees resided.
Add to that the out-of-country outsourcing (where specific programming disciplines are taught), and a BSCS does not appear to be a good career path, 2 OR 4 years.
Liberal arts. That's the part of a college education that teaches people to think for themselves, and to be generalists.
Nothing wrong with that, but nobody should be under the impression that this is as good as a traditional degree with a full curriculum. Unfortunately, the students who graduate from such a program will think they are well rounded, and well educated. That's because they will lack the thinking tools needed to realize that they don't have a full education.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
If you are learning how to click menu items in Websphere, you are getting an IT degree, not a Computer Science degree.
In theory you could teach a full computer science degree without even touching a computer. Computer Science is the theory behind computation, IT is the practical application of the work.
...although there are many who oppose such approaches to college education.
I do not approach such an approach. I oppose such institution being called "Universities". If you're getting two certs, AND a CS degree, where's the Humanities, History, PE, and other pieces of a well-rounded, universal education?
OT: Some people do not like general education, and that's fine. Go to a two-year (like this one), or another vocational training program. Unfortunately, administrators, wanting to attract these people are "modernizing" university education, and cheapening it at the same time.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
So essentially this turns the CS degree into a trade skill like pumbing or electrician. Not that that is bad. My biggest concern about their technical skills would be if they had a sufficient math background -- IMHO no enough CS grads know or appreciate enough real math.
On another note though, even a general understanding of history, politics, and a host of other subjects one meets in a more "liberal" education is very important and often lacking amongst the general population.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I'm a fourth year comp sci student at McMaster university. I think it's a great idea. In my four years, the first 2 didn't even have that many comp sci course, a lot was electives. Sure electives are great for general knowledge and fun, but if you just want to get your comp sci degree and start working, then this is a much better option. Plus, if you really want to do electives you could do it after you start working.
Personally i'm sick of university, i was sick of it after the first year and I wish it was over. My attendance rate is near zero percent (literally), and i still manage As? Seems rather ridiculous and a waste of my money, considering everything i've learned about programming is at my current and previous development positions.
a certification teaches you how to answer questions and follow a set of instructions. a real education teaches you how to think and solve problems.
i'd rather hire one CS student that went to a 4-year, second tier school, than a thousand 2-year certified programming monkeys.
i think with the right students liberal arts is not needed at university level. after all you forget that stuff after graduating that is if you haven't by graduation day.
brains are going to boil in that program. thats for surer
One day the truth of it hit me:
People don't go to college to learn things. They go to college to get a piece of paper that qualifies them for certain jobs.
This is a program that lets you walk out of there with 2 useful certifications and a degree under your belt. It's a "cut the crap" kind of education.
These people aren't out there to bilk you out of your money, or to brainwash you. They're there to provide a service to a niche market. And you're it.
Apparently that's their secret -- double the caffeine, halve the time needed for a CS degree. Or is a 52 ounce Mountain Dew now a standard beverage for normal college students?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I went to a 4 year university and learned NOTHING. Not a single skill that can get me a job. All i learned was computer theory. If this had been available i would have jumped on it 4 years ago. Every job i interview with rejects me because i lack experience. The 4 year university's are just a machine to extort money from you.
How is this a Computer Science curriculum?
... the first course teaches all of "software development life cycle, OO Concepts, introductory Object Role Modeling (ORM), Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD), HTML, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Visual Studio Enterprise Architect, C#, Structured Query Language (SQL), Microsoft SQL Server, and XML basics.". That is quite the ... course.
Course Descriptions
So
Nothing new here, just another technical institute trying to sell their courses as something they aren't... I have no idea if it is a good program or not, but it isn't a CS degree.
This is going to be a degree in Computer Programming, or Computer Administration at the most.
These people are not going to be taught a wide spread of stuff like in Computer Science that goes from lots of maths and theoretical stuff through to real world stuff through to hardware and all that.
You can but hope that this course will create people that are more than unthinking code monkeys or button clickers.
