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Ask Slashdot: CS Degree Without Gen-Ed Requirements?
davidjbeveridge writes "I'm interested in getting a CS degree. I've been programming since I was 13, and like many of us, taught myself. I am familiar with a number of languages, understand procedural, functional, and object-oriented paradigms; I'm familiar with common design patterns and am a decent engineer. I learn quickly. I work 2 jobs and I have a life. I want to get a CS degree from an accredited school (a BS, that is), but I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like. While these fields are useful and perhaps enriching, they will not contribute to making me better at my job. Moreover, I attended an excellent high school that covered these fields of study in great detail, and I feel no need or desire to spend more time studying these things. I want a BS in Computer Science with no general education requirements. Any suggestions?"
I guess this is a US-only problem. When I started my computer science degree at the University of Antwerp, it was pretty much only computer science. We had a few credits in economics, but that was really just general economics and that's it.
However, what are you expecting from studying CS? It's most likely not what you think it is. It's basically math, automata, algorithms, computability theory and stuff like that. If you plan to be a computer programmer and only that, you already have the skills required (even though, you probably make certain avoidable mistakes by if you don't know about computing theory).
If it is to have better chances to get a job interview, I can understand...
I don't regret having a computer science degree, it was very interesting, but it's not a course "how to become a better programmer".
Anyone considering computer science, should ponder the words of one of the greatest computer scientists of all times: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes", Edsger Dijkstra.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
A BS covers general education and major course work.
Your best bet is an AS degree. Then, come back later and get your BS.
Go take your gen eds like the rest of us. Do you think we enjoyed them? No.
Good luck with that. It has been my experience that higher educational institutions just want your money. I'm sure if you donated enough of it to them, they would give you a piece of paper just for that merit alone. Once you understand that motivation, you will know why they want to purchase as much of their product as possible.
I think you underestimate the value of those things. Most of these classes aren't strictly about history, english, and the like, but enhance your overall mental ability - such as the ability to write, comprehend, and reason, which frankly, is generally missing from those in our field.
If you don't have those things, that's fine, but that's not a BS or a BA, thats a trade school education.
How is enriching your life wasting your time? Why is education a bad thing?
I finished off my degree while working full-time as a kernel engineer. By the last year, the Gen Ed classes were the ones I looked forward to the most.
Is your goal to have a degree because it would be useful to list on a résumé, or do you want the degree because you think the content of the BS in CS would be useful? If it's the latter, then independent study or auditing college courses might be the answer for you. If it's the former, though, you more or less have to accept that the BS is not just a vocational degree--it is a degree from a university that attests to you not only knowing the content of the major but also the gen-ed requirements.
.....reading Slashdot and having a life is generally mutually exclusive! That said, studying "other things" is a good idea to provide context and balance to your life (i.e. have a life ). To paraphrase, all programming and no other interests makes Jack a dull boy. At the very least, the "other things" can be inspirational and help look at your programming problems in other ways. Consider taking some management, marketing or communications courses so you can understand the business life going on around you at whatever company you join.
What you just want the piece of paper?
I spent a good deal in college CS classes, learning stuff that I already had a good idea what to do.
When it came to the real world I was quite prepared for anything computer related. It was every other subject that killed me. It was my lack of art classes that kept me from good design. My lack of English classes that kept me from good copyright. My lack of Business classes lead me to make wrong decisions.
Now I'm considering going back to school. But I'll stay as far away from CS as possible.
I once read somewhere that the things you don't know become your Achilles heal. Very true.
Go to school for an education. Not a piece of paper.
...how to put it politely? Nope, can't think of a gentle way to say it, so quite bluntly, you are an idiot.
You may be the best programmer in the world, but without studying the things you now consider to be a waste of your time, you do not know how to think or communicate.
Being better at what you consider your job is not everything. You need general education to be able to handle all of the other work-place and meat-space things that are not programming related.
When It Counts.
Skills besides programming are very important unless you want to be an underpaid code monkey. You say you have already taken or otherwise have the needed "Life Skills". Well find a good University you want to go to then figure out how much of their Gen-Ed you can skip through by transferring your credits in or getting life skills credit. Other than that if you are looking for programming only, it is called a trade school here, and is worth little more than previous experience in the field.
You've discovered the fundamental flaw in higher education: it's full of academics, and fundamentally exists to produce more academics, not people who actually get things done. There's more and more thought that the degree is simply not worth the paper it's printed on, much less the crushing debt of student loans.
Give it long, hard, careful thought - and then ask yourself if you need the degree at all. I'm not going to kid you: there will opportunities forever closed to you because the hiring authorities can't see past the piece of paper - but you'll have a fine career nonetheless, especially if you build a demonstrated history of learning things quickly and hitting the ground running.
I don't have a degree. Looking back, I think I made the right choice not to put up with the railcar loads of bullshit that go with academia.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Intelligent managers (managers that understand the position they are hiring for, as opposed to PHBs that are looking to fill an empty seat) will understand that experience can be more valuable than education. Four years in an active CS position will teach you more than you're likely to learn in the same amount of time in college.
This does limit your options though - there are going to be PHBs in hiring positions for jobs you may be interested in and very well-suited to, and a lot of them refuse to consider you unless you have that fancy piece of paper to show them that you blew a lot of money on your job hunt. You just need to take this into account when looking for work. Also, just because the opening states it requires that gilded paper doesn't guarantee it's required - if you're really interested, ask them if they'd consider experience and accomplishments on your resume' to be equivalents. A few will.
I know most of my time in college was totally wasted, and I don't mean on beer and parties. It played basically no role whatsoever in my current job. The person that hired me was interested not in my current knowledge, but in my talents and in my ability to learn and adapt/grow. You can't learn that in college, and the smart managers know that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Also, since the tone of your post suggests you are male, can I observe that exposure to the humanities tends also to enable you to meet (and discuss interesting subjects with) women? I'm not talking about sex, but improving your familiarity with the people you will meet as soon as you step outside the IT department, some of whom will influence your career.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You will not be able to get a good degree without the general education courses. However, you can always pick up a few CS books and do your own research. It's a lot cheaper than paying tuition.
"Moreover, I attended an excellent high school that covered these fields of study in great detail, and I feel no need or desire to spend more time studying these things." If this is the case, then take the AP Placement Tests and you can skip those courses.
They teach you how to learn things. Very useful if you are going to ever design anything new. If you're just going to code out of the Gamma book, you're missing quite a lot. Patterns don't work well outside their design regime (and Gamma even says so in his book), and it takes some real creativity sometimes to adapt them correctly or design new ones.
If you think learning to communicate better won't help your job, you won't be a very good engineer. It is absolutely critical. As is learning how to persuade, learning a foreign culture and/or language (not even necessarily one you will encounter regularly with your job, but it helps if it is).
And a narrow perspective will put you at very substantial risk of burnout. 5 years into your career, you will get truly sick of writing your 50th test procedure document, and you'll be stuck because that will be your only skill.
You apparently just graduated high school, and think you know it all. Take it from someone with experience, you don't. Not even close. Your first year of college will teach you just how little you really know. It will be a shock.
In short, BAD idea for the long (and even medium) term.
If you think the point of education is to get a spiffy piece of paper no one will EVER look at, you have missed the point.
For similar reasons, I'd suggest steering away from a dedicated CS degree. Maybe as a minor. I can't emphasize enough how useful my physics and math degrees have been.
They will help with your life. When your boss asks you to do something unethical, what do you do? When you vote in an election, who do you vote for? When you realize that zeros and ones are not all there is to life, what do you fall back on? I am happy if you went to a good high school that gave you the basics. That will prepare you for a good college that will challenge you further, to think and learn in ways that you do not expect.
University is not trade school. You go there to get educated. If all you know is one narrow field, then you can hardly call yourself educated.
You can do what I did and take the general ed classes at the local community college, then just transfer the credits in. A lot cheaper that way.
And out of all the general ed classes you need to take, I'd have to say the English 101 class is the most important. It's just down right embarrassing to claim that you are educated, but can't even write a coherent paper. And yes, you do that a lot in the professional world. Or in more general, you need to be able to communicate effectively. I know this one senior developer who said one of the best developers he's ever had was a guy whose degree wasn't in CS or related field but in English. And it was simply because he was knew how to communicate his thoughts in a clear and effective manner. His code might not have been as tight and efficient as a CS guy, but in the grand scheme of things that doesn't matter as much as being able to write clear and maintainable code.
Who knows, you might actually enjoy some of those non-CS classes. I know I liked the critical thinking class I took to fulfill a humanities credit. That surprised me because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have signed up for a class like that if I wasn't forced to pick something.
Beware: If all you can do is code there's a great chance your job will end up in India. You have to have broader skills now to be competitive. Instead of taking classes in an area you obviously know well (i.e. coding), why not take more general business classes or in the sciences so you can use your coding skills as a tool to solve critical problems rather than being a coder waiting for a problem to get assigned to you? 99% of the people you will need to work with aren't coders and if you don't have any general skills you won't be able to work with them as effectively.
Good luck,
-c
Um Gen-Ed classes WILL make you a better programmer.
So many people say they don't want to take those classes, but after 4 years of real liberal arts study (+ your required field of course) changes you and very few people regret it (except the cost).
Simply put, if that's how you view things, you have no place getting a real college degree, you should go to trade school.
I personally suggest you get over yourself. From your post I get this feeling you skipped collage and are coming back and now feel your to busy to get a degree someone is pressing you to get. If its not the case and you are only 18-22 I suggest you work out away to go to school part time and drop one of your jobs. Some of the best students I find at Universities are Adults who come back. The fact they have families, jobs, and other issues makes them far more dedicated and less likely to waste time. They typically go year round to get the electives out of the way and I don't see why you can't find away to work it out as well. A Bachelors is a specific field type of education which is aimed at a generally rounded higher education with a small focus on some field of study. While the next level of degree a Masters is a specialized degree with pure focus on a single discipline and generally research experience. If that is not what you want to do or you find the process with out merit I suggest you pursue a different piece of paper to prove your worth. Depending on your true work experience and you coding portfolio you can likely just start paying money to take certification exams to sprinkle all over the resume. Get a few certifications in programming languages and then move on to OS admin and maintenance maybe to impress the bosses you could then move on to networking, databases, and IDEs.
I read a few months back that the expectation is that work experience will start to trump education this decade and that the larger business are starting to reverse trends which focus so much on college education. So, it is a direction to take if you feel that college just isn't for you, but it likely won't be any cheaper as the average test cost about the same as a 3 hour course and you will still need books and courses to prep you for the exams that are actually difficult.
Finally,
You will not find a Bachelors at an decent university that doesn't require you to take Math, Physics, History, English, Physiology, Economics, and many more. Hell of a 120 hours to 160 hours of course work 54 might be in your field with 18-30 going to a minor and the rest to general studies.
Momento Mori
Wow, that's the most self obsessed thing I've ever read!
I'm presuming you must be American, one of the few countries in the world in which a "general education" somehow serves one into becoming an "engineer" or a "manager". For years of successfully running a business, and employing both licensed "engineers" and people that just had INTEREST in relevant fields, I can assure you there's no difference.
Except that the "engineers" expect more money for the exact same job.
IMHO: MOST western university educations provides the means to teach, but only if you expect to teach the way current University professors teach. Our whole university system BADLY needs a major overhaul, It does very little but take money from people and make them think they're owed more then they really are.
Like many people, I had life happen and dropped out of Uni a year in. Trying to fit in the classes now, some 20 years later, to finish a CS degree it is very hard to find the CS courses during non-work hours. Any hints on schools that offer transferable credits to get these CS classes done? The gened classes are easy to find from my local university in an online my own hours schedule.
I know it seems like a big waste and such, but seriously... do the general ed. classes. The last thing you need to do is to end up so single-minded that you can't even see a wider world out there.
You know the big stereotype about how geeks can't function socially? Remaining willfully ignorant of everything outside your chosen craft is a big symptom of that.
You may *think* that your high school covered all of that, but honestly, they likely did not. Even if it seems like total crap, you'll likely learn things about art, philosophy, English, history and the like that a high school class could never cover.
I remember thinking the same thing you did a long time ago, while chasing an EE. Then I took the required history class, and gained such a passion for looking into the past, that I minored in it. All it took was a prof that really loved what he taught, and expressed it in a way that touched off an intense curiosity to learn more. The more I learned on my own and beyond, the more I fell in love with where we've been as a whole, and in exploring the past.
Hell, it even helped out in my eng. classes. Proof? Researching why RMS Titanic's electrical systems held out for so long in spite of all that seawater coming in made for one of the most kick-ass papers I'd ever written, and it gave me an incredible respect for electrical technology back then. I wouldn't have given a shit if I wasn't interested in history, and my classmates were too busy analyzing and making shallow papers on the tech-du-jour (mostly centering on what they thought about the upcoming 1993 NEC).
But - you know the biggest reason why you should diversify? My degree is in Electrical Engineering. I took a couple light classes in programming (C++, FORTRAN, PASCAL...), and thought it was a waste at the time, but I had to fill electives. I'm a Sysadmin, have been so for 15 years, and have done programming professionally on occasion. I haven't done jack in the EE field since 1996, and my last license renewal expired a little over a decade ago.
Your career will likely diverge too, and having more than a single-minded subject under your belt will help you greatly, as well as give you alternatives and avenues that you may have never thought of.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Fraud is really your only choice. Seriously. No accredited program awarding a BS is going to let you skip out on General Education requirements; your two demands are mutually exclusive. That's intentional. BS programs are not technical college programs (which have their place), and they are not skills certificate programs (which also have their place).
If you don't want GenEd, you have two choices: an AAS degree, or a non-accredited BS/BA program. Few if any of those credits will transfer to an accredited program in the future, however. Accreditation provides a minimal guarantee of "quality", which is why colleges go through the (significant) effort required to obtain and maintain the credential. Caveat Emptor.
A final comment: a few additional things the General Education requirements are likely to teach you are 1) that you don't know as much as you think you do, and 2) a little humility.
Waaah. I don't want to be a well-rounded person able to hold an intelligent conversation with the people around me. I just want to single-minded-ly pursue learning only the few things I want to learn, and not be bothered with knowing anything else. If somebody makes a reference to Big Brother or Jesus or Ahab, I can just look it up on Wikipedia later.
One of the things that happens in college is Growing Up. I highly recommend it.
No accredited colleges is going to award a degree without core classes. Since the high school you went to was good, I assume you have a full load of AP classes and are able to get some, at least freshman credit. If not these core requirements can be taken a community college and transferred. You might also look at online schools that test to fudge these requirements. These degrees may or may not be accepted by the employer. I wonder if you have thought about contributing to open source projects to get some experience and see how code it written on large projects, and integrated, then opening up a consulting type situation. People do make good money doing this, and the hours can be flexible.
Just as an aside, two of my friends in college were in a similair situation. They were late 20's, had decent jobs, and made decent money, though often had to work overtime to get it. They had lives, did not live at thier parents house, had cars, had lovers, and both gave up the life to go to school. I don't know if life after school was better for them, but I do think that going through the full process of college, including the evil core classes, made them people who were not laborers but problem solvers. This in terms gave them opportunities they did not have before. I never understood how they did school, I would not have been able to do it at 30 with a job and a life. But they did.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Do a three-year computer science degree in the UK. You will only see computer science.
I really would hate to work with someone like you.
First, participating in general education classes is in no way a waste of time. Practicing and learning skills and knowledge in an array of topics is always beneficial and has a greater impact on an individuals effectiveness and ability to interact and collaborate within a society, within groups, and with other individuals. And whether or not your high school education covered the same topics it is unlikely the teachers and material will be identical and unlike many technical courses the general education classes can often provide new perspective and insight simply because you are learning from a different teacher and different book.
Second, if you truly do want a CS degree then stop wasting time trying to figure out how to work your way around the general education requirements and just take the damn classes. The time you spend taking these classes is a drop in the bucket compared to the probable amount of time you have to live and work in a career and hopefully even go back later and take more classes to expand your knowledge, experience, and perspective. It always astounds me when I see intelligent people who have the opportunity but waste precious years not getting an advanced education and usually it is due to the most minuscule barriers such as "I don't want to take the general ed classes, they are a waste of my time".
Just do it.
Because that is what getting a "real" BS entails, getting a "well-rounded" education.
Instead, it sounds like you are wanting a vocational/technical school degree, which is subpar, compared to getting a BS.
Do note that many colleges allow you to CLEP your way out of certain core requirements courses, which means you take a comprehensive test for that course and, if you pass, you get credit for it with whatever grade you get. The tests still cost money, but not usually as much as the full course. Of course, if you fail the test, you'll be out more money, since you'll have to take the course to get the credit. So, if you feel your high school education was superlative enough to let you test your way out of the "time-wasting" core curriculum, then by all means do so. It will save you time and money. Just don't be too surprised when you reach the limits of your knowledge in them at some point and have to take the courses anyway.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Like many of the comments have mentioned, fulfilling the general education requirements of a BS degree /will/ make you better at your job. Learning how to think critically about ambiguous problems and how to apply knowledge from a variety of disciplines will make you better at solving the specific problems you face as a programmer. Those creative skills will also help you later in your career by which time you will likely have grown into broader roles that include project and people management.