Let me be the first to propose that students graduating from this college with a degree in "Computer Science" be instead given a degree in "Computer". There's no science going on there. No arts either, but I will leave developing that witticism to others.
I looked at the CS requirements, a whopping 12 credits of math(or maths for those of you outside the US). I had that many math credits at the end of my freshman year at Penn State, and had to take much more. The theories behind CS is math, and if they want to do anything but be a code monkey, they will need more than "Introduction to Calculus", most CS geeks took that in high school...
If you want to get through your undergrad program really quick, take the AP tests, don't go to some fly-by-night college....
Their textbooks are the "Teach Yourself XYZ in 24 hours" series?
I slogged four years (with breaks for co-ops) at a major American university very close to where I lived. I learned an incredible amount of theory, computing background, and a good solid programming style. ...that was 20 years old.
The sad thing is that I had a good amount of trouble (thanks Dubya) finding work. However, my theory has served me well.
If you have the theory, you can pick up the current much easier than if you just have the current and no theory. (My beef with my school is that they spend all of their efforts on theory, and learn little practical knowledge.)
My college just started an entire new college called "IST" which attempts to merge business (MS/IS) majors with computer science.
I'm finding that a lot of people who want to go into that major:
1) want lots of money, quickly
2) can't program and have no desire to
3) don't know about the old "Paper Novell Engineer" phenomena and are happy with getting certificates.
Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrial Engineering majors tend to call it "The System Administration Major" :)
While too much theory can be a bad thing (evidenced by my difficulties entering the market) it's definitely better than learning the latest and greatest in a highly protean field (like computing) without at least some roots in theory.
(Incidentally, this is why Visual Basic programming has a stigma attached. The bar was lowered to make entry easier--and it means while VB 'works' for many applications, I haven't seen a lot of elegant VB code that is scalable and designed well.)
--BA
The Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (B.S.C.S.) program is a ten-quarter, 28 month program. The academic year at Northface University is 47 weeks, and there are 10 weeks in a quarter.
Students attend classes and work on projects from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., with one hour for lunch, five days a week. Most assignments are performed in groups as part of lab and project work.
This seems possible. In fact, it seems exactly like what most universities offer - less the out-of-faculty electives.
At my university, a full degree takes 8 semesters, or approximately 4300 hours of coursework (estimating 3 hours in class, and 6 hours out, per week). This can be done in as little as 32 months if one really tries hard. (read: doesn't fail anything, and takes 5 courses a semester with not summers off)
This place is advertising 3980 course hours, a 9-5 school environment, and 47 weeks of class a year.
Really, you are getting the same ammount of education. In fact, you are likely getting more (the 3980 number does not take into account homework time, my 4300 hour estimate does). What you are losing out on is diversity. Which many students don't want.
True, diversity is a valuable asset, and a valuable experience. I enjoyed taking english and writing classes, and found them very useful as well. But if you really want diversity, go to this school, get your first degree in just over two years, and then enroll in a second degree program somewhere else.
I went to Penn State and got my math minor by changing two 300-level STAT courses into 400-level ones and adding a few extra math courses. Translation: Computer Science more or less CONTAINS a Math Minor. I tend to think that's not just confined to PSU... They're going to be Sys Admins who WISH they were as cool as BOFH. ;)
This two year degree is pretty much the kind of crap you'd expect. No theory, little exposure advanced topics. The cirriculum is pretty much a lesson in writing web applications for a small set of technologies. Apparently a critical part of all software is the Web.
This is no drop in replacement for a well rounded and indepth degree you'll find at your local University. Accrediation means something, you know.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I doubt many companies care if you can create a turing machine on paper using predicate calculus either. But it's still an important part of computer science.
The difference between a trade school and a university is that the university aims to not only equip you with the knowledge to perform in a job, but to make you a better all around person as well through exposure to other studies, people and ideas.