It's also worth mentioning that the quality and depth of critical analysis possible in college literature and history classes will surpass that of even very good high school programs.
You apparently want job training...not a college degree. A bachelor's degree is not training for a job. It's to teach you how to think and solve problems for yourself. How to absorb knowledge, interpret information and apply it to a variety of situations. Part of that involves studying the subjects you seem to want to avoid. Find a trade school. A college degree is apparently not for you if all you want is job training.
You should be applauded for wanting to get a CS degree. This will certainly affect the ways you look at computer programs in the future, and especially the programming part of it.
However, my opinion is that you should question the reasons as to why you doubt learning about, for example, English - since that might be exactly that thing that is most beneficial to you.
Allow me to explain by telling you my viewpoint of the story. I started a CS education 15 years ago, with the intention of only learning the computer-related courses in it. There were some courses in "communication" (in Swedish, since that's where I live), that I for the most part didn't like at the time. My view was that learning to write properly and to talk in front of people was a waste of time, since my focus was on creating the most brilliant programs ever created. The math and algorithm courses were more interesting at the time than the courses that got you well-informed of other areas.
However, once I got into my last year and started writing the thesis (for a company), I started seeing other priorities other than the programming itself. I saw people being percieved as bad programmers because they could not relay the intention of what their programs were doing, and I was seeing people being percieved as great programmers because they could get the whole team to start working in the same direction towards the same goal. My view is that being a great programmer is not only being able to write excellent programs, you also have to write the program the fulfills the correct purpose (and not just YOUR purpose).
I would argue that the ability to correctly convey your reasoning behind a design decision is equally as important as the ability to execute on that decision.
Getting back to your case, it seems that you have a proficiency at understanding programming, and learning new programming languages. That is absolutely a must in order to be a good developer/engineer, and you will have that advantage over other people probably for your whole life. The ability to quickly learn new areas is something you should treasure. However, I would encourage you to also learn communication skills, as that (in my experience) will help you equally as much.
Maybe that's just how it works where I live, but I guess it is applicable to other places as well.
You should question the reasons why you don't want to learn something about an area that is not as intuitive as computer programming to you.
That being said, I wish you all the luck in getting a CS degree, you have whole generations of programmers behind you that want you to succeed!
That's where you're wrong. Speaking as a developer with a BA in English, I can tell you that your English, History, and Art classes will make you better at your job. They will make you better able to relate to people outside IT fields, better able to reason and argue logically, and give you a broader perspective of your (and your code's) context.
I can't tell you how many CS graduates I've seen at my workplace, lamenting how worthless their CS classes were because the tools we work with, and the problems we're trying to solve, bear no resemblance to their coursework. I've never heard the same from a liberal arts graduate, because everybody knows the point of a liberal education is to make you able to think critically, and give you the foundation you need to learn anything you need to learn later in life.
a BS from an accredited school
I can confirm this. I go to a school where the least technical major is civil engineering. First day of English class, the teacher told us bluntly "I know none of you want to be here, but the organization which accredits us requires English classes."
There's (almost) no `general education bullshit here.
Most schools will let you test out of courses - you just take a test at the beginning of the semester to demonstrate that you already know what they were planning on teaching you, and they give you the credit. Saves a lot of time. The second time I went to college, I tested out of basically everything but "computer lab," did all my lab work for the trimester the first week (I had been working as a programmer for 2 years and could type 90wpm), and then spent the next few months hanging out in third-year networking classes learning about SNA and the OSI model and all that.
Of course, I could argue that SNA and the OSI model turned out to be a bigger waste of my time than Gen-Ed classes ever could... ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The general gist of this thread is a good one and getting a degree is a great idea. But CS engineering has no licensing requirements in the US, so no, it doesn't actually mean something. I have met more than my share of people with engineering degrees from third rate state schools who are absolutely abysmal. And equally I have met a very few absolutely brilliant engineers who have no degree at all and are completely self taught.
Again, I don't disagree on the whole with your general sentiment. Nor am I trying to attack state school education, I have met some solid folks who came out of state schools (Berkeley comes to mind immediately). Just that the generic statement that engineer means something in the US is demonstrably wrong. Personally, I don't have much respect for CS as an *undergraduate* degree in general. Folks coming out of Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, Caltech and a few other schools, a BS in CS is a pretty serious piece of paper. But if I had to make a generic call, MS and up is where I would put the engineer tag if you wanted to be really serious about it.
And this slightly less than brilliant original poster, if I were him I would go for one of those life experience degrees from a lower ranked state school, assuming he actually has the life experience, which can require only a couple of semesters of additional coursework if he has enough documentable experience, and then use that to get into an MS program at a not-to-competitive institution (since a top ranked institution won't look kindly on the GED of college degrees). Of course, the odds of him failing horribly due to not having the fundamentals solid is high. But it would meet his personal goals of avoiding as much non-CS coursework as possible.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I was in a similar situation, here is what I suggest:
1) Take the Comp Sci AP test to get you out of the introductory CS courses and get you some credits from the start. The gen-ed courses weren't that bad to take: It may be the CS 101 classes that drive you nuts. "This is a for loop... this is a while loop..." and looking around at all the Art majors who think they can go into Comp Sci for the money and don't understand the concept of a variable.
2) Take any other AP test you think you can. Worst-case you lose money, best case you skip some courses. There is nothing wrong with getting a poor score on an AP test other than the loss of money. But talk to someone who has taken and/or teaches AP courses to get an idea of what you need to know. If you are still in high-school then taking the AP courses is the best approach.
3) Use community college to breeze through gen-eds. I decided on my final college and picked a community college to take my Gen-Ed classes. (I did it for financial reasons though). Pick the schools and classes so you guarantee a transfer. Then take nothing but gen-ed courses in the community college because they will be really easy. If you are as smart as you think, you might be able to do 2 years of gen-ed classes in 1 year. Most of those community college classes will be designed for slackers.
4) Grow up. Those gen-ed courses are actually some of the best parts of college. I am a geek to the core, but I loved discussing Descartes' meditations, studying economics, learning how the eye communicates images to the brain, and debugging why various wars started. If you think you can survive in the world knowing only what is in the computer you will be unable to accurately measure the world around you and efficiently apply what you have learned to your field. You won't be young forever so at some point you will wake-up and realize you aren't the best of the best of the best anymore, and you will want your niche in the real world. Computers are a tool - a means. True success requires more than just the means (your C.S.) to fulfill.
I work 2 jobs and I have a life.
- bzzzzzzzt. What gives you the right to think you can do that and be a computer nerd exactly? Also, how does one have 2 jobs and a life in the same time span?
You can't handle the truth.
I started when I was 11 and thankfully was a bit more open minded regarding courses but also lived in an education climate where we had mandatory curriculum.
My advice is that you need to learn humility and that is best done through the humanities because lets face it the computer is just a hyper mirror of your own super ego.
So how about jumping on something that is really a challenge like "Child rearing 101." Good luck and have fun you might actually learn something substantial.
Sorry, you're thinking of a tradeschool, not a university degree. A university degree produces a well rounded, also called "educated" person. If all you're interested in is the computer stuff, then by all means, learn it. You don't need professors for that.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
the GE subjects? They can be interesting and learning more makes you a better person, programmer, spouse, parent, neighbor, voter, etc. Learning and school, in general, really don't have to be bad things which you try to escape.
I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like. While these fields are useful and perhaps enriching, they will not contribute to making me better at my job. Moreover, I attended an excellent high school that covered these fields of study in great detail, and I feel no need or desire to spend more time studying these things.
I graduated college from a nationally prominent liberal arts college in 1984 with a BS in mathematics. Based on placement tests administered in orientation, I was exempted from english, foreign language and most of the other "gen ed" requirements you speak of, like you, based on a strong HS curriculum. I then spent the next FIVE years fighting a system that had exempted me from the requirements, but gave me no credits for them.
In other words, the "gen eds" I avoided ended up biting me in the ass HARD as I found my schedule "filled" with "the only courses available" to fulfill my credit requirements to graduate.
The good news is I ended up with almost enuf philosophy credits for a minor, and that my sound HS grounding in the basics have served me well in the past 30 years.
My advice: be careful what you ask for.
Place out of what you can, but realize you still have to have the credits to graduate. Take the gen eds, but get yourself exempted from the baseline requirements if you can, take the higher levels, and choose them carefully. Being literate in another (human) language is a good thing. I have been very grateful for the religion courses in Islam and Buddhism. Formal logic out of the philosophy department has helped me write airtight code over the years. All of this will not only make you better at your job, but stand out from the other illiterate ramen-slurping geeks who will likely be your peers in the first few years of your career.
Red
I think you miss the point of a college education - the purpose of college is to ground you in many topics, so that you'll me well educated, and to prepare you for a lifetime of learning. You seem to be viewing college as a requirement to getting a higher-paying job.
I can't tell you how many 'computer people' I know that while very talented in their area (networking, administering, programming, etc.) wind-up stuck at some level of their career be ause they are not prepared to take on greater challenges. Learning how to write, how to think, analyze, and understand the world around you are the traits a college degree is supposed to give you.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with attending a trade school, but it will likely open fewer doors than a college degree with all that 'general education' material.
What do you want a degree for? Seriously, is it to check a box on an employment form, or do you want to learn something? You will learn from doing, be it in college or working somewhere. Have you considered not studying computers at college? At least not as your major - say you studied chemistry, biology, or mathematics, if you did that, you could build yourself an impressive career as a programmer in your chosen field. Your programming skills would augment your degree (or vice-versatile) and make you a very attractive candidate in your chosen field.
Ken
Go to a trade school. You don't want a BS.
Or better yet, just study independently.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I got a double-degree in Computer Science and Linguistics.
The great thing about doubling in Linguistics is that it is so interdisciplinary that you can use Linguistics courses for most of your general education requirements:
Behavioral Science = Psycholinguistics.
Social Science = Sociolinguistics.
History = Historical Linguistics.
Composition II = Syntax
Philosophy = Semantics
Elective Supporting Coursework for CS = Computational Linguistics, Cognitive Science Seminar, etc.
etc...
Then by the time you've finished your Gen Ed for CS, you've practically got your Linguistics degree.
And everything you learn in Linguistics is essentially about data structures and algorithms and rules and parsing and formal systems and symbol manipulation. The more advanced stuff gets into AI and natural language processing. It'll help your CS brain a lot if you learn Linguistics.
Of course he does, the engineer is the guy that drives the train.
It is an education in critical thinking. And not only about critically thinking about CS in your case, but about the world in general.
You will be, with a degree in hand, among the top 5% or so of the world's population. If all you know is CS and what you got in
high school you will be sorely lacking the skills to cope with the complex world we live in, especially considering that 95% of the
world will have less education (and lower coping skills, presumably) than one with a degree.
I worked as an engineer in a weapons manufacturer/defense contractor for the US Army. They hired lots of guys who had great
engineering backgrounds but little in the way of coursework that would help them deal with being humans. Those guys were great
if you wanted to put them in a room and have them develop stuff, but don't show them to people, don't let them interact with
people, particularly if you want money from they people they must interact with and God forbid, don't let them make decisions
that would affect other people. They just didn't have the skills to be anything more than geeks.
, but I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like.
A shame because until I took a course on boolean logic, de Morgan's algebra, etc. in the Philosophy department a lot of computer science and mathematics didn't really click and up to that point I was just regurgitating formulas without having any understanding on the foundation on which my knowledge sat.
> While these fields are useful and perhaps enriching,
> they will not contribute to making me better at my job.
You are assuming the job you have now is going to be the job you have 10 years from now.
Let me give you a hint about this. You don't want your job today to be the same one you have 10 years from now. You want to move up the food chain. As you move up you will find that your job will become one of getting things done by working through other people. The fields that you seem to think are unimportant now will become very important to you in the future. So take those psychology, economics and similar humanities courses.
I got my BA degree in mathematics in 1964, before computer science was a generally recognized subject for degrees. I loaded up on numerical analysis classes since they presented the kinds of mathematics applicable to computers. I also took two years of symbolic logic (part of the philosophy curriculum) because I thought it might have some application to programming and a year of accounting (business curriculum) because I knew much of future use of computers would be in business applications. I did not know it at the time, but my English and public speaking classes meant that I was prepared to write literate, readable test procedures and user manuals and to make presentations in front of customers. By taking literature, history, art appreciation, and music appreciation classes, I ensured I would not be merely a geek or nerd (terms not yet in use at the time).
In the end, I got an excellent job as a computer test engineer. It was not long before I was supervising 5-10 other testers. When I hired a new tester, however, I tried to avoid hiring anyone with a computer science degree. I found that those with CS degrees were more interested in computers as the central object of their studies than as a tool to accomplish a task.
I am now very comfortably retired after a computer career of 40+ years. I retired before I was old enough for Social Security, retiring when I wanted to retire (not when my employer wanted to retire me). Part of the reason I am not bored with retirement was that my university education gave me a broad enough view of life and the world to have interests beyond my career. Part of the reason I was able to afford retirement was that my university education gave me the ability to understand financial statements and investment strategies.
A university education implies an education that is universal and not narrowly focused. Not everyone benefits from a university education. Those who could benefit but do not partake might find themselves as drudges, earning a living without having a life.
Perhaps try the Open University: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/computing-and-ict/index.htm
It's UK based but is open to students from anywhere, and is both distance learning and part time so as to fit in with the two existing jobs.
Growing up happens when someone gets a job.
Useless intellectual wankery is useless - how many people have you met who went "oh, i was trying to code up this database and i couldn't figure out how to implement the storage, but then i remembered reading Hemingway and it was *obvious* what to do!"
I want to succeed in life, but I don't want to put in the requisite hard work that others puts in. Thanks
Just take the CLEP tests if those Gen-Ed classes really have no value for you. You can complete almost your entire first two years of schooling with those tests. I just finished up going back to school (harder to move up now without a BS degree), and I saved a boat load of time and money taking CLEP tests for Gen-Ed classes that I didn't finish in community college a decade ago.
For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze. If it is hard to pass them, then you really do need those Gen-Ed classes (those areas of knowledge really do have value). But plenty of people who actually like to read (non-fiction) have no need to waste their time in 100-level Humanities classes.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Instead, it sounds like you are wanting a vocational/technical school degree, which is subpar, compared to getting a BS.
I wouldn't say sub-par; it's just for someone who wants something different in life. If all you want is a job, go to vocational school. You can earn a great living. It's apparent the submitter does not want to learn for learning's sake, so a vocational school is probably the right direction.
That's the real value of the degree - not to prove you can do the job, but to get past the layers of clueless administrators who's only job is to find reasons to reject candidates.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Gen-ED is about WHY you're programming something in the first place. CS courses are about HOW to program. The HOW always follows from the WHY.
You can't be a good programmer without understanding what a program (or any other machine) is for. ALL Technology (including software) ONLY exists to serve humans in all their varied social, economic, political, philosophical and psychological contexts. It is a tool. Nothing more. To be a good toolmaker, you need to understand that a financial planner has very different needs, desires and skills compared to a building engineer, or a consumer sentiment analyst or a teacher, or a writer. They all eat too, but what, why and how they eat, and for what purposes other than nutrition vary wildly. It's the same with software.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Don't knock non-elite schools.
2nd-teir universities and colleges may have top-tier CS programs, and 3rd- or 4th-rate schools may have 2nd-rate CS programs.
Look at the accreditation the CS program has and how well respected that accreditation is. Ask top-tier graduate schools how well they "rate" applicants from the undergraduate school under consideration.
Princeton or Harvard might say "Acme U.? Oh, they are in the bottom quartile on most things, but ever since one of their alums donated $100M to fund a computer science program, they've been steadily rising. They are in the 2nd quartile now but they have a stated goal of becoming as nationally top-ranked CS program by 2020 and they are well on their way to doing so."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First: CLEP or test out of as many of the general-education classes as you can, if for no other reason than it is ridiculous to spend tuition cash on knowledge that will be discarded in a semester. The tests aren't that difficult, but then again neither is the material they cover.
The "well-rounded individual" is a line of hokum. I'm nearing the end of my own degree, the field-specific material is marginally useful, and the general-ed requirements were an expensive waste of time and money. The usefulness of a BS degree is that it demonstrates your trainability in difficult or technical fields. The first two and half years of material aren't useable - you'll spend your time studying "ideal" situations and tasks that are simplified enough for an untrained mind to handle. With the amount of programming you've already done, you'll probably be bored to tears for most of your undergraduate career.
The things that have made me a decent candidate for entry level positions are the research and projects that have been conducted outside of the classes. Sounds like you're already doing a good deal of that.
Get your degree, but understand what it is. It is a "certificate of potential ability to understand." Not a "certificate of capability."
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Why would you want to skip out on all the potential tail you can interact with in non-CS classes?
lost. away. phased out. non-existing.
You are basically saying that you want certifications. The key difference between certifications and a degree is Gen Ed. Its an annoyance, but Gen Ed is basically teaching you how to navigate bureaucracy. For a programmer that may not seem as much, but it'll be required when/if you decide to move into management.
I have an email signature that I like from Edsger Dijksta. He is the Dutch computer scientist best known for his concept of structured programming. "Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer."
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
People from outside America probably can't comprehend the psychological differences between America and basically the rest of the world when it comes to education.