In no other situation in life will you ever get a chance to experience such a fascinating breadth of humanity in such a period of time. Its a sad shame some people see this as a BAD thing.
-
Vocational training and vendor certifications are great. But they aren't computer science.
There are trade schools who offer "degrees" in "Electronics Engineering Technology" and "Computer Technology" where, as far as I can tell, you learn to fix VCRs and install Exchange Server 2000.
Obviously this is beyond that level, but it's still vocational training.
OTOH, industry always needs a greater number of schleps than creative thinkers, and the American educational system has been morphing to suit industry's needs for a hundred years. The average CS grad is no great shakes. This school just formalizes and rationalizes the production of average CS grads. They won't be be any less competent than the others.
It's an interesting response to outsourcing: lower the standards of education so we can home-grow more workers.
There's a huge difference between TRAINING and EDUCATION. You can train somebody so they have whatever certifications you want ... but that doesn't mean they know how to learn. I learned a lot of different things at college ... many of which I'm sure I'll never use, but they helped develop my brain to think a certain way and I improved my ability to learn how to learn. Particularly in an age where outsourcing is prevelant, I'd rather have a broad knowledebase.
... and for anyone that's purely technical ... that may be a good fit.
On the flipside, maybe college can be completed in 2 years if you take away all the fun, alcohol, and women
Anything that gives traditional colleges something to worry about is good. Its called healthy competition.
Northface.edu runs 47 weeks a year and the program is composed of ten 10-week quarters.
10 quarters x 10 weeks=100 weeks of class in two years as opposed to 8 semesters x 13 weeks=104 weeks of class in four years.
Its a 4 year degree just a faster, cheaper (by a little bit), stronger one with additional benefits.
It makes you wonder why traditional colleges don't do this. Perhaps it is because they like raking in inflated housing fees and food sales and the annual tuition hikes. Perhaps they are simply milking their aging business model of enslaving their grad students and treating undergrads like cattel instead of customers. For Profit Colleges and technical schools continue to innovate and traditional colleges are still living in the 1950's.
Computer Science (an academic subject) and Software Development (a business pursuit) are very different things.
I would think that all the people with CS degrees here would know that by now.
Some of the best coders I've ever encountered were under 20. It doesn't really take that long for someone with the right sort of intelligence to develop the skills. So the idea of a two-year crash course isn't unreasonable.
The real problem is, that sort of intelligence isn't all that rare. Which is why a coding career isn't as lucrative as it once was, I guess. These crash courses beguile their audiences into thinking they can be fabulously wealthy just as coders. You need a great deal more to convert computing skill into something other than a moderately paid high stress job.
Know computing, but also know something else, is my advice for most people. What else? Something that you can apply the computing to, basically. There's a lot of choices. Pick one.
mt
Mills College (Oakland, CA) has a program with similar goals, although a more academic focus. Specifically, Mills has post-baccalaureate programs for people who already have a bachelor's degree in another field. Graduates go on to industry or to CS PhD programs, such as University of Washington, MIT, and UCSD. The coursework is primarily upper-division undergraduate CS courses, which are taught by faculty with PhDs from top schools, such as MIT, Princeton, and UC Berkeley.
FYI, I direct the program. We're having an Open House on Thursday, August 19, and are still accepting applications and awarding aid for this fall. Contact me for more information.
That's not college. It's a trade school. A vocational program. That's very useful, maybe more useful than college in starting to work a job. But its value plays out fast, even the most of the training itself becoming obsolete within a few years. Learning to become an independent adult in college lasts a lifetime, and makes for a better career. Especially when your career, or industry, changes. That's why spreading this education over twice as long (or more ;) in college, along with a variety of other courses and students, is so much more valuable. But the trade school is better than no higher education than just high school, and probably a more realistic path for thousands of people each year than expensive, and largely mediocre, colleges. And as a post-liberal-arts degree, it sounds like the best balance.
--
make install -not war
Well many of you said that during university years there's a lot of crap, and that peeps don't go to univ. to learn... and I could continue.
Thing is, there are some of us who do. I mean after 4-5 years of univ. time (for me it was 2 degrees - partially - in parallel, done in 7 years) you just prove one thing: you can keep up, can do your thing and still be able to concentrate on other matters that don't precisely relate to your major(s). That you can learn new things quickly and adapt to new challenges and requirements.
And on that I don't just mean learning a new programming language, but the ability to quickly familiarize yourself to new systems, concepts, designs and ideas. One can get a way of thinking and attitude that can't be picked up in 2 years of coders' crash-course.
And besides, it's not always the things you pick up on lectures that prove to be themost important, sometimes it's what you pick up between them. That also needs time (which 2 years can't possibly provide).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Since I graduated in 1995, tuition at the University of Iowa has tripled. It has done so because the school has locked itself into a number of expensive construction projects and is not able to reduce its cash flow needs to match the decreasing state revenue.
From what I can tell, the quality of instruction has not tripled since my graduation. Even moreso, students that I have advised to pursue Oracle DBA certification as technical electives have been repeatedly refused, even though the university listed Oracle certification as for-credit courses.
The CS departments of most universities have been bought off by Microsoft to the extent that they already spend over a year teaching Visual Basic. They do not use open tools, and their administrative structure reflects this close-minded and obsolete path.
IMHO, State Universities are run in a cartel system that has seen its fair share of waste and corruption. Any ideas for a system that could effectively compete with the public university cartel would be welcome indeed.
..while it doesn't come in handing here at work I did get get laid a few time.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yes, Northface gets you through in 2 1/2 years as opposed to 4. We're also here at school, in classes, from 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. While the total number of years is less, I think the total amount of time in school (including homework) is quite comparable.
Yes, I'd like to see a bit more math. I personally love math, and have passed up to Calc II. That's the one thing I miss about traditional Universities.
Umm, not teaching critical thinking or hardware architecture? Okay, I agree there's no class specifically titled "Critical thinking" or "Hardware Architecture". But it's definitely there sprinkled in by the professors in their lectures. Dr. Halpin (ORM and databases) in particular puts a lot of logic problems into his assignments and lectures. Algorithm development has not been specifically taught yet (i.e., can you write a B-tree), but I'm only in my 2nd quarter here.
The software development cycle and software architecture are heavily emphasized. I'm in a project team now that's working on things that my brother-in-law (who graduated with a BSCS from the University of Utah) never dreamed of getting into. Homework assignments in the traditional setting get you to work on problems. Project work at Northface gets you to work on all those problems and then see how they interact with each other.
There's lots more to say. But there are probably a hundred other posts in the discussion that I need to catch up on. I emailed the other students here at Northface and encouraged them to post their experiences, so we'll see how this goes. It's no Ivory Tower over here, but I'll disagree with anyone who says we're not getting the people skills or the critical thinking experience that comes from a 4-year.
Darned tropical millipede! What's it doing in our apartment?
Progamming and adminstering machines isn't computer science. Those degree programs are jokes.
This is impossible, along with CS courses, in two years.
The problem is they should call the program a degree in "Computer Technlogy" and degree holders should be "Computer Technicians."
I may trust them to crimp connectors on my Ethernet cables, but they're not going to be doing any heavy lifting!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Everyone has been talking about how this is going to lack diversity, but there's another important point to be made here.
I'm a senior Computer Science major at a top-tier liberal arts institution, and have been through almost all of the major, and a lot of other courses in the process of completing my degree. Here's my main comment- I'm getting the broad-based knowledge that I consider to be extremely useful in terms of general employment, but what's notable is what I DON'T have as a result of this education. The ability to program well enough to get a job doing it.
A four-year CS major doesn't necessarily mean you know ANYTHING about proper programming practice, systems organization, or anything even remotely related to the workings of a computer. Virtually all of my knowledge of these things comes from my own efforts either before college or independant of anything curriculum-related.