Americans are groomed from a young age to not give a damn about anything outside of America. At an individual level, this in turn encourages them not to give a damn about anything outside of their immediate lives.
Education is affected by this attitude. An individual will have a core interest, but anything outside of this narrow viewpoint will be considered a "waste of time". In many cases, the individual won't even like their core stream of study, but will just be doing it to get a degree to supposedly "get a good job and to get the money" later on (even if it puts them hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with no chance of earning that much back).
It's not limited to any field. Those who focus on English literature, for instance, will often go out of their way to avoid even the most basic math courses. This is unfortunate, as they'll need these basic math skills when making change at their future careers as baristas and cashiers.
The same goes for those who focus on Comp. Sci. They often avoid the most basic courses that involve the English language, thus never acquiring necessary skills like the ability to use capitalization and punctuation when writing.
Programmers (and any professionals) should learn humanities so that they can easier communicate with others. "Darmok" is a good example: artsy folk love allusion, and it would be good to stretch your mind beyond loops and branches.
We barely pay any attention to a person's education when we hire. We look at their experience. If you have been programing for 8 years and can prove that you understand it, go take night courses to get the education you want. Go to school part time and start looking for a job. Our job interview consists of asking real world questions about real world programming, which filters out most of those just out of college anyway. By the time your fellow high school students are out of college, you could already have 4 years of experience.
Those trying to tell you that you have to get a degree to get a job are only trying to justify their own waste of time and money.
If you have been programing for that long, you probably already know a lot of people. Contacts get you jobs because they get you past the HR department. Get your resume to them. Find a company that understands a BA, BS, masters, and PhD really don't account for much, anyone with enough money and time can get one. Find a company that understands that smart people make the best employees, and smart people don't need degrees. Do you really want to work for a company that is so myopic that all they care about is if you have a degree, and won't listen to an employee about a talented person they know???
College degrees are for average people who need a piece of paper to prove they know something. Smart people can learn things on their own, and are smart enough to know when a single college course is needed for something they DO need to go to school for. These people telling you that a CS degree is necessary to design and code simply didn't have an aptitude. Designing and coding are common sense for the most part, and smart people can pick up on the principles very quickly. You don't need a three month course to learn a computer language. You just need to sit down and start writing with many of the excellent books out there as a guide.
As far as enriching your life, if you find an elective that speaks to you, take it. If you don't write well, take some English courses. If you want to know more about history, take some history courses. If you have trouble with finances, take an accounting course. But most of the people that take these courses simply because they have to forget most of what they have learned by the time they are 30. I couldn't tell you what a past perfect predicate is anymore, and I have never needed to.
Except in English class.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Then go to a trade school. GEC's (General Education Courses) are an inherent part of a B.S. And really, they are quite interesting. Yea, there are a few that I didn't like (like British Literature) but you have choices and I found I enjoy Economics so I took my writing class as an Economics writing class where we studied the 2008 crash. If you find you are interested in something different then you can take GEC's in that.
My school offeres a Computer Science Engineering degree. That replaces some of the more fluffy requirements with Electrical Engineering and even a few Mechanical Engineering classes. You may be interested in something like that if you are more into math-type classes.
Oh, and this deserves to be repeated. Don't expect Computer Science classes to be programming classes. They are NOT. Yes a few of them are Software Engineering classes where programming is a big aspect. But there are also a good number of algorithms classes which feel like math classes, that kind of thing.
I am not American. There is no mention of the US in the question. How did this thread become all about the American system? Where I'm from, and in most non-american western countries the term engineer is strickly regulated. Engineers have legal authorities and obligations and it takes a lot of hard work to earn your license.
It's where you meet women and other interesting people outside your field of study. I liked my CS and math classes, but loved (and hated) some of my general education classes. And who knows, maybe you'll discover another passion and decide to leave CS altogether.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Why exactly do you want the BS? This will help determine your best course of action.
If it's not a requirement for a job, and you don't have some other compelling reason to get your degree, then I would skip it. The cost-benefit analysis just doesn't add up. Instead, start doing odd programming work and earning certifications. It's a pain in the ass but doing a lot of this will help build valuable experience that will eventually lead to a full-time programming job.
If it's a requirement for a job, then your best bet is to bite the bullet and deal with the requirements you think are lame. Get into the best public university for computer science in your state, even if only part time. Actually go and move there. Milk each project for what it's worth and try, as an end goal, not for a grade, but for a piece of work that you can show to prospective employers, and say, "I did this." Nonetheless, get the best GPA you possibly can; employers will drool over anyone with a 3.5 or better GPA. As for the not-so-technical requirements of a degree, use this as an opportunity to study, for example, the history of technology, or western philosophy up to and including Heidegger (specifically because Heidegger has a word or two to say about some of the assumptions we make as computer scientists). A language will be required; study a language that you think will benefit your career. Russian and Chinese aren't easy but they will be in demand. Pay for school by working part time for the computer lab. Avoid the party scene; it's an enormous distraction and you don't need it. The whole process may take five years, or longer if you are doing it part time, but it will be worth it for the better job offer you get when you graduate.
Do not buy a degree from a mill. Do not lie on your resume. Fraud will end your career.
Good luck!
Finding God in a Dog
Wow, what a total sheep you must be if you think government recognition is the only determiner of what has meaning in life. There's no such thing as a chef license. That doesn't mean the head chef at a top level restaurant is interchangeable with the guy running the grill at McDonald's. If anything, the fact there's not government certification for software engineers makes getting a good education even MORE important, because until you establish a body of work, that diploma is going to be the one of the main ways of evaluating you.
I wouldn't hire you because you want to remain ignorant. I would think you were afraid to be challenged, and content to live with your prejudices.
Here's the view of the Harvard faculty ( http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/general-education-gains )
"The essential purpose of a liberal education, as we understand it, is not to instill competency and confidence, or to flatter the presumption that the world students are familiar with is the only one that matters. It is, on the contrary, to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, and to disorient young people and help them to find ways to re-orient themselves. Liberal educators aim to accomplish this by challenging assumptions, by inducing self-reflection, by teaching students how to think critically and analytically, by exposing them to the sense of alienation produced by encounters with radically different historical moments and cultural formations and with phenomena that exceed their, and even our own, capacity fully to understand. These are things that professional schools do not do, employers do not do, even academic graduate programs do not do. Those institutions deliberalize students, train them to think as professionals. The historical, theoretical, and relational perspectives that liberal education provides can be a source of enlightenment and empowerment that will serve our graduates well for the rest of their lives. We expect that every course offered in general education will be taught in this spirit.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Got a Comp. Eng. BS at U. Michigan in 1978.
Out of 128 credits:
English (Sci Fi class)
English (God class)
Humanties (Logic)
Humanties (Logic and Automata)
Humanties (Advanced Logic)
I took the Logic classes in the philosophy dept. They were cross listed in philosophy, math and CS depts.
So, really, all of it was "In My Field".
When I hire, or use interns, I can safely say through personal experience that I have to evaluate the individual. Some top schools in the states are really good, but it's tough to find someone with a generalist CS education. Engineering is a slightly different discipline in terms of course and syllabus compared to what I've seen CS students take.
But brain power, resourcefulness, tenacity, and a sense of humor when things go wrong are important. Give me someone that can learn quickly and not begrudgingly, and does it-- and I'm happy.
I respect what a few schools put into the heads of theirs students; MIT, Purdue, Georgia Tech, U of Texas, and a few other schools really shape the minds of their students in terms of becoming resourceful. Yet I've had interns from tiny schools, like University of Dayton, Rose-Hulman, Washington U of St Louis have great instinctive skills.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
In spite of what certain yahoos, who might even pay you not to go to college, there is a world beyond computers. You may need math, physics, psychology, and politics. You still have to deal with people to get and keep a job. Knowing something about what the software is used for will help
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
Why would you want to skip the gen ed stuff? By the last year they were the only classes I went into because I really wanted to (the engineering/cs classes I could do out of the book if needed).
Expand your horizons. If you want to do something that is just CS, that's called a graduate degree in CS and that's just fine. But for an undergraduate degree, do the gen ed.
As a college graduate with a BS in CS I can tell you straight out that college education is very much overestimated. If I hadn't wasted those years in college, I wouldn't have been any worse off.
If you want to learn something, don't go to college; go to a college library and just read about whatever it is you want to know. All the humanity courses in particular are a giant waste of time. It isn't that the subjects are necessarily worthless; it is the professors and their ultra-left-wing mindset that you are forced to adopt (at least for a while) in order to pass their courses. Thankfully, most of them can be avoided.
If employers didn't require a college degree, people wouldn't have been going to college quite so much and the world would be better off. As things are now, you don't go to college to learn - you go there to get a degree. You don't get a degree to become proficient at something - you merely need the degree to be employed doing the things you already know how to do. All these ramblings from other posters are totally off-topic; I don't want a liberal education, so stop preaching already how "valuable" it is.
Don't be such a nerd. General Ed classes enable Freshmen to party and still coast through the first year with good grades. Besides, you need some English Lit and critical thinking skills so you can communicate with your wife down the road. Enjoy these years a little, there will be plenty of time for ambition later...
You've probably already found that management with degrees, particularly advanced ones, wont hire people who didnt also commit to the same course they did. You'll soon discover that there isnt much actual learning in a 4 year degree program that someone with hands on experience and a few years in a job working for a good company doesnt already know. The alleged 'rounding' experience is just to get you to pay extra for the piece of paper that'll serve as the entry ticket to certain jobs at certain companies. My son is 7 now, and I figure in ten years I'd be better off spending $250k buying him a business he can run, be successful at, and make money. Otherwise its a tremendous waste of cash even if he does decide to follow a career in whatever his degree was focused on. Or if he finds a small business he wants to work for but they're sketchy about hiring him, I can just invest $100k into their business and make him a part owner/partner. Or just pay someone $20k to apprentice him for a year or two. I started coding when I was a young teenager just like you, never went to college (hell, I barely crawled out of high school), and got a job working for a big computer company when I was 18. Over the next 6-7 years I had a few doors closed on me due to the lack of a degree. Sadly for those folks, I went on to become enormously successful, making hundreds of millions of dollars for the companies I worked for. After that initial 6-7 years, most people stopped caring about the degree, mostly just asking "Oh, where did you go to school?" at the end of the interview after realizing there wasnt anything about it on the resume. At that point, most didnt care. I looked a couple of times at company sponsored higher education opportunities. They'd have pretty much eaten my spare time at a time in my life when I was enjoying it. I had a nice 25 year career, retired early with plenty of money, and am thoroughly enjoying my life. All it took was hard work, doing a good job, having the right attitude, never giving up, and making the most of every opportunity I had. I also made a habit of taking on jobs or owning technology areas that were old-school, werent sexy, or stuff other people didnt want to do, being successful with those, advertising my own accomplishments (jeez, dont rely on you manager for that), being very focused on doing my own job well, and only working on stuff that I could put a benefit or value on. Heck, at the end of the day, being able to work office politics is far more valuable than a technical degree. Learning how to play golf might be more useful than a 4 year degree...
... or maybe an "industry certification".
You will not receive a Bachelor's degree in the United States from an accredited university without somehow completing or receiving credit for general education requirements. You can argue the merits of this until you're blue in the face, but a bachelor's degree is generally _defined_ to be a well-rounded educational experience that consists of approximately four credit-years of instruction.
Even if the GE requirements were waived, you'd have a hell of a time coming up with 4 credit-years worth of instruction in your chosen field only - and "I don't want to" isn't going to fly as a valid reason for not meeting the minimum credit requirements to graduate.
Welcome to the real world.
You want a certificate of competency in a skill. That's not what a college degree is. I thought some of the classes I took for my B.S. were a waste of time, but a degree demonstrates (or, considering some of the people I studied around, is *supposed* to demonstrate) proficiency in more than one area of thinking. Some will apply directly to your job, some will apply indirectly. But all can be useful somehow in one of the innumerable thought processes involved in day-to-day work. Abstracting problems, dealing with and understanding people, politics, etc., etc., etc.
Probably the non-directly-vocational things you'll learn are more valuable the farther up the ladder you get. So if you want to remain a replaceable cog in a machine, keep thinking exactly the way you are.
All of this blather and banter aside, you have only two options open to you that result in a practical solution.
1: Get a degree at a trade or technical school. These bypass GE requirements for the most part, but are expensive and also are considered third-rate by most employers. But if all you need is a certificate to legally work in the state that you are in, this might be the quickest method to get employed. This does work best, though, when you need the skills or certification to work for yourself or start a business.
2: Get an AA degree first. If you get one in math or possibly physics, 80% of your coursework will be prerequisites for your main degree. There will be a few filler classes, but these can largely be filled with things like geology, astronomy, chemistry, and so on, which are always good to have alongside any technical degree. Also, an AA degree has to be accepted at any college as a waiver for G.E. If you switch schools or majors at some colleges, you can lose some of your G.E. courses or have to take extra ones. 90% of the time, it's those humanities courses that really ARE mostly junk that they force you to take over if this happens (as an example, even transferring between many state colleges will trigger this nonsense). The AA degree is cheap as dirt to get (my local JC charges $21 a unit) and essentially puts a "lock" on your transcript. Once it is out of the way, you can shop around for a four year college to finish up at or most around to and you'll only have to do the core classes in the major. If you want a second BS or BA degree later on, it allows you to repeat the process. Even if your classes were a decade ago or more. (otherwise most schools will cherry-pick courses they feel are acceptable if this happens). Lastly, it also means that you're protected if you change your major to something else part-way through. Some schools have different requirements for G.E. for BA vs BS degrees.
***
Now, a CS degree also is part of the problem. Simply put, a CS degree *is* full of filler and useless stuff. Yet it also will require that you take quite a bit of math and science in most cases. You are far better off getting your AA degree in math or physics because anything like Electrical Engineering (emphasis could be on computers, of course, if you wish) or similar is a lot more useful employment-wise. The standard prerequisites for any BS degree are pretty much the same now, as well: Calculus 2 or 3 and Physics 2 or 3. Since you are going to need it anyways, you should get it out of the way first. Taking a couple of extra math and physics classes won't hurt you, either, as it will mean that you are good to go for ANY BS degree. Math and Applied Physics are the Swiss Army knifes of degrees and are always useful for anything that you want to do at the Masters level. In fact, many employers would rather hire someone with one of those two degrees who knows some SQL (or whatever language/system they need at the time) than a CIS major.
Simply put, there are no idiots out there with Masters in physics or math. Since you don't know if the job situation in the U.S. will get better any time soon, this is a better option as it covers more bases. And employers simply want you for one of two things. A: SQL. B:C++ or a similar language. They couldn't give a rat's ass if you know your way around the inside of a computer or took a class in some nearly dead language like PERL. SQL is where the high paying jobs are right now. And those are specific things that you could learn on your own or add as electives into your main degree. Think of it as math plus specific programming and database courses. But this job might not last forever. In five years, you will likely be looking for work again, and might be interested in something else. CIS is awfully saturated and narrow at this point. At least, IMO.
Also, your money needs to be saved. with colleges gouging thousands per semester, and most serious jobs now requiring a Masters degree, your money shoul
Does anyplace actually still offer a pre-law major? Law schools haven'twanted such thing for generations; it leaves students with to muchthattheythink they know to un-teach.
The best prep for law school is. Math/physics/engineering, much to the surprise of English majors who arrive expecting their "superiorwritingskills" to carry threat (aside do generally not being true anyway, this is trounced by the analytics)
hawk, j.d, ph.d.
Whoa there, Hoss. I think we are in violent agreement. I am just pointing out that the term engineer, which is what the poster was rabid about, can't be misused in the way he was objecting to. Which makes your point and I am agreeing with. It is just like chef. Anyone can call themselves a chef, anyone can call themselves a computer engineer. So yeah, getting a good degree from a good school is important. That was actually the point I was making. "Engineer" doesn't mean dick in the US. A good degree to start and a good track record later, those mean everything.
Should we have government certification for what makes a computer engineer? Personally I think that is a retarded idea and didn't say I thought we needed one.
Switch to decaf.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
What if this guy said he had to get a degree to increase his income to support his family, or to support a sick family member? Would your advice be any different in this case?
"wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like" -- You are assigning value to thngs you are unfamilair with. It's like a blind man saying that he doesn't like colors. Interesting.
I see some comments here encouraging you to take the classes from the other requirements, insisting that they are good for you and your career long-term. I agree with them, and my message is essentially the same, but I'm going to take a different approach to my response in case they can't impress upon you the importance of those other subjects.
A bachelor's degree by definition requires education on a variety of enriching subjects other than your major. It signifies that you have received an education on those subjects. You are requesting a means to obtain something without earning it.
If you want a computer science education without the other requirements, there are a lot of options out there, including free ones (see MIT's OpenCourseWare). If you want some kind of proof that you have obtained a computer science education without the other requirements, there are trade schools. If you want a bachelor's degree, then you need to put in the work to get one, and that includes courses on subjects outside of CS.
Universities grant degrees for people who fulfill the requirements described for the granting of the degree. If you're not willing to do what's required, you have no right to one. If all you want to do is sling code, go to a freaking tech school. If that's not respected as much as an BSCS? There's probably a reason for that.
I'm a guy with a job, a wife, and two kids who went back to get an MSCS at age 50. I wanted one, I did what was required (including a thesis), and got one. My undergrad degree was thirty+ years ago (in Computer Engineering) - again, I wanted it, I did what was required, and... hey! I got the degree! How about that!? Such a deal... The bottom line is that a University is not a Tech School. If you want the respect/prestige/whatever of a University degree, do what's required to get one. If you don't want to, then live with the tech school degree you're entitled to.
That is all.
But CS engineering has no licensing requirements in the US, so no, it doesn't actually mean something.
Be careful. At least in the state of Florida, a person may not:
use the name or title "professional engineer" or any other title, designation, words, letters, abbreviations, or device tending to indicate that such person holds an active license as an engineer when the person is not licensed under this chapter, including, but not limited to, the following titles: [long list omitted], "software engineer," "computer hardware engineer," or "systems engineer." Florida Statute 471.031(1)(b)1.
There are some significant exceptions, such as working in the aerospace or defense industries, but if one is an independent consultant in the State of Florida with the word "engineer" on his business card, software or otherwise, he should read Florida Statue 471 carefully, and perhaps consult an attorney. The state frequently views using the word "engineer" in one's title as implying that one is a licensed, Registered Professional Engineer and, if one is not, one is considered to have committed a misdemeanor of the first degree (FS 471.031(2)).
I think the rules in many other states are similar.
This general ed / "distribution" thing sounds ghastly. Being permitted to take courses outside your subject? Fine. Being forced to? Bleah.
There are various European countries where distribtion / gen ed doesn't exist,
though of course I don't know how realistic an option that might be for the original poster.
-- You've got to get a hat if you want to get ahead.
If you don't take courses in economics and history, you could end up wasting your time on an "alternative currency" programming project that's just a big scam without realizing it.
See,
College is unlike lower education, in that you aren't there to merely learn - you're there to contribute to the greater body of human knowledge.
Gen Ed courses will likely lack an engineering approach to their problems. You have expertise that you can offer to enhance the content of those courses. Maybe an anthropology teacher has too much data and not enough time. Maybe a business professor knows the equations that need to run, but sticks to the old habit of writing them out by hand. Change these things!
You'll learn along the way, sure. But the POINT is to contribute. And that's where a diverse education is fundamental to our society.
The first 6 days are for preparation.
The seventh day, you break into the house of someone with the degree you want and steal it.
Your precious time will be safe this way. Unless you get caught. But that would mean that you didn't prepare well.
From when I was looking for schools, I would suggest you look for schools with things like "institute of technology" in the name. I suspect that you won't find any major universities without gen-ends, but if you're OK with somewhere like Rochester Institute of Technology, I seem to recall that they didn't have much required in that area.
I've been saying for a long time now that one of the requirements during a tech interview should be to have people write an essay. Readability of code will determine 70% of a programmer's usefulness. And those who can't structure text with future readers in mind very likely (albeit not with 100% correlation) cannot structure code with future readers in mind.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Carnegie Mellon may be for you. When I was there exact gen-ed requirements (100 level english, history, etc) were minimal. People who did well on the high school AP tests were able to avoid them entirely.
There were a number of non-major elective slots and rules for how to fill them, but with a university like CMU it was easy to populate my schedule with wonderfully interesting and/or useful classes. Many people chose electives that stacked with a few additional courses to give them a minor.
One of the few good things I can say about CMU is that very little of my time was wasted. I contrast this with the education many of my friends received at the local "state schools" where more than 50% their education had little bearing on their major. At a nearby state school it was possible to declare a major some time during the junior year and still graduate on time. I don't know how you can learn enough of a field to receive a bachelor's degree after only one year of coursework.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
the net. .. ,just not irrelevant baggage that comes alongside a degree in the US. Wasting the time of people who could actually be doing useful work isn't in any way laudable
Furthermore, all a google search might reveal is someone with a name similar to his posting this up. Considering it isn't an unusual one
Also, genius, the guy is mainly looking for an useful way to improve his CV, instead of doing the same wasting time and money learning about total BS. In pretty much all of europe (where i am from) you don't have to sit through useless classes at college learning instead stuff that's related to your profession.
It might be because people here view higher education as something to give you competence in your field of work , not as some bourgeois status symbol.
And a small bonus - he is interested in learning
I'll second this. The Open University is not a degree mill and has an excellent academic reputation.
You can (or at least certainly could when I did it) go straight to a Masters Degree in engineering at UK universities by doing a 4-year programme, missing out the Bachelors degree on the way. It's marginally faster than doing a BEng/Bsc + MSc combination, and academically equivalent.
CLEP (college level examination program) is what you are looking for. I CLEP'd my way out of nearly every general ed requirement at my alma mater (BS in CS from the University of Arizona, 1998.) Like you, I had an excellent high school preparatory experience that let me pass every English, math, social studies, chemistry, and physics CLEP test. The only thing I couldn't CLEP was a gender studies requirement, but that was only because there was no CLEP to cover it. The tests aren't cheap, but for less than the cost of resident tuition for one semester at the UofA, I CLEP'd out of three semester's worth of general education requirements, leaving me free to finish my 4 year degree in 5 semesters.
You don't want to work in fiance where the highest paying programming jobs are, so you don't need economics courses.
You don't want to write games, so you don't need physics, English (story telling), art, or movie courses.
You don't want to work in the "green" industry, so you don't need biology, chemistry or physics.
You don't want to work for a business (or own your own), so you don't need business courses or accounting courses,
You won't ever write proposals, specifications, reports or presentations, so you don't need English courses.
So where are you going to work?
Students get the responsibility for making sure they learn and all that, but not the freedom to choose their specialisation without tons of tack-on garbage unrelated to their field they'll never use.
Like many of the other comments here, I would encourage you to consider the big picture here. People who can program are a dime a dozen. If that is your only real skill you are easy to get rid of and will constantly be in danger of either outsourcing or being replaced by the younger graduates who are more up-to-date on the latest technology.
I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in CS and the #1 complaint by employers is that too many CS graduates can do nothing but program. To get and keep a good job you will need to be able to deal with customers, end users, to take their problems and deliver solutions. A general education will prepare you for that much better than a vocational education. Overall, my recommendation is that if you have CS nailed, double major in business or something like that. It will help your career and give you an edge when it comes to promotions and more selective jobs.
General education requirements can be met by a number of courses. It doesn't require you to take literature or ancient Chinese history. Most schools have a wide variety of courses and the requirements can be met that way.
Example:
I have a BS in Mechanical Engineering. The majority of my classes in college were degree related because in high school I took Advanced Placement (AP) tests allowing me to test out of Biology, Government, Economics, History. Instead of shelling out university fees for the public speaking and lower division English I took those at a community college during the summer.
As a result a lot of my GE requirements were already completed and I only needed an advanced English course, and a couple of social science course which I took a business class and a psychology. The advanced English class was a technical writing class. I don't know if they teach technical writing in the high school equivalent in Europe but in the US they don't. Psychology and business were easy courses for me, but I took away some nuggets of information that will stay with me.
Without any AP tests I think my degree required 6 GE courses which amounted to about 1.5 quarters of instructions (assuming 4 classes is a normal load) out of 12 quarters being the expected number to graduate (though I hear a lot of engineers are taking 5 years instead of 4 now). For those that don't know the quarter system has periods of instruction that are 10 weeks long and there are normally 3 quarters in a year (the 4th is a summer quarter that a lot of people don't take).
What I would like to see in colleges is a couple of trade school like classes that deal with specific topics (technical electives don't always fit the bill). I have friends that are electrical engineers and have gotten a job working for the Navy working on radar systems and there aren't classes dealing with radars in school. You have to pick it up on the job. Likewise for me I had heat transfer but a lot of subject matter uses simplified models and teaches you the theory. But I have not come across a problem where I need to find the temperature across solid plate with a perfect source and sink. Instead I get problems where I have heat generated the processor of a circuit board and power supply in an enclosed 3D space and I need to make sure the temperature won't rise above X degrees. It's excellent that we have software to assist with this, but it would have been nice to come into the work place already have learned that software as well. Maybe some of the colleges like MIT or Caltech have that, but UC Davis didn't (sorry for the rant there).
note: I haven't read anyone else's comments, so Im sorry if this sounds like a repeat. When I was CS, they asked us a question. (ask yourself). In this business, what is the most important language for you know? The answer is English. You need to know how to talk to people to make it in this business; ESPECIALLY if you plan on becoming a start-up. That is where the other non-cs courses come in handy. They make you a more-rounded individual. As your going through your years at school, chances are your chosen goal may change. You may finish your CS degree still, but you may choose to go on and get a masters... in business for example. Taking only cs classes gives you a narrow focus and you kinda restrict yourself in what you can do later on. Take a wide birth of classes also give you another opportunity - the option to do multiple degrees at the same time. At my institution, most of the classes (eng, phil, art hist, etc). are required by most entry-level degrees. Only the 3rd/4th year core classes were degree specific. And while you may not THINK you want to take them, I for one can say, I ended up taking Photography as my art elective and LOVED it. I ended up taking 2 more classes in it - and it was a great way to relieve my brain of CS-related stress (and there will be lots of CS-related stress, trust me). Long story short, If you know 100% that you want to go program computers for the rest of your life, then great. I know I don't.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college, and they all went on to have fairly decent careers.
Yep. And you know their names. Compare the number of people with successful careers (in fields traditionally pursued by college graduates) after dropping out of college to the number who dropped out of college. Now compare the number of people with successful careers (in fields traditionally pursued by college graduates) after finishing college to the number who finished college. Which probability would you like to have of achieving a successful career?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Degrees must be respected to be of value. Beware of programs offered that use unusual accreditation orgs. Also make certain that not only the school is fully accredited but that the departments of your trade are also fully accredited. You may have to pry and do research to get the real answers but even major universities tend to have some departments that are not accredited. Private schools tend to have their own nonsense accreditation services which they control. You can learn without degrees but you better be able to point to some wonderful, past results or your salary will suffer. Going to a lot of the nonsense schools that are now common will make you look like a village idiot to potential employers.
Where did he say he was scared off by challenges? It seems that he's more scared off by having to spend lots of money on pointless courses.
I want my cake, and I want to eat it too. I want to go to a good school, but I don't want to meet all their requirements because it's a "waste" of my precious time.
You know what, princess? It's ok that your parents spoiled you - but unless you're the next billionaire (and you're not, or you'd be well on your way by now) the world simply isn't going to change for you. Posting that question here only shows that you are interested in "the easy way out", the "low hanging fruit", the "path of least resistance". Life ain't like that kid. Now GTFO and stop wasting MY precious time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
do n't really worry about the "wasted" time in gen ed courses use them to network and get contacts.
Also you may want to get with your advisor and see what are the best courses to take to serve those requirements without getting one of the more "loony" teachers that will hit you with those insane "i think everybody should go through what i did to get my degree" assignments like a weekly 9 page report on %random% subject that must be in %style of the week%.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Once you get a more general and rounded education, you might find you like something else better, or combined with CS. It happens to a lot of people. Honestly, I would not hire someone that only knew CS. They are boring people. Expanded yourself and use your education to do it.
I thought the same when I was doing my CS studies. However, then you suddenly stop being a code monkey after a few years and move to a position where you have to interface with "normal" people, not CS grads. Which means communication in English, it means being sensitive to potential cultural/historical issues, etc. That is where all the humanities come in. If you ever do anything that has a user interface, a bit of background in arts will help you tremendously with design. These classes also help you see problems from a different angle than an engineer would look at them - again very useful when dealing with "mere mortals". Unfortunately for me, I have discovered this only after 10 years of working in CS.
So do take these "useless" classes - if they are any good and you take them with open mind, they will give you wider background to build on.
At the time I attended (disclosure 40 years ago) the non-technical requirements were minimal. But you did have to take chemistry and physics. I majored in applied mathematics and stayed on to get a masters in information and computer sciences, I am a software engineer Lester
I see an attitude problem that would make you a very risky hire. I also see a person who doesn't know enough about any application area to be able to understand customer requirements. I also see a boring jerk that is no fun to go to lunch with, because he can't discuss music, history, physics, economics, or politics. In the general flood of resumes, yours is one of the easier ones to dump in the circular file.
Bachelors degrees aren't supposed to be about learning to do a job. That's what vocational schools are for, and they generally do a much better job - except with HR.
There's a reason for that: having a degree demonstrates that you can stick to a process for four years, including all the classes you don't like. That is particularly important to the military, which requires all officers to have a college degree (though it can be in English literature or ancient Greek.) It also helps if everybody gets the same jokes, etc - a lot of bad puns come from Shakespeare, and that's the sort of thing you learn in a 4 year college.
Another consideration: a degree is a valuable thing, both for employment and bragging rights, even if you don't really care about learning. Colleges don't require a certain number of credits to be sure you're smart, they require a certain amount of money, but it sounds a lot nicer if they don't say it that way. There is absolutely no motivation for a school to devalue its degree by giving you what you want.
Incidentally, an MS is pretty much what you describe: about the same as taking all your major classes over again (at a higher level, of course) with little or no extraneous extras. Now do you understand why they're so sticky about having a BS first?
You get very little feedback other than a handful of grades.
While there are a few teachers who are absolutely terrible -- worse, a few of those have tenure -- I've found far more teachers who actually are passionate about their field, whether or not they can communicate that in class. Talk to them. Go to office hours. If you don't have another class immediately afterwards, follow them out of class!
If you're willing to accept only a handful of grades, that's what you'll get. The few students who care enough to demand more will likely get more.
Even in that case, there are opportunities to make it technical as well. In my first English course, I wrote a script to generate precisely the right amount of random characters to look like "code", then applied that as a background to a brochure on cryptography. The rest of the brochure was designed using Scribus, which was worth learning as a skill, especially since later programming courses will require groups to create posters for their projects.
In my second English course, I was required to give an oral presentation in a PowerPoint presentation. I wasn't going to trust OpenOffice to do this right, as even PowerPoint made it difficult -- you'd have to have it reference audio files physically close to it on disk, zip them all up, and send them to the instructor. I refused to buy and install PowerPoint, or bring a microphone to a computer lab. Instead, I did it all in HTML5, mostly by hand (with jQuery), which also let me build exactly the animations I wanted and sync them to the audio. While the resulting code isn't pretty, it is something I may return to at some point, because the resulting presentation was awesome and I want to be able to do more like that.
Disclaimer: Again, talk to your teacher, especially before you try something like the above. As it turns out, PDF was perfectly acceptable for the brochure (though print was also required), and my teacher didn't really care what format the presentation was in so long as she could view it (and she had a decent browser). But you don't want to try to ask forgiveness instead of permission on something like this.
At a whole lot of schools, these classes have become little more than perfunctory checks on writing and attendance.
So, this is again sounding like English, which did indeed require attendance. It wan't an arbitrary requirement, though -- there would often be class discussions, and the assignments were such that you'd often want to be there to make sure you understood them.
It also attempted to teach rhetorical skills and critical thinking, both of which are incredibly lacking in our field, and both of which are improved both by practice and by being restricted to arbitrary subject matter and forms of presentation.
And that's just the gen-ed English that absolutely everyone needs. There's also a technical writing course required for fields like CS.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you have any interest in games then I would suggest Full Sail University in Orlando, FL. If you can afford it without working a job at the same time. The reason is, it is a 40Hr per week school. The Bachelor degree takes 21 months and it is almost exclusively CS. There are a couple of English type classes but they relate directly back to game design and development. And, because it is an accelerated program they are only one month long. So, in my opinion, this is the fastest way to a CS degree. http://www.fullsail.edu/degrees/game-development-bachelors Here is a link to the program.
"I want to get a CS degree from an accredited school (a BS, that is), but I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like. While these fields are useful and perhaps enriching, they will not contribute to making me better at my job."
I bet to differ, especially with English. Just look through Slashdot threads and see all the misspellings (which should not even be there with modern inline spell-checkers), poor grammar, paragraphs without logical structure and so forth. Most IT people have a deficit in English and should have studied it more. Trying to wiggle out of even the very minimum they're required to know does not seem the correct course.
I have been working in IT for 15 years. 99% of the technical stuff I do at work is brain dead simple no matter how much I'm paid. The bigger the company, the simpler my technical work usually is. I don't really see how replacing a course which teaches you how to write clearly with an advanced theory of computation course is going to help you. In fact, part of my theory of computation course's final exam was writing an essay.
People who think all they need to get ahead is good technical skills always perplex me. I guess that's why Steve Wozniak is richer than Steve Jobs, right? Universities, and the place who hire university graduates, have been around for a long, long time, and I'll go with their judgement about what is important in the work world over someone who wants to skip out of his English classes for yet another CS class.
If you want CS but not the general requirements needed for a Bachelor of Science, then look at a tech school or a 2 year associates degree. However, you should be aware that you will probably spend most of your "career" as a programmer. Your co-workers that do have a B.S. will be offered promotions ahead of you.
Many seem to think that things like english, philosophy, science, etc. are a waste of time, but those are the subjects that let you communicate with those outside your specific field. They are what make you a well rounded adult instead of just a guy who can program. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong an associates degree or a tech school, however, in the long run, you will go further in life with a B.S. as it will open many more doors for you.
Course materials and lectures for much of MIT's undergraduate curriculum, including CS courses, are available on the web. Educate yourself.