Hell, most of the CS majors can't even fix their own computers, much less write software that won't break someone else's.
The issue, then, isn't with a shorter or longer curriculum, but with the individual programs... Certification doesn't seem to mean much, as far as I can tell.
Trust me, I'm not saying your degree won't provide you valuable information and training for a successful career in IT or software development. I'm simply saying that graduate programs at major universities do not look favorably on certain accreditation, ACICS included.
Call a few local Universities with graduate programs in Computer Science and ask if they accept a degree with ACICS accreditation as sufficient for admission to their graduate programs. I'd be willing to be most will say that it is not. The University of Phoenix has the same problem.
If you're not going to grad school, this is completely irrelevant.
What these big companies are getting is trained workers with skills they need, and they don't pay a dime for it. All the risk is on the student, because if they are the 301st member of the class and only 300 of the class gets hired, the student is out of $60k and with a Computer Science degree (although it sounds more like Software Developer degree, more technical than scientific). IE he has all the technical skills, but no personal skills and will have hard time rising into management.
TANSTAAFL
E. Dijkstra: Computer Science is no more about
.net certification is not a computer science course. It is probably not even a software engineering course.
computers than astronomy is about telescopes
Anything that brags about java and
It is probably a programming course.
With the focus on trendy skills and certification you are basically getting a highly "outsourceable" degree. Ignoring the basics of learning and the "softer" skills will keep you in a small replaceable tech box and basically doom (not DOOM 3, MyDoom, etc.) your career. When are they going to hire Sally Struthers as a spokeswoman? Maybe they can hire Carly Fiorina in her place?
And yes, there are scattered cases of people who eschewed college and did very well. I'd wager there are even more people who didn't attend college and wound up in fast food. A degree gets your foot in the door.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The difficulty with this program's goals is that they are incorrectly equating the skills needed for a computer science degree with what the CURRENT job market needs are that can be satisfied with a CS degree. A college education educates. A trade school trains. This is a trade school pretending to give a BS CS diploma. I'm sure they could never get an ABET accedited Computer Engineering degree out of this nonsense.
A recruiter representing the school's sponsors, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and Unisys, added, "These companies aren't really looking for people, as such, to work for them. They much prefer pre-fab, pre-integrated, CPU's or 'Carbon Programming Units.' These CPU's represent the ultimate achievement of our modern educational system. They have been super efficiently manufacturededucated to have exactly and only the skills required of them to meet the job descriptions that Fortune 1000 managers request."
Northface spokesman John Smith explained, "Let's say you are a manager at a large company and you need a CPU to work on your PeopleSoft general ledger system. You would send an order to the school with the appropriate boxes checked. In just two to four weeks, we will ship you a carbon programming unit that meets your exact specifications! This unit will know all about PeopleSoft general ledger work. And it won't come with any extraneous skills that would just get in the way. It won't know anything about data structures or algorithms. It won't be burdened with knowledge of Visual Basic or Java or English. In fact, it won't even really know how to survive by itself -- it's up to you, the manager, to be sure to instruct your janitorial staff to clean the unit at night to prevent unwanted organic residue buildup. You should also assign someone to supply the unit with vending machine coffee and fuel, such as candy bars. Then, when your company switches from PeopleSoft to SAP a few months later, you can just dispose of the unit with a simple layoff. No severance is required -- all units are preprogrammed to be grateful just to have the chance to work for someone like yourself! Open the door and the unit will activate its secondary programming. It will seek out the nearest McDonalds and become a burger flipper. No troublesome human resources issues! What could be more thrilling?"
Asked why General Electric wasn't participating in the school, CEO Jeff Immelt expounded, "We were using domestic carbon programming units years ago, but found they were too expensive. A school like Northface costs almost $87 per unit. We've now constructed a factory in Singapore, with future expansion plans in China, that can construct almost unlimited numbers of units for us at a cost slightly less than a dollar each. That's the power of 6smegma in action! That tremendous cost savings is the engine that has fueled the exponential growth of this company's officers' personal investment portfolios. That's where the future lies! No longer will a CEO, COO, or CFO's portfolio be limited to double-digit growth per year. This kind of forward thinking exploitation of the carbon unit race will drive wealth creation for the privileged few to undreamed-of levels."