That doesn't meet your requirements of an accredited institution? Then take individual courses at your local college (many colleges and universities allow members of the community to purchase courses one by one).
That doesn't meet your requirements of an actual degree? Then take courses at a night school. Most of those are geared toward Associate's Degrees, which is really what you are looking for.
That doesn't meet your desire for a Bachelor's Degree? Sorry, you need to actually take the rest of those non-CS requirements you are eschewing to get a Bachelor's.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
When an HR monkey or potential hiring manager receives your resume and does a simple google search on David J Beveridge, what makes you think this slashdot submission is going to result in a job interview?
Depends on the legislation. If HR monkey googles your name in Finland, it gives the applicant grounds for a lawsuit. Since you're not employed yet by that company it's gross violation on your privacy for a company to search your name online.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Computer science is not a career. It is an academic field of study. It sounds like you want a degree or certificate in Software Engineering, not computer science.
A college degree implies that the degree holder is educated broadly. It sounds like you want something more narrow, such as a certificate from a trade school.
The "life" that you claim to have rests on the existence of the free and relatively safe society in which we live. As you get older (you are obviously very young), I expect that you will come to realize that if we are to expect that we will continue to live in a free society, that we all need to contribute to the national dialog, and we cannot do that unless we are educated. We all should try to understand the big issues of the day, and that requires a-lot of knowledge about things other than computers. If you ever plan to vote, I hope that you will realize that a broad education is crucial.
Here's UAntwerp's subjects for year ("deel") 1-3:
http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=.OOD2011&n=94160
In Dutch, but 95% readable to English speakers. ("gegevens"=data, "uitbating"=operating, "inleiding"=introduction)
I'm studying law in Belgium and there's lots of general education subjects, but that makes sense for law.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
You work two jobs and have zero interest in English, Philosophy, History, Art? You don't have much of a life.
you had me at #!
| I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time
| taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art
| and the like. While these fields are useful and
| perhaps enriching, they will not contribute
| to making me better at my job
this is a narrow view, an perhaps runs counter to the
well-rounded nature of what a *bachelor of science* may imply.
also, some people might differ with you though in regards to
the 'not contributing to making you better at your job'.
this whole address is really worth a read:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
>
> Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I
> decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned
> about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space
> between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography
> great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that
> science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
>
> None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
> But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh
> computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.
> It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
> dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
> had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows
> just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have
> them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this
> calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful
> typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots
> looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear
> looking backwards ten years later.
>
> (Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement address, 2005)
--
Americans are groomed from a young age to not give a damn about anything outside of America.
While a fun myth to spread, the reality is far different.
I have a number of friends with kids of all ages. All of them learn quite a bit about other countries, other places across the globe.
In fact the opposite is true, that so much attention is being focused on learning about things all over than kids are not being bought the history of where they are. Learning more about all aspects of American history is pretty important to understand the context of modern choices and existing social structure.
Now it might be true that in college where kids have more self determination, they are not really thinking much about things outside the U.S. But that's when they are basically an adult and it is their choice if they wish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you took enough AP classes, you shouldn't need to take many general ed classes.
In most of the world, what you call "Gen Ed" is what we are taught in secondary school.
So know we know why so many people flock to college from outside the U.S. - because you place no value on continuing those studies at a more advanced level.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The original poster, and you, who call it tack-on garbage, are the very reason that general education requirements are tacked on.
Clearly both of you can't even conceive why studying, for example, literature and philosophy might be useful to the practice of top-level computer science or software engineering. Therefore you clearly need to come out of your tunnel and be exposed to the world.
When I was studying artificial intelligence and computational vision for my post-grad degree, the stuff I learned most from was the shelf full of twentieth century philosophy books on logics, epistemology, and metaphysics (and Zen). binary-encoded symbols in computers representing things and processes out there in the world is a wondrous thing, and also a thing whose complexities are not easily mastered without a good grounding in philosophy. How can you know about the limitations of your representations - they ways they are sure to fail or become too complex or be challenged as limited or invalid - if you don't understand philosophy?
And I've come to understand how much of peoples' understanding of the world and themselves is in narrative form, and what the significance is of what is left in, and what is left out of a "good" narrative, and how narrative is fundamentally about the guiding of attention and the selection of the sub-situations salient to humans' concerns and needs. Some of that knowledge has come through a lot of careful consideration of great stories in several forms of art and literature.
All of it is central to a conception of how to do good user interface in computing.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If you are trying to become a programmer, or any sort of engineer, and you think you can ignore general education, I sure as hell hope you know how to write already.
There is nothing more irritating than a programmer that can't express themselves in English (or whatever your language happens to be). You write great code, but your documentation looks like it was written by a ten year old with ADD. You don't understand the concept of proofreading. You don't understand the concept of organization or readability. Even your emails are useless rambling drivel.
Someone with a college degree should know how to write. Fine, don't write literature papers or take art history if you feel it is pointless, but for the sake of all that is good and holy, learn how to fucking write and take any courses you need so that you at least write documentation.
I will say this. I agree that some of the stuff they force you to do in college for "the experience" is not going to serve you as a grunt programmer. However, if you ever hope to aspire to be more than a grunt, most people need some other education. You need to understand things other than computing so you can understand requirements. It would be nice if you knew more than a little history so that you understand mistakes people make and avoid them. And when I say history, I don't mean pop culture.
And yes, I speak from the personal and daily pain of working with programmers who can't express themselves in writing to save their lives. That's only marginally acceptable if you are an outsource-able drone. Even then, it's difficult and undesirable. So unless you are very, very capable of self-education take the damn courses.
Also, be aware that the elusive female of the species is generally in the *other* courses. Having taken both the CS and the humanities courses, I know this to be true. Art History is generally best for that, in my experience. Only Education tends to have more, but that's not usually a humanities elective. That and Women's Studies, but I don't need to explain to you why that is not exactly the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Interestingly, I hear what you're saying quite commonly in computer engineering/sciences, as I'm in that faculty. My friends always complain about it, but take the first year classes, as they are required. In the whole scheme of things, one year of general classes in the sciences, arts and humanities(is that under arts?) isn't that long. At 18 years old we always feel as though we have a good understanding of the world, which is somewhat true, but as we grow older and more experienced, we come to realize the arrogance of such an assumption. We will never come to understand the world in which we live fully.
Computer Engineering is distinct from Computer Science. Computer Engineering is really a mixture of electrical engineering and computer science. You take 8 Math classes instead of 4 and you come to understand and make digital/analog circuits. After this year(I'm finishing this year and have also complete a M.A.), I'll only be about 1 year away from either degree(Electrical Engineering or Computer Science). The interesting thing about being able to understand both Computer Science and Electrical Engineering are all of the amazing hardware/software devices you could create. In Computer Science you are generally restricted to writing software for existing hardware platforms, but imagine being able to do both? Imagine the neat things you could create!
A lot of people here seem to make comments that you can just "read" about computer sciences and understand it. Would you trust a doctor to operate on you who learnt from "Surgery for dummies"? Would you trust someone to make the software that runs for car controls and on planes to have gone that route? You create projects, do tests, etc., which are then graded by professors. When you graduate, it is because you were viewed academically as able to practice engineering, not because you felt as though you were. That is why in Canada, engineers are certified as professional engineers and cannot receive that designation unless they get the degree and work for 2 years under the supervision of another P.Eng. No one else can legally call themselves engineers or use the word engineering in their business name, this includes Computer Science graduates.
Being able to write is always an asset.
Itch scratched, get on with your life, where experience and contact make paper qualifications into worthless trinkets. Job done.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you're a great programmer already, why even bother with the CS degree? Why not take a completely different degree?
Some of the best programmers I know have degrees in things OTHER than CS. The best physics programmers aren't guys that understand CS the best, they're the guys that understand physics and math the best.
A CS degree will teach you how to be a programmer that's good at programming things to do with computing science. To a certain extent, unless you're actually interested in computing science itself, as a field, it's not worth your time. Do you want to understand computational complexity of search algorithms so you can develop your own? Get a CS degree. Do you want to come up with new algorithms for network communication? Get a CS degree. Do you want to be a programmer that understands how to program? You're done.
I would actually recommend doing a degree that gives you ONLY the extra stuff. Do an Arts degree of some kind. Find an interest. Expand your mind. You've already got the other stuff done; the piece of paper isn't going to make you any better at it. And if you want a degree because it affects your hireability, almost any degree will help you get your foot in the door.
I wanted to specialise in CS when I was in University, but I was a slacker student that's bad at writing exams. I did a lot of CS classes—all the classes that are required for a CS degree, in fact—but because I was forced to do a general science degree, I ended up with a minor in 'Earth and Atmospheric Sciences'. I've taken classes in Geology, Astronomy, Invertebrate Palaeontology, general Meteorology, Atmospheric fluid and thermodynamics, and Mass Extinction. I'm more of a scientist now than I ever could have been otherwise. It seemed like a bummer and a semi-failure back then, but now I appreciate it in so many different ways. I work in games, but I feel like I have options and avenues that wouldn't be open to other programmers. If nothing else, I understand that those options and avenues MUST EXIST.
You're already a programmer. You can keep doing that, and nobody will think any less of you, I assure you. If it were me, I'd take the opportunity and go be a scholar and a scientist, though.
You don't want to learn anything. You just want something to add to your resume. Focus on certifications. If your good enough to pass classes you can pass tests. Afterwards you will find out what everyone else does, including those that went to college. Bosses want workers that have something visible that can be used to keep wages down. IOW, your not going to get paid more.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Just get through it and watch your staring salary rise comparatively. I do agree that much of that type of 'enrichment' can be a waste of time. The general studies is now being used as a sway tool for the political left to condition young minds the way they want them. Sad...
Having had to work with many people who either came from a school with very limited genEd requirements, or where some students found some loopholes to get out of them, etc., I can now appreciate those 'pain in the ass worthless' classes. I've strongly suggested to some of them that they go back just to take a few of those classes so that they (maybe) can see that it doesn't matter how fast their code runs if they can't work well and communicate with others (coders, engineers, HR, administration, customers, end users, etc) and technical writing actually has to be read and understood by those same others in many cases. But that's only one of many reasons that it makes sense to take them and actually expend effort on learning in those classes.
That said, I have to provide a couple of caveats. First, even taking those classes there are no guarantees that you will be a well rounded, socially apt individual capable of communicating with everyone with backgrounds from PHD's to GED's. Some will take the courses and either be incapable of assimilating the material or just refuse to. To some extent, that's where the socialization outside of class can help. In some cases, people are just narrow minded jerks and are basically content staying that way.
Second, we could have many pages of discussion on the general state of education in the US today and how many of those classes are in fact fairly worthless on many campuses. The bar has been lowered at the elementary school level which in turn forces the bar to be lowered in each tier up through high school, which in turn means that teachers of genEd classes at universities have to either lower the bar or fail massive numbers of students. At places where non-tenured teachers have their salary and/or jobs somewhat dependent on pass rates and student evaluations, the obvious pressure to drop the standards means that those students that are 'above average' will find the courses pretty lame.
My advice would be to take the genEd classes. Maybe reach out to some successful people in the industry and ask their opinion on which types might be most beneficial, ask recruiters or hiring managers what they look for as well. There are plenty of people in the various sectors of industry that would be happy to give their opinion.
> You don't want to write games, so you don't need physics, English (story telling), art, or movie courses.
Most of what you just spouted off about is not relevant to a game programmer.
The "art end of things" in game development is carried out by people who specialize in that sort of thing.
In any company bigger than what would fit in a garage, you will quickly see a very high degree of specialization.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As many others have said, move to a country that does its general education in high school. For extra bonus points, move to a country with free university-level education.
You get a degree because of the type of person it makes you.
If all you want are current technical skills then just go to a trade skill.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If you think that studying "English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like" is "wasting your precious time", then apparently you have no interest in being an educated human being. You want a trade school, not a college or university.
If that's all you want, fine; but if I were seeking to hire someone, for anything but scutwork I'd take the educated human being with a breadth of intellectual knowledge but perhaps lacking a fine point or two of skill, over a trade school graduate with specialized but limited skills.
You might want to think more about this and come back to the question after you grow up a little.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
... You will come back here crying that you are stuck in a developer's role and some snot-nosed newbie with an MBA is telling you what to do.
Programmers are a dime a dozen - *if* you can find a job in the USA, you will be competing directly with offshore resources that cost the company 1/3rd what you do.
You have 2 choices: 1) Make your own fortune by creating the Next Big Thing, or 2) Grow the fuck up and start thinking about what you are going to do when you are 40 years old, not what you want to do today.
My degree is in informationt technology rather than computer science. I am half way through my last semester so most of this is still fresh in my head. There have been several programming, system administration, and other courses related to computing. I have also taken calculus, linear algebra, technical writing courses, ethics, micro and macroeconomics, american government, histories, writing, and god knows what else over the years. I have not enjoyed a single damn one of them aside from linear algebra.
You may want to sit behind a desk all day and code, but it helps if you can write in a way that properly conveys your message to your coworkers. Moreover it is also a wonderful thing to understand how and why your government operates in the way it does. As I said I took an American Government course a couple semesters ago. Just yesterday I was listening to a story about redistricting in Florida and they brought up gerrymandering (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering), something prior to that class I had no understanding or concept of. Maybe that is shameful to be an adult in the US and not understand something so basic about how our system works, but it is just one example of where my education has been paying off.
Another example was listening to a story on the radio (I have a very long commute, I listen to a lot of radio) and a financial story and an economist started referring to M1, M2, M3 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States)etc. without going into detail what the differences were. Had I not recently taken those courses I would have had no idea what he was talking about; I may not be an expert now, but I could at least understand this story on the radio. Simple things like these crop up every day.
So college hasn't always taught me to be a better systems administrator or programmer, but it has made me a better member of society, able to think critically, rather than flapping on about things I have no frikkan' clue about like ultra {liberal,conservative} morons ever present in todays media. I wish to ****ing god you and everyone else would take those courses more seriously, attempt to do well in them, and come out of the experience better for it. We need more people who do in this country. [/rant]
because of drones who just look for a college degree when hiring.
Ah well, best to go get valuable , enriching education in basket weaving.
When I went to college 40 years ago I went took the opposite path of that proposed by the poster. I got an electrical engineering degree and a bachelor of arts in humanities as well in 5 years study. My career was in engineering but I firmly believe that it was the broader view of the world I had that set me apart and allowed me to excel. I worked primarily as an individual contributor but achieved a salary more commonly reserved for middle management. I am now retired from engineering and pursuing the other half of my education working in photography, video and web design. I have never regretted the extra work to get the arts degree.
As someone who started out my career with a totally 'practical' view of education, rather than a 'person-shaping' view, I have since discovered the benefits of the latter. Sure, you learn some of the necessary skills (tools) to do the job, but you don't round out all the attributes of becoming a good person or good employee. As anyone knows who has ever hired anyone to do a job, the person's character, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, ability to work in a team, ability to learn, etc. are FAR more important than their ability to use a particular tool or that they possess some particular set of knowledge to the highest degree.
People don't go to college to get made a type of person, they go there to learn job-related skills and improve their chance to get one.
This doesn't change the requirements for a BS degree, but it might be just what you need. If you really have a good background in the non-computer subjects you would have to take for a BS degree, take a course (as one of your electives) on how to document experiential learning. You'll get credits for taking the course and credits for your first experiential learning document that could, if you match your experiences and knowledge with a syllabus from your required courses list, get you credit for that class and a course waiver. The course on how to document experiential learning is a good idea if you want to do this, but you might be able to figure out what you need to do in order to earn credits this way without taking the course. I feel I would not have been able to do this if I hadn't taken that course, but you may be different. You may be able to get a copy of another student's document from your student adviser and see how it all fits together. I aimed to document about 75% of the topics covered in any particular syllabus (which must be from an accredited institution, by the way). Two of my documents were requested as "models" for other students to be able to view, so your college should have samples of these available. I got out of 27 credits worth of a bachelor's degree that way. (A friend of mine got out of 45 credits that way!) Some of my documentation was used to avoid taking courses I didn't particularly want to take, and others to just fill elective credits needed towards the degree. The dollar cost for those experiential learning credits? My college didn't charge anything for the first 30 credits' worth of experiential learning, and only $10 per credit after that. This was 9 years ago, but even if it doubled in cost, it would still be a bargain in my book. The real cost is your time. after doing a couple of these, I was able to knock out one of these in 2-3 evenings or part of one weekend. You can also test out of certain classes. CLEP tests give you credit for courses and (I believe) a course waiver. You can also take simple course waiver tests from your college if you really know the subject well. I think you have to score 70% to get the course waiver. But that, unlike a CLEP test, probably doesn't give you credits toward your requirement for graduation, only a course waiver so that you don't have to take that course. You would have to make up those credits some other way. I took one course waiver test to get out of a prerequisite course for an MBA degree. It was for calculus. I never had calculus, so I asked for an outline of what I would be tested on and bought the Idiot's Guide to Calculus, and studied through chapter 6, I think. I passed the test using a calculator that did most of the work for me, but it was allowed, and you have to know what you're doing with any calculator or you will get the wrong answer. (It just made it easier for me.) I never took a CLEP test. I probably should have. There is a fee for taking a CLEP test. I'm sure, whatever that fee is, that it's worth it, assuming that you can pass the test. If you are interested in this at all, I suggest asking your student adviser for more information. If you with to ask me more about this, email me at my username here at a very warm, "high temperature" place for email (a popular web mail place). I don't check that account every day, but I do occasionally check it, hopefully before the spam folder is purged by Microsoft.
Because globalization is making brains a cheap commodity. You need to be well-rounded to survive these days. What happens if you get burned out in programming in 10 years? You need to prepare for a career, perhaps multiple, not just a job.
Table-ized A.I.
It issues degrees based on granting credits for life experience, CLEP testing, and self-study course. They have no classrooms and are fully accredited and are a NJ state school, not a private Phoenix-like school. There are a few other schools like it around if you look. One of them is likely to offer a degree you want. http://www.tesc.edu/
I truly do not understand why a person would willingly pigeon hold themselves in this manner. Sure, you save a couple bucks on the front end but you lose valuable experience and exposure on the back end. Your education is an investment in you, why invest in only one part of you?
And if you want to move past a BS at some point, you're putting yourself behind the 8-ball. Your application will read like a 2-d caricature...
It all matters. Math, science, art, philosophy, engineering...they all tie together and knowledge acquired in one realm is transferable to other realms. It provides a foundation for creative thought.... but maybe you just want to debug code for the rest of your life.
I graduated from the University of Rochester (NY), and you needed to have a "cluster" of 12 credits (usually 3 classes, as most are 4 credits) in the two general areas that are not your major. So a CS degree would be a math/science major, so you'd need a Humanities cluster and a Social Science cluster, plus the freshman writing course, which is the only single required class. You can make your clusters pretty much whatever you want, and they don't have to be contained to any one department. For instance, my math/science cluster was two semesters of calc and one of stats. Philosophy (at least analytical philosophy) might not be as useless to a CS degree as you think (--there are symbolic logic courses in the Philosophy dept), so that might be your humanities cluster. Throw in an Econ cluster and you're set. 24 credits of clusters plus 4 of freshman English writing and you can spend the rest of your time taking every CS course you can schedule. I didn't have to take a single laboratory science class, nor any English lit, nor phys ed,...
You and the two replies beneath you are probably missing good candidates that way. Always talk to the candidate in these cases.
He may not be interested in learning at school, but would prefer to read and explore on his own. Someone looking for shortcuts may be exactly the kind of person who can find more efficient ways to do things. If he picks up quickly, he'd be the perfect candidate for a position with advancement opportunities.
You've all three changed "I want to focus on what I like" into "I refuse to spend time on anything else."
The best approach with someone like this is to focus on things like these in the interview:
We have mandatory hours of training every year, and there's only so much in your field available. What else might you turn to in order to fill out those required hours?
All employees are required to take certain company-wide training, like ethics, harrassment in the workplace, and maybe safety. Can you explain to me how knowing these things, which aren't in your field, contributes to both your own success and the company's?
Also maybe start a discussion on applied mathematics, which is basically what most programming is, at its core, once you get past the interface. Things like the Antikythera mechanism (the oldest calculator, and history), Ptolemaic model (geometry, and astronomy), Golden Ratio (architecture and aesthetics mostly, applicable to design work and financial modeling). And it never hurts to bring up Plato's Republic, in which people do the work they are best suited for (the CEO being the Philoshoper-King), with application to career advancement.
If the person you are interviewing shows no interest or cannot intelligently discuss, and doesn't even ask questions, they may be a genuine one-trick pony that you don't want working for you. But they may learn about these things along the way, and you have a genuine jewel-in-the-rough on your hands.
My question to you is, how much effort do you put in to get the best candidates? It sounds like I would not want to work for any of you, because you filter out some of the best and brightest based on assumptions, or as a shortcut to finding someone acceptable.
Yeah, what a strange question OP has asked... :/ . What really marvels me is that Americans have 4 years to learn a lot of stuff, yet from what I read here most of CS degrees are wasting valuable time in History, English or Art! Like OP, I don't say they aren't valuable, just that they aren't that important to the degree's field.
This is what someone like him would do in Argentina (I'll just write from now as if I was talking to him):
You would want to go for a degree in Information System Engineering: it would be 5 years long, and you would have to take a few Gen-Eds with knowledge relevant to the field (IIRC Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Economy, and Law). Half or so of the courses have on-the-field assignments (go to a real company and set a network and server for them, do quality management, use BI to answer questions, develop an AI-program to solve a certain problem, etc.). On the last year we had more managerial courses available (akin to an MBA), and they are practical from the start.
You seem more like an engineer than a compsci. I urge you to avoid Computer Science and look for an Engineering degree: the emphasis in practical knowledge will suit your taste better, and even if the courses/teachers suck, the students there will probably be like you. Although I described my education there, friends in Germany and France told me they had similar approaches.
tl;dr: Get an System Engineering degree abroad, education in America doesn't have your mentality.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Education is good. But is college the best place to get the general education? The college will give you a piece of paper saying you have been given the opportunity to consider different subjects. But there is a substantial fee for that piece of paper and that paper doesn't not tell a potential employer if anything was learned or gained. Perhaps there is a better way to measure his desire to learn and his exposure to things outside of his computing field other than a piece of paper that may or may not tell me something of value.
BTW, I went to college. I took some graduate classes. But I would still hire the guy even with out the BS degree if my interview with him showed he was creative and able to solve problems.
Yeah, but would HR let him in the door or even put his resume on your desk?
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Yes - *if* their budget for the position was so low that they had no chance of getting someone with a degree.
I fully expect this to get lost in the noise here, but there is such a program (nearly). UCSB has a tiny college called the College of Creative Studies, which bills itself as a graduate school for undergraduates. While they do require general ed classes (8 quarter-long classes in total), that's as specific as the requirement is. You can fulfill it with any classes unrelated to your major - I do hope you have some interests outside of CS. Also, you can skip the prerequisites for classes, even those outside your major. The CS program is considerably more compact than most undergraduate degrees, because it is assumed you will come in already experienced in computer science and be able to start on the upper-division material during your first year. http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/welcome/ Look into it.
A fair point. But then, if they're that cheap/strapped for cash, they'd probably be outsourcing everything to India or China anyway (more likely the latter, these days).
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
I have to second this comment. Brown is a great school that will allow you to take whatever courses you want (outside those required for your major). No general education requirements.
I think Oberlin might also allow complete freedom of course choices outside your major.
well its more who you know than what you know - which was my Fathers view about going down the Chartered status route (in the UK) - though of the work I am doing on HPCC could be useful - though exactly what the BCS does for the profession is open to debate.
One choice is to knock out the gen-ed requirements as quick and cheap as you can, then focus on comp-sci for the degree.
Or...
Start investing in your people skills big, and begin to market yourself.
Both of these are perfectly OK. Interestingly, you still need to do the marketing, whether or not you've got the degree, meaning there is a strong case for just investing a ton of resources in that, using the school to plug gaps.
If it were me, and I chose not to do gen-ed, I would do the following:
1. Get your online portfolio looking sharp. Knock out some projects, document anything else you've done, and put it all up on your domain, detailing where the value is, and what it all means to you personally and professionally. Keep that updated.
2. Do a few projects to highlight areas of passion, interest and skill. Again, document, etc... Also take some time to express who you are as a person, hobbies, kids, life interests, adventures, etc...
3. If you can't make those two look good, make some small investment in somebody who can.
4. Begin to network. Use all the online tools, and be sure and not forget meat-space. Professional lives often revolve around lunch. A few times a month, take interesting people, influential people to lunch, connect, ask for introductions, and follow up on them. Return all networking favors you are granted, and do not stop this process. It should become a way of life, and a part of your overall culture.
This is important because those people who lack the piece of paper are going to get hired by those other people who know their value, rendering the lack of paper largely moot. That is exactly why you need to put your package together and network consistently. The good jobs are often obtained by knowing the right people. The more people you know, the better you've expressed your value to them, the more opportunities you will encounter, and that means more and better jobs throughout your career. This also opens the door for consulting, or running your own show. Both work well, depending on how you plan to carry risk.
I know lots of people with degrees and without, and the most potent ones are those that invest in themselves, and the presentation of themselves. Do it, and it absolutely will pay off, paper or not. There is some discrimination present for those without the paper, but it's not too bad, if you've done the work to deal with it. The beauty of it, like I said, is that you really need to do the work anyway, so just do the work! Net gain all around, regardless of how you choose to deal with education.
Finally, if you have gaps in general presentation, fill them. Your writing skills need to be solid, as do your basic graphic skills. Competency in this has a lot of general value, the most significant one being the clarity only enhances your value proposition, and that is what will score you the better work. The secondary one is communication with the customers, and team project members. You will gravitate toward leadership positions because of that, and as you age, those positions will matter.
Blogging because I can...
I seem to remember that the early spreadsheets specifically did NOT automatically recalculate all the cells, because with a lot of data, that could take a lot of time and cause the application to become unresponsive. There was a function key the operator pressed to have it recalculate.
I agree here. I see someone who learns on their own a hard worker. It means that they are driven to learn. And besides, the trend these days is a person trying so hard to succeed, they resort to cheating. And I have, on more than one occasion, met people who should be teaching at MIT, but can't afford to go to a community college. As for the original poster, I would suggest going and getting the specific certifications for the levels of tech they know. Or start your own contract programming firm with some friends.
Nobody is preventing you from studying computer science, so quit your whining!
If you want to study computer science, and only computer science, then just do that. There are plenty of colleges and universities offering associate degree programs and trade schools that teach programming and only programming. There are plenty of articles, books, and online resources that demonstrate and illustrate programming techniques and details.
Don't expect someone to just hand you a bachelors in science without completing the entire curriculum. If you are too lazy to complete the minimum requirements of a BS degree you shouldn't expect to be conferred one. Besides, plenty of talented programmers don't have a BS in CS and many poor programmers do.
I did my 4+ yrs getting a CS diploma, and GED: what did those non-CS courses teach me wrt to my current job:
English: I can write SW spec documents and comment big blocks of my code with sufficient grasp of grammar that doesn't make me seem like a idiot (and even gives me extra points in credibility)
History: The ability to look back at past events helps you formulate a coding strategy for the future, and avoid mistakes
Art: CS derives from Math, and Math has been considered an art-form for thousands of years (hmmm, there's that History again)
Philosophy: You sometimes code in teams, and understanding that these other team-members are human beings, and understanding your team strengths/weaknesses/quirks, makes you work smarter, not harder.
So sure, you can skip all that, and hyper-specialize in CS, but that won't buy you as much as you think in the long-run.
I urge you to reconsider, impatient youth! ;-)
I attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. There is so much flexibility in course selection that I chose classes that were interesting to me. For a random science credit requirement; I took technology of alpine skiing and went skiing for a grade! (I learned something, too!) For humanities, I took a lot of electronic music classes and learned about MIDI programming and graphical dataflow languages. (wpi.edu) In general, if you choose your school wisely; you'll be able to select classes that are useful and/or interesting to you.
No, I will not work for your startup
I haven't heard of a K-12 school teaching logic or philosophy. So yes, reasoning and comprehension does need to be taught at the higher level.
If that is really so, it would explain a lot about US politics, and the nonsense some politicians can get away with, and still be elected.
(I guess K-12 means students around 18 years old, in their last year of school before university? If not, please correct me.)
What you are describing is vocational training. And others have said this, but you are completely missing the point of a University education. The process of going through "other classes" is what enables you to BE a better programmer. Higher education, all of it, transforms the way you think and interact with people and society. What do you think "social networking" is about? The new (smart) hiring trends seek those who are just plain good at programming, but much better at people skills. I know highly successful consultancies hiring History, Economics and Music majors to do 80% your job. They dominate the development process, even though they don't code. They save the real time because they produce the really usable products. Get your head on straight, you are missing the boat, utterly.
For CS it self at some schools it is to broad or to theory based and at some place it to focused.
The filler like art history or general history should not be part of a CS Degree and the math can be cut down a bit as well.
There should be more of a hands on / apprenticeship part to a IT / CS Degree even to point of having a mixed apprenticeship / school setup and don't force people ti write 10 page papers on book reports.
Also there should be some tracks like maybe 1 over all for programing that can be split to more sub's and 1 for the IT / support side of things. There are people out there who are good at fixing stuff / setting it up but are poor at programing and people who are good at programing but are bad at doing other IT stuff.
What you want is a CERTIFICATE, not a degree. Undergraduate degrees from reputable (accredited) institutions, by their very nature, involve not just some level of mastery of a field, but also a broad education to make one a better member of society, not just a whiz at one skill.
Moreover, if you think that "these fields ... will not contribute to making me better at my job", then (a) you are dead wrong, and (b) you probably need more exposure to "those fields" more than the average college student, so for you to skip them would be an ESPECIALLY bad idea.
So: either go get some comp certificate from a community/technical college, then maybe supplement it with a few more core CS classes from a university (and try to compete in the world without a bachelors degree), or else just buckle down and fulfill whatever requirements the school asks you to do.
I also wouldn't get too caught up in BA vs BS. You'll do fine either way. If you really want to go in-depth in your education, continue on for a MS. Otherwise, realize that you'll probably learn a lot more by actually working in your field than you do in school anyway (given a suitable foundation).
I am on the verge of compiling and submitting seven years of general studies as a BFA fine-arts in Digital Studies. Y'all are as good as first round critique as they get, and 400 pages of coments have to count for something! Plus I have evaluated web hosts and after I get bck on track overseen a web site's digital archives. I keep debating whether to go for a Masters in Digital Privacy or stay general with a BFA Culture Studies. The latter would allow the looser approach I employ, though I have put modest work into the privacy field.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I didn't "learn how to think" in college. And I did go in thinking I would. I know plenty of people who have degrees and don't really seem to know much about anything, and don't know how to reason. College teaches you nothing that you can't learn through independent learning and being a student of life. I find a person's knowledge level and reasoning ability are correlated to their desire to develop those abilities. If you learn anything useful in college it's how to brown-nose professors and tell them what they want to hear, and I'll grant you that that is an important skill.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
You are mistaken in thinking what you want is a college or university. What you want is vocational school or technical school.
DeVry used to be an excellent one, though they have decided to become a university and that may mean you can't go there and get a technical education to turn you into a good worker.
You may have to roll your own. Go to community colleges, which are much cheaper, or pay lots of money to take the same classes at a reputable school and ignore the ignore non-technical requirements. You won't get a degree, but then, you don't want one. A College or University degree is a mark that says to are a smart, well-rounded person, which is something you don't want to be. Socrates said "Know thyself", and you've got it down. Good for you.
One of the problems with American higher education is that people like you don't have a place in colleges and Universities, and vocational schools are either going away or in hiding. This means people like you have no place to go. Instead, people like you try to turn real college and universities into vocational schools. That's bad for people who want an education, and bad for people like you, who wind up paying a bundle for something they don't want: an education.
You can definitely find vocational schools in India. Classes there are taught in English, and it will be far cheaper than an American education, and probably better than the one you'd get in a community college, unless it's one which is far better than the norm. Go live in India for two years.
you have no life, it's the 'other stuff' that helps get you one.
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1. If you really don't want to take the GenEd stuff, go overseas. When you get back, look us up after a year or so of job-hunting, tell us how it's going. Note this is not meant to be snarky; I am truly interested in how such a pursuit would work out.
2. If you don't want to spend any more time with the GenEd in a US program than possible, take the CLEP/DANTES tests, make sure your school awards appropriate credit for them. This is a seriously good way to meet the requirement, IMHO.
3. If you go into GenEd courses with an open mind, you should come out of your degree with a far greater perspective of your chosen profession in context with the rest of the world than if you hadn't sat through them. YMMV, really; if you take such courses without the motivation to get something out of them, they truly will be wasted time.
4. Speaking of mileage, take note of this: In three degrees (BS CIS, MS CS, DCS), the most perennially useful course I've ever taken was Business Law, of all things. Turns out, every job in my career has been on one side or another of a contract, and having that short introduction to contracting law and the UCC has helped me understand why some things are the way they are, more than any other experience.
For what it's worth, I was a college prof a few years ago, spent a year doing academic advising. After all that, I really have come to believe there is a larger place in our commerce for careers based on targeted training, because the college path does not fit all propensities (maybe the OP is an example), and programming should be a discipline targeted such. But, if you have aspirations larger than just chunking out code, a well-rounded US university program is a good place to hone them.
"Maths" vs. "Math" is one place the Brits make more sense than Americans. However it certainly is odd when I hear "the M1 Motorway" which presumably is short for "the Motorway 1 motorway." Worryingly, the Los Angeles habit of saying "The I-10" -- presumably short for "The Interstate Highway 10 'freeway'" where "freeway" is just a Californianism for "limited access highway," and thus "The Interstate Highway 10 limited access highway" -- seems to be spreading like a cancer throughout the American west. Do these people get their kicks on "the" Route 66? (sigh)
As to the original question -- If you want a technical degree, go to a technical school. College really should teach you more about The World and not so much about technical subjects.
If you really feel that way and can not be dissuaded, I would suggest looking at a BSEET degree instead of a BSc. Still a four year degree, still accredited, but it leaves behind most of the humanities. The ones it retains are primarily communication oriented such as English I and II, Technical Writing and Public Speaking. Just the minimum to be accredited.Those particular humanities are far more important to you than they may seem, right now, because for career advancement, communication skills are paramount.