I think they're a big part of a real CS degree. I mean, wtf? You just go and get certified for Windows 200X, or Version Y of some major software? That's a recipe for obsolesence. Might as well just STUDY Latin, because in ten years, more people will be using Latin than anything you'll be certified in today.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Does anyone else remember the TV adds for "Control Data Institute?" I rember seeing them watching afternoon TV as a kid in the 70s. (CDI adds ran between the "Meet Chuck" mechanic school ads and the DeVry ads.) CDI was on offshoot of Control Data to teach programmers in a trade school environment.
The plumber/electrician analogy is very apt. You wouldn't hire an electrical engineer to do the work of an electrician. An engineer may understand and specify an electrical system on paper, but it takes the equally important skill set of the electrican to get installed efficiently and properly. The problem is that many employers inappropriately focus on BSCS degrees for all IT jobs, probably because there are a lack of real quality "programming" curricula out there. (As a side note, while I'd probably agree some of the best IT people pick up the knowledge on their own without getting a technology degree, I would argue that there may not be enough of that type of people around...)
My alma matter, Purdue has addressed this situation with two programs. One is a Conventional BSCS program in the School of Science, the other is a rigerous Computer Technology program in the School of Technology.
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
College is designed to train minds to think critically, absorb, process, and analyse, all while rounding the individual to the point where no matter what they pursue, they will be equipped.
The commercialization of education is a giant bowel movement on the Arts and Humanities educational system that has served our planet so well for so long.
Keep your fucking "job skills" movement out of my university.
"Now earn your Bachelor's in Food Service Online from the University of Phoenix in half the time!"
This is probably being written far too late for someone to notice, but I'm going to waste my time anyway (I'm waiting for a test to run, so I have some time to burn). I end up running into a lot of very bright kids these days who are just finishing up high school and looking at what to do for their education. Some of them are looking at these two year game development schools, or two year software development schools. Every time I give them the same advice: pick a school that is going to give you a well rounded education beyond your immediate career path. Don't just study CS and learn how to be a C++ god. Learn how to write, how to speak, about history, math, science, art, whatever. The more you are exposed to, the more useful it is going to be to you later in life. That's not just a trite phrase-its reality. It is very rare today for someone to stay in the same career path or field for their whole lives-market factors, human factors, any number of things can and will force changes in your planning. The better rounded you are, and the better able to adapt, the better chance you have of changing professions successfully. As it is, I look back on my education at Penn State (EE degree, I'm a software engineer now), and some of the courses I think of most fondly had absolutely nothing to do with my career-but they were a lot of fun and I'm very glad to have taken them.
If you want to go to one of these trade schools and in two years hit the job market, go for it, but the guy who waits another two (or four or six, depending on degree) years is probably going to be able to better mold his career path to the needs of his life.
Taking two years of courses and having certification in WebSphere and Microsoft stuff does not make you a computer scientist--it just makes you a programmer.
There's a difference.
From working with developers of all sorts as part of what I do, I can tell you that there's a clear difference between someone who simply learned to code from reading a book on EJB development and someone who took enough courses in networking protocols, systems design and compilers to know that using HTTP to send 4 bytes of data from point to point is a bad idea.
It takes more than simple practical knowhow to actually be thoroughly trained in a field. A two-year certification program is just that...
jfr
***Foucault is watching you..***
For CS what really counts is CSAB accreditation (http://www.csab.org/ ), and Northface University doesn't have this.
/ schoolall.asp
CSAB is now part of ABET (i.e., the accreditation organization for CE and EE). The list of accredited schools is at:
http://www.abet.org/accredited_programs/computing