However, the less critical humanities (history and other social sciences, etc.) are also more important than you may think. Again, for career advancement you need to interact with people. Who exactly do you think those people are? Is it possible they may have interests beyond the work at hand, that you may need to form relationships to gain what you want out of your career? Do you think they might work in other disciplines (accounting, management, sales?) Maybe you will even need to interact with customers. Being a bit worldly goes a long way towards interacting with people you hardly know, at first. If all you are fit to discuss is your work, you will be boring company, indeed, and a poor communicator.
Finally, breadth of education lends a certain variation and inspiration to your thinking. If you think Art History is all about looking at pretty pictures and memorizing names and dates, you miss the point of the class. Each of those artists had problems to solve related to the technology of the day. Many of those artists became of historical interest because they saw the world in a unique way. Many of them changed the way we see the world. As a brief example, compare the human figures present in the art of the ancient world to that of the 15th century. In that time span, humans had to learn how to change the way they thought about what they saw so that images of humans went from being symbolic to being realistic. It wasn't about pretty pictures, it was about advancing the state of thinking.
I work in a technical field. I hire technical people. I vastly prefer to hire Bachelors fresh-outs than PhD.s even though PhD.s have a far higher concentration of relevant education. The reason why is simple, outstanding Bachelor's fresh-outs have shown the ability to adapt their thinking and learn a breadth of topics. Outstanding PhD.s have shown the ability to excel in a very narrow category and please their professors specific interests. It turns out that when I hire them, within a year each is as productive as the other, but I have to pay the PhD. 2 grades higher salary. I WILL test your knowledge about many things when I interview you and at least one of the scales I will grade you on will be your out-of-the box thinking, something you will learn nothing about pursuing an on-topic only degree.
Finally, for better or worse, until you have a reputation behind you (roughly 10 years of continuous employment, with references) your resume is what will get you called in for the interview. If your resume does not let me know that you are a well-rounded individual, you will be unlikely to make it in for the first interview. For every self-taught genius that I miss out on, there are 100's of self-aggrandizing morons. I will not take your word for it that you have what it takes, I need other people to stand up and say that you've proven yourself. A BSc on your resume, at least, begins to tell me that.
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
If all you learn is computer programming, that's all you can do. And you can learn computer science and programming on the net at least as effectively and swiftly on the net. So don't waste your time and precious tuition on that. Join an open-source project and prove you have skills and experience instead of book learning.
Learn a subject matter: biology/pharmacology, and you'll be of interest to the pharmaceutical industry; physics and you'll be useful for games; business and project management and you're useful to everybody; some other form of engineering so you can make the engineers more effective.
If all you know is computer science, you're only useful as a grunt that I'm going to work hard, and never will advance to analysis, subject matter expertise, etc.
Design for Use, not Construction!
A B.S. means you have a well-rounded undergraduate education with focus in a particular major. That's not what you are asking for. You're asking for specific technical training in a single field. That's called a technical school diploma.
I know exactly how the guy feels. I went to an accredited trade school to learn computer hardware and networking. When I graduated I didn't get a degree, but they did offer further courses to obtain the degree. The length was ok, it was just another six months of classes but it was all Gen-Ed. Literature.. Art.. Biology. Courses that I already took in high school. Now granted they aren't "college" level classes in high school but still, I had to pay more money to take classes I did not want, that would not help the subject my career was going to be in? No. I just said no. I barely afforded tuition for what I had already passed, not only could I no longer afford further classes (nor get more loans) but how was dissecting a frog or learning more in depth insight of Plato's works was going to help me fix a networking issue for a computer? It wasn't. So to this day I still do not have a degree, even I could afford the classes by saving up some now I still don't want nor see why they are necessary. Are they going to compensate me for the waste of time? I may not be able to get the best of jobs without a degree but which seems better, wasting all that time and paying to do it or continuing to work making money and not wasting time? (yes, spare me the "well if you do it now in the future you'll make more money so its not a waste" arguments).
...
Degrees are nothing but a racket created by what passes for an educational system in America. Life isn't about what you know or how good you do something but how many fancy pieces of paper with your name on them you grinded out. It's like an MMORPG.. but with paper. Spend X years getting Degree Y, earn awesome Reward Z
Aw Frell this
Just take some CS classes and leave university without taking a degree. Oh, you think you should be able to get a B.S. degree without doing any non-C.S. coursework? Sorry, that's not what a bachelor's degree signifies.
emperor's new clothes.
And, the idea is not to get it for the money , but to get it for hireability - sadly it seems companies these days require people to have college degrees even for jobs where it is irrelevant.
Actually those are not a waste. Without English you might as well be another 'offshore programmer". English and communication classes actually differentiate good programmers from bad. It helps you understand the business and communicate with the business to help design the right solution. The idea that you can code and throw it over the wall and say I'm done no longer flies in the US like it used to. Well except for SOME startups and SOME small companies. You also need to be able to communicate with your peers. Art and History, and the like are not a waste because they actually help make you a well rounded person.
I think what you want is a certificate in computers not a CS degree or maybe you want a CS degree but don't want to do the work that goes with it.
I've meet many computer programmers that do not have college degrees and while often they are good programmers, they are often not so good at communicating and in the end, many employers don't want to hire them or after they hire them they do not like them. Even as a programmer / systems analyst sometimes need to communicate with their peers or even your manager. Often the people that are the angriest at their manager are the ones that do not understand business and economics and because they lack the communication skills are often the ones that have issues talking to their manager.
Only 'flamers' flame!
General Ed is not a waste - it is invaluable, because it makes you a better thinker. It contributes to you being able to do your job better, even the parts that are seemingly unrelated. If I had a choice between hiring people with 4yr bachelors with gen-ed and 3yr without, I'd hire the 4yr candidates. Over the long term, they'd tend to be better at communicating, at working in teams, at thinking creatively, at solving problems that are outside their original expertise. There would be the occasional one-off exception, of course, but as a group, over time, they'd outperform the 3yrs in subtle but important ways.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim Janke Part mad scientist, part lion tamer: sr. software engineer, global team leader, project mana
I wish I'd understood, before going to university, that it is not immediately much (at all?) more difficult than high school. Hell, I'd say my senior year of high school with calculus, chem II, physics, plus the usual other classes like English and history, was significantly harder and required a much larger total time commitment than any of my years in college, even after the classes started to get more serious.
As it is, I only got over the shock of how easy it was after I'd completed a year of bullshit classes that didn't go beyond material covered by my sophomore year of high school (some, like psychology, spent significant portions of time covering things I'd learned in junior fucking high!)
In retrospect, I see that I could have easily tested out of a year's worth of classes using CLEP and asking the right people about non-CLEP testing to get credit for classes (taking the final and getting a B minimum, or something). Probably closer to two years.
If I had one piece of advice I could give to high school seniors regarding college, it would be: start taking tests to get out of classes as soon as you can. Summer before school, ideally. Remember that the final might be easier than the CLEP, so keep that in mind if you fail the CLEP and ask counselors or similar about other methods of avoiding classes. Consider knocking out in-major courses this way, too, especially if you have a lot of experience with them. Watch out for limits on how many credits earned this way the college will accept, and choose the courses you target for elimination accordingly
If you can test out odds are you weren't going to get much out of it, so it's not worth your time or money. If you feel cheated out of knowledge, spend an hour reading wikipedia pages on the subject--ta da, you just learned at least as much as you would have in the class.
You can't get exactly what you want, but you can compress a 4-year regular bachelor program into approximately what you want. We will assume you have the actual gen-ed SKILLS to survive in the workplace. If you do not, please stop reading now, and start studying those subjects. An engineer without, say, English skills is severely disadvantaged. No, you won't be reciting Shakespeare at a CS job, but the skills you pick up from practicing a few hundred thousand words of reading and writing make a big difference - when I pick up your API spec and try to write code that bangs it - between "Ah, this is how it works" and "WTF was this moron smoking when he wrote this document?" FWIW, I am in exactly this position - finishing a bachelors' degree in electrical and computer engineering after having worked as an engineer for 16 years, and having written three books published in my field. Step 0: Decide if it's really worth pursuing this career path in your country of residence. Seriously. Think about it. Step 1: Enroll at a college in their standard program, part-time. Being a part-time student will allow you some flexibility in how you sequence your classes, and overall there will be less scrutiny of which particular courses you pick. Step 2: Build up a minimum of 12 credits, better 20-odd credits, of straight As in courses that you think are "important" for you. Due to prereqs, you might need to do a couple of lower-level math courses to achieve this (my sequence went something like Precalc, Calc I, Calc II, Calc III, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Control Systems, Random Variables and Statistics, and Communication Theory, with Physics I, II and III alongside those). Getting As is critical to the next step because it establishes your bona fides as a "why the hell are you wasting my time with this baby stuff?" student. If you can't get top grades, then consider the humbling possibility that maybe you aren't quite as special as you think. Step 3: Go to faculty with your academic record and resume and ask nicely for special treatment. This request will fan out to the other faculties and if you convinced them fully, you'll get life experience credit (free credits! no coursework) for some material, and the option to take CLEP exams to skip other courses. I was given a few courses "free", and about another 4 courses (12 credits-ish) as CLEPs. Step 3a: ABET-accredited degree programs have strict limits on how much life experience free ride any student can receive. Deal with it and suck it up, big guy. I don't think ABET certifies pure CS degree programs (yet), though I may be wrong. But a combo EE/CS degree - forsure you need ABET. ABET is your route to PE status, should you desire it. Step 4: There will likely be some dross left over at this point - ethics, psychology or philosophy, for instance. See if your school offers these as online courses. This way, I did Chemistry [the special-ed version for electrical majors], philosophy and a couple of other courses so unmemorable that I've even forgotten their names. It's low stress and easy to get very good grades because you set your own study schedule. Step 5: Hopefully, profit.
"I've been a nerd since I was 13 and I want a uni degree but I won't want to have to learn about stuff that doesn't relate to my narrow field of interest"
University isn't about giving you skills to be a better computer programmer. The gen-ed courses are the most important - they force you to learn about how the rest of the world works, and how nobody in the real world gives a rats arse about the differences between .NET and perl.
If you want to be a computer programmer for the rest of your life, why are you going to uni in the first place? Just go and hit the job market until you find someone who will employ you on your programming skills.
Look on the bright side - Those annoying gen-ed classes (especially the ones in the art faculty) are likely to have some girls in `em. And as any uni-grad will tell you - THAT is what university is really about.
There is no such thing in the US as a Bachelor's degree without a general education. That is intentional and good. There are lesser degrees which focus on specific technology, these are mostly vocational certificates and associate's degrees (e.g., A.S.).
You will have a ridiculous amount of fun in college. Leaving early is a serious waste of boozing and womanizing opportunity.
And of course there's those..what did you call them? Education benefits too.
To be technically correct, engineer licensing is handled at the state level and each state does it differently. In Texas, the title "Software Engineer" does mean something and if you are not a licensed "Professional Engineer (PE)" and attempt to claim to be a Software Engineer you can get into a mess of trouble.
I have an ABET accredited Masters of Engineering degree in Computer Science (from a state school no less) but I never sat for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam nor completed the required apprenticeship period (or sit for the PE Exam) so I cannot claim to be a Software Engineer. (However, I've got nearly 12 years of industry experience as a software developer).
American K-12 education is a fashionable whipping boy--but I call bullshit on your claim that US engineers who attended good US engineering schools are inferior to their European counterparts.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that your sample size is small or your company has trouble attracting decent US talent. Or maybe European schools emphasize different things and you are judging the Americans by European standards.
Whatever, but look around dude. Seriously, look at the computer you are typing on. American engineers know how to build stuff. There's some great talent outside the US but there is no denying the overwhelming amount of engineering talent and skill within the US.
Both with similar technical backgrounds, but one of them also has a well-rounded general education from a good 4 year school, which one do you pick?
Now suppose you have a hundred resumes, 99 of them have well-rounded general educations and 1 of them doesn't. Get the idea?
Other countries have their own systems and maybe do a better job on the general education stuff in their primary schools. Whatever, we do it different, it works for us.
BTW: "Scoreboard" is a sports reference, it means check the score before you talk shit. If you're down 20 points then keep your mouth shut.
Sadly philosophy was largely absent from my education, I have been (very slowly) rectifying my ignorance for the past decade and have found the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy to be a very useful resource.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I disagree with the premise above that things are improving because they are better than in the 1950s. There are some schools in the USA that don't teach any calculus to any of their students. There has been a major decline in education standards since 1980 which is in proportion to the decline in education funding.
The US now is famed for having a very high level of graduate education but very low standards of undergraduate education. Just ask any of those graduate students that come from elsewhere about the students they are tutoring if you want to get some anecdotes about how the high school system has failed a lot of those students.
So you're too lazy or disinterested to bother to learn those skills that will make you tolerable as an adult. The ability to work your way through something you have to do yet are not interested in is the critical sign of maturity that you will be lacking when you are facing a job task you have little to no interest in. It is my fervent hope that you don't lose interest in wiping your butt, bathing and other things that distract you from your single-minded existence.
Good luck with that.
Employers want well-rounded individuals, not button-pushing, narrowly-focused sheep. Your resume will sink like a stone on any competent HR manager's desk.
You want a BS degree, but without taking liberal education courses that you think are below you? So do a lot of other people. A lot of online schools claim they will grant you exactly that; why don't you go find one and try their curriculum. Go through their paces, get their degree - you can probably even do it mostly online without ever going to a campus.
Then take that online degree, put it on your resume and go look for a job.
Later on, you'll be back at a brick-and-mortar accredited school taking lib ed courses, only you'll be older and financially worse off than you would have been otherwise.
In other words go through the standard process like the rest of us. You can bitch about it later, and the a few years after that you'll see kids joining your workplace complaining about the same thing and you can tell them to get off your lawn.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Colleges with a large "core" curriculum serve two ends--they serve the philosophy of a well-rounded or well-educated curriculum, and they are much cheaper for schools because they can have large "gut" courses with a higher student/teacher ratio.
Don't pass up the non-CS stuff. Enrichment can be awesome--at least a little bit. Find out who the good professors are and take a course or two from them. You can always pick up new material--you cannot always learn from great professors.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I used CLEPs for 30 credits of a double B.S. including almost all of my general education requirements. The key with getting most universities to accept CLEPs -- which are mostly targeted at people coming out of highschool with some college level experience -- is to make sure that you haven't taken an official college level course in the department that you plan to CLEP in. I CLEP'd out of literature, american history, sociology, american government, composition, economics ... Basically everything I could. Take AP exams for everything you can as well. I still wound up having to take a couple of classes outside of math and computer science in order to fulfill art and cross-cultural coursework requirements -- the one that stuck out most was african american theatre -- but overall I can't say I'm any worse off for having given the other departments their pound of flesh.
I did have to study for the CLEPs I took to ensure I passed them all, but I was much happier studying sociology for a weekend than for a semester.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
http://www.tesc.edu/
I went to University (in Australia) and have a Computer Science degree on my wall and other than one required maths unit (aimed at giving you the maths you need for computer science stuff) and a couple of electives I took because I was interested in it (like the introductory Economics unit), everything else I studied was computer science related.
The #1 problem these days in IT is that degrees dont matter anywhere near as much as they used to. These days its all about "commercial experience" (and finding people to hire you so you can GET that experience is hard)
So for example the school I went to expected you'd take 32 courses over 4 years. 6 of these would be the first set of "gen-ed". Then there was the dreaded foreign language requirement which was another 4 courses. (And yes, you had to take them in the same language.) Then there was the 2 course english requirement and the math requirement which pretty much was 1 course. Of course you could test out of some of this or end up doing them anyway as part of your major but you were looking at at least 10 courses outside of your major.(but probably more) Given that your major was about 15 courses that meant you'd probably get around 3 courses in your entire "career" of stuff you might have an interest in that was outside of you major.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You could always CLEP out of some of the electives... http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html Enroll in your local community college and take your CLEP exams there. The requirements for a "pass" on a CLEP exam are usually lower at a community college than a four-year school. Once you've taken (and passed) all the CLEP tests you can, finish out a "Liberal Arts" Associates degree at the community college. Trust me on this. A liberal arts associates degree is the easiest to transfer without losing credits. Then transfer to an in-state four-year college and take all the CS classes and whatever remaining classes you need to get your Bachelor's degree.
As someone who's been working in the software industry for 30 years, and having a BSCS and a Masters in Software Engineering, here's my take on this question. I wish I had taken more general ED and more classes in other subjects. I had a great education in BSCS (Cal Poly SLO) as well as a great Masters in Software Engineering (OMSE at PSU Portland, OR), but what I miss today is the more well rounded experience and exposure to what I call 'non core' classes. Open your eyes and heart and challenge yourself to learn somethign that actually could be useful at a cocktail party other than the latest anti-pattern of the latest language fad. Languages and design patterns come and go with generations, but the concepts of philosophy and proper english writing never go out of style.
I like the AP strategy (maybe could have done more with that), and had thought of #3, but I particularly like #4.
Though I like my field (not a computer technology one), I most enjoyed the assorted one-of electives outside of my major.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Computer Science without a bit of an education on history and economics gives us BitCoin.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Liberal Arts education is meant to make you into a more well rounded person, either on your job or elsewhere. If you don't want to go through liberal arts education curriculum, then BA/BS is not for you. BA or BS means a lot more than a certain number of hours of coursework in the subject of your degree. If all you want is to have some piece of paper to show to your prospective employee at the interviews, then get a certificate in .. whatever is relevant. If you want to obtain more than that, get a normal BA or BS degree at a traditional (rear, not online crap) institution.
The level of "English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like" reached in an Australian school is not high, as evidenced by the low standards of discussion in some General Studies classes in UNSW. I don't know of the standards in US schools. Are you sure you need to know nothing else besides computer science?
Being an Engineer is more a method of approaching problems and a personality disposition than some piece of paper. While yes I value the engineering education I got, at the same time I have met many good engineers with a degree in another field. I have also met those with engineering degrees that I do NOT consider engineers.
If you are going to follow your line of thought, you might as well do something silly like have a national exam that all engineers have to pass with some equivalent of a Hippocratic oath and a secret handshake.
People that value degrees value the entire package. The full well rounded education.
People that have suffered through those long programs spend their lives looking for ways to use that info, and thus will often come up with stories about how some essay they wrote helped them through a problem.
Everyone pulls on challenges they have overcome to help solve new problems. For many people, university is where they were challenged the most often, and for some the only time they were. So it's logical to pull from those experiences and see them as valuable.
If you went off an joined the peace core and did that for four years, overcoming many obstacles you were go on in life pulling from those experiences and telling young people how everyone should join the peace core.
Personally I loved much of the gen education stuff. Law, History etc. Found the English classes rather tiresome to be honest.
However, it's VERY hard to learn if you either don't see value, or resent being forced to learn it. Based on your post I would say you don't need college right now. Keep working, focus, learn, and enjoy it. Learn as fast as you can. In 10 or so years, when you want to learn something new go then you can go to university and learn something like art history or physics. Go when you actually want to, and you will get something out of it, much out of it.
However asking such a question here is rather silly. Those of us who have degrees with talk of all the value of our tribulations and explain that you should just "grow up" and do it. Those of us that don't have degrees will tell you how wonderful our choices were as well I’m sure.
Follow your gut, you know what you need to do, and what you want to do. Will you get something out of all those GE classes? Sure, some are awesome and will force your mind into new areas. Are you a bad or incomplete soul if you get that in other ways? Of course not.
But remember, most people out there have degrees. And those of us who have suffered through our degrees will often resent and look down on those who try to do go without. Many don't want you to succeed and will try to prevent you from doing so. Keep in mind, If you do, it means we may have wasted our time. So without a degree, you will always face challenges, and downward eyes, and disrespect. Often not warranted or justified, but such is life.
So either join the club, or don't. You can't have a foot in both camps. And either camp will attack you for trying ;-)
It does very little but take money from people and make them think they're owed more then they really are.
I agree. My professors could have been replaced by DVD players. The labs could have been done at home, and submitted online (in fact, many were). I already knew more about all of the subjects than the textbooks tried to teach me thanks largely to the Internet, and partially to the local library I've had access to since I was 6.
Universities (currently) exist to force people to learn. Without requiring a certificate (diploma) how else would businesses know you're "qualified" (whatever that means)? If you could get the same job with the same pay with or without the certificate, how many people would study things they aren't interested in to get the job?
Personally, I hated college. It was more of a mental prison, shackling me with constraints of time via assignments. It forced me to perform the standard set of mental motions required to graduate. For this worthless piece of paper, I wasted 4 years of my life not doing what I was already good at, and not learning what I already knew. If only there was a way to opt out of the certificate and simply take all the finals, I would have gladly done so (in fact, I did just this -- tested out of some classes, but all classes should have this option, IMHO).
For those truly interested in learning and thus already possessing much knowledge, college is a waste of time except for the exposure to other people or facilities that you might not get access to otherwise. For the average person college is a mental training ground that is probably necessary to get them in the right mindset for learning.
Looking back, I should have just started a small business out of high school; I'd be farther along at it than I am now, having spent years in corporations and in college.
It's a shame. There are two types of people that college isn't right for: Those who don't need a college education for their career, and those who've already acquired the equivalent of a college education, but have no proof.
Studies are a waste of time.
That time is better spent getting work experience.
Now, for most jobs, degrees are pretty much a requirement. But in computer software, you could maybe show off some software you've made to compensate.
If you really want to do, you can probably work and get a degree at the same time (just go to the exams without attending any of the classes). I got my Master's degree this way, so it's doable.
What are my most useful courses to date? Which has had the most significant impact on my life? I'd have to say English I (5 paragraph composition, which my wife taught me in 10 minutes and then I mastered over a semester) and Advanced Composition (the basic logic and style of writing arguments).
Course I have enjoyed? Introductory drawing (the only early morning class my mind could handle since it was mostly studio work), neurobiology: mechanisms and disorders of sleep, environmental dispute resolution (actually just dispute resolution/art of negotiation with exercises themed in environmental issues), cultural anthropology and human diversity (because of the professor - any professor that throws candy at you during a review session as long as you are asking a question to 'simulate the pressure of an exam' is awesome), global environmental issues and solutions (again, mainly for the professor, but also some of the most difficult writing I ever did - sum up that weeks reading, typically 200-400 pages, in one paragraph - use specifics to demonstrate you read the material and synthesize the material into a novel analysis), and current directions in contemporary art (my TA commented that the readings were at the graduate level, and the essay exams were synthesis and novel analysis - NOT regurgitation).
Courses I think all students should leave with? Basic understanding of the sciences - chemistry, biology, and physics - along with a second language. I use to think that language requirements were pointless, but I now understand that once you learn to think in another language, you learn to think in another manner.
I understand this is a lot of work, but don't view gen ed requirements as a restriction - view it as an opportunity to explore. It gives you a broader framework to draw upon, makes you more rich and diverse, increases your flexibility of though, and gives you unique insights that you could not achieve normally. Which course do you think you'll enjoy the most - the discrete mathematics, theory of computer science, and machine language courses you will take for your major or the exploratory liberal arts courses that challenge you in new and unique ways (like Scandinavian literature, Kendo, astronomy, bacteriology, 3D design, or writing in the wild - a creative writing course that takes you out into the wilderness)!
Heck, I have been struggling in my undergraduate work. I'm officially declared in biology with a neurobiology emphasis, with the intent of going into computer science. Since my start I have found I am more and more drawn to art and environmental issues (including issues of social justice). Where is this all leading? Last semester I took a course in Human Computer Interface (HCI) design - a field that draws on computer science, psychology, social science, and art. I will most likely follow suit of another student and design an HCI major for myself rather than complete my biology, computer science, or art degree,
As for what to do? Since you feel - and may well be - adequately skilled, perhaps you can come up with a few products to develop and become an entrepreneur. Employers often look for the diverse background that show you are a well-rounded person with interests that lie outside your field of expertise, and without a degree you job prospects are equally limited. However, with the right idea, you can be the boss - perhaps you should try that route.
It may be true that what you term 'Gen Ed' classes may not advance your career, but there's more to life than a career. I'm a computer programmer, and I love the job, but some days I'd go crazy if I were staring at a computer screen... luckly, there's a very bright gentleman (let's call him Tom) who works down the hall from me who I can talk to... and the conversation is a lot more interesting because he knows more than computer science. I can make an oblique reference to Shakespeare, and he'll catch it. I can talk about quantum physics or electronics or biology, and he'll be right there with me.
... 20 minutes before it fills up, of course. Extrapolate that to the use of environmental resources in this country, and the fact that we only solve political problems in this country when we see them... gee wouldn't it be nice to have some smart people around who actually understand exponential growth, and could actually warn people that this is a really bad way to go, before we're one doubling away from really bad things happening? ... And wouldn't it be nice to be able to convince the nice conservative southern half of the country (who aren't big on science, because science tells them that the earth is more than 4000 years old) that just maybe the scientists have it right this time, and we actually have to make major economic changes, or we're fooked...
Now let's say that you were working in the office next to mine. The two of us have roughly the same programming experience. Tom has moved to a different job. The company that you and I are working for goes tits up, and we're both looking for a new job. Tom's company is hiring, and Tom is likely to have some say in the hiring process... who is Tom likely to hire, me, or you?
Ouch. Some 'Gen Ed' classes would have been nice.
Here's another thing to consider... you live in a country that has some really substantial problems that it needs to address... our economy isn't looking too good, our political system is having serious problems because people are pigeonholing themselves into groups who agree with their own narrow political beliefs, we have serious environmental issues that need to be addressed... say... If you have a petri dish, where bacteria are doubling every 20 minutes. You know the size of the bacteria, and that about 2 million of the little critters will live in the dish. You do some math, and figure out that it will take about 7 hours to fill the petri dish. When will the petri dish be half full? At 6:40
How's your computer science education going to help you there? You need political science and math and economics to even get a handle on the problem.
See what I did there? Analogy. You learn it in English class. You'll need some really good symbolism to bring the religious right on to the table on environmental issues, because right now, the business critters have their ear, and the business critters are all focused on next quarter's profits... say... did the guys setting up the bonus structure for CEOs take that 'exponential use of environmental resources' thing into account? Maybe they could have used a broader education...
Let's flip the question and see how it sounds:
"I'm interested in getting an English Lit degree. I've been reading since I was 5, and like many of us, taught myself. I am familiar with a number of languages, understand paradigms, themes and subtexts; I'm familiar with common plot arcs and am a decent writer. I learn quickly. I work 2 jobs and I have a life. I want to get an English Lit degree from an accredited school (a BA, that is), but I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in Math, Science, Biology, Chemistry and the like. While these fields are useful, they will not contribute to making me better at writing. Moreover, I attended an excellent high school that covered these fields of study in great detail, and I feel no need or desire to spend more time studying these things. I want a BA in English Lit with no science requirements. Any suggestions?"
Would the OP agree that high school presents enough of a background in the sciences to let me slide through without setting foot in any of the gen-ed science courses?
You'll have something like one Humanities (Hum) requirement per semester, and it will be tailored to people putting all their effort into tech courses.
At least that was my experience going to Stevens Institute of Technology circa 1986 - 91
Read this about programming language features:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)#Blub
Now apply it to your education.
"Specialization is for insects." -- Robert Heinlein
The question rubs me the wrong way. I understand the desire to stay focused. But you want to be well-rounded. You should want to be able to write well, to have a broad grasp of the way the universe works and how you fit into it. You should want to make your body stronger and more graceful than it is today. You should want to learn to sing, or play a musical instrument.
And this might be your last chance to do any of that in a supportive setting like college. Once you get into the rat race, it's hard to jump back out and go exploring. Really hard.
We have a saying in the software engineering world: Avoid premature optimization. You don't go crazy optimizing your program before you really understand what you want it to be. You don't optimize before you know what sections of the program will be the real bottlenecks. You don't optimize at the expense of the flexibility and readability of the code. What you're demanding to do to yourself right now strikes me as a form of premature optimization.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
"Having a life" conflicts with "making me better at my job". Job & life are intertwined, so you never know where a piece of knowledge from one will help the other.
... and your life.
On the surface studying history, for example wouldn't seem to help divining more about OOP. But you might be reading a bio of some historical figure, come across something he or she came up with, and solve that bottleneck that's troubled you all day (or week).
Don't try to choose *all* your classes based solely on what they'll do for your 9 to 5. Pick some stuff that interests you outside your chosen field. The more you know in general, the better you'll be at your job
If all you want to do is learn to code and be a code monkey, then go to a trade school.
Getting a university degree is not supposed to be simply about getting a job. It is supposed to create a more well rounded individual. You can normally tell just through 5-10 minutes of conversation with someone at a dinner party who has gone to university and who has not.
If you don't care about that, and simply want to get a job and make money, then don't go to university, and build your resume with provable performance.
A degree does not make you any smarter. You should be able to manage. An engineering degree does not make you an inventor. Neither Bell, Edison had a degree. Tesla had one but he was the most prolific and greatest inventor the USA ever had. Edison is the most famous for his electric light invention, which patent he bought for only $5000 from a British medical Student who invented it in Toronto. You always could try a course from a mail order group.
Go to the UK. Universities here focus only on your major. No gen-ed classes. And unless you go to Scotland, the degree is 3 years instead of 4. So it comes out cheaper and quicker then the US version but you get the same CS knowledge. Some schools here (like the department at Edinburgh university or Manchester) are considered to be on par with the top CS schools in the US.
Various schools have various rules around electives. I can't remember all that well, (I drank a lot in college) but I believe electives were exactly that, you *could* go outside your discipline, I'm not sure there was anything preventing you from taking more CS courses. I'm probably wrong. I know I enjoyed taking Classical History and a few others that were a break from most of my CS course....
However, you should be thinking less about "having" to take electives, and trying to get into a good CS school. Not all CS programs are the same, and if you have to take a few more electives at a better CS school, then so be it. I think you have your priorities mixed. Pick the best CS school you are able, and go for it. That would be my advice. You might even enjoy taking astronomy 100 or something like that which is hardly a course, enjoyable, and will raise your average. Win-Win-WIn!
As a software engineer my greatest concern is having a job in 10-20 years. Companies do not want to spend 2-3 times as much of a US employee when an Indian will do it for far less. Do yourself a favor, go to school concentrate on business and try to start your own company making the software which interest you. If we continue to outsource US engineering jobs, for you to get a job you will have to move to India....
I got my BS and MS in Mathematical and Computer Sciences at the Colorado school of Mines on 2007. I had to take exactly 6 courses (18 hours) of non-engineering courses to graduate with both degrees. Sure there was physics and chemistry and metallurgy, but very little liberal arts fluff. I learned C, assembly, and Perl in high school but after the first programming course (CS161) it was all new or more applied material than the practical programming had taught me.
-- Adam McCormick
...and it is clear that you have never been to Silicon Valley or met any of the people who created the computer revolution. Also, where do you think those "talented people from all over the world" go to college?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you only want to take courses related to your field, then a trade school such as ITT Tech is probably what you're after. They typically offer associates (2yr) degrees, because aside from the fact that most people wouldn't be able to afford the time and money it would require, it would be difficult to provide a 4 year curriculum that is 100% focused on CS.
A bachelor's degree means you've taken art, literature, english and math. Subtract that and you've got an associates degree. So I'm not sure why the OP feels like he should be able to get a bachelor's degree while only doing the work required for an associates degree.
Businesses look at a bachelor's degree and realize that a certain part of earning that degree is having the fortitude to stick it out and go through all the crap courses like financial accounting and biology that are most likely unrelated to your chosen career path.
If you want to work somewhere where your entire job will be 100% technical, then I don't think you should have a problem getting an interview with an associates degree in a proper field from a reputable school. On the other hand, if you want to work at a "normal" business, which is not in the technical sector, then they want to see a bachelors degree because they want to know that their employees are well rounded.
In short, I don't think the question is valid because it seems the OP is essentially asking for a bachelors degree without having to do all of the extra work. What he wants education wise is an associates degree, but if he wants to work somewhere that requires a bachelors degree, then he just has to tough it out like everyone else.
All over the world, although it is true that many of them have worked in US universities as postgraduates. Cheering for the flag is very fashionable I know but cutting spending on education was a real kick in the teeth for the USA and really has hurt - that's what I'm talking about.
My point above is that silicon valley was a bigger success than merely Californian or US talent alone could produce and thus exceeded what Japan, Germany or more recently China could do in the same fields. Look at the history of Intel as an example, or dozens of others.
Also forget the patriotic kneejerk response because it's not a criticism of the country but instead the current education system. The same comparison could be made between students now from a poorly funded education system and students in the past. Also when the average dropped the expensive private schools didn't have to work as hard to produce above average students, and when the profit motive kicked in the quality of their education declined as well.
If I won the lottery or had a windfall one day I'd quit my job to free up my time and go to school just for the fun of it, especially for the General Education and other courses so that I could expand my view of the world and the knowledge acquired in all the time we've been here. Learning is fun especially if you pursue what you like and sometimes stumble into the unknown but interesting things. Don't skip the general studies if you can, enjoy them and broaden your horizons.
I have a semi-successful career in server administration in finance sector and now a different industry and am able to live very comfortable in minor luxury right now without a high school diploma. If you are truly a good programmer then you will be able to make a name for yourself and have a successful career in development and technology, if not then a degree won't help you.
I have seen my friends go off to college and return no different than they were before and no smarter or more enlightened. I have always eyed universities with watchful disdain because of what I saw happening there through my experiences with my friends at their schools. I am weary of them now and question their value for the general populous. Many young people are forced into studies there where they could save time and money and get vocational school training instead. Many of my co-workers throughout the years in the top financial institutions working on the technology side had degrees but not quite enough experience and technological geekness to progress them past the mid level admins and operator type work.
Now that I am a bit older with 10+ years in the industry with a lot of time at different top level firms I can say that at this point in time where my career and life are pretty stable I would understand and enjoy university studies more then when I was younger. I feel that I am now past the time wasting aspects of my life, girls, games, parties, that I now appreciate the greater things in a geek's life like deeper understanding and further search for knowledge. I have this feeling that I will try and enroll in some classes just to see what I can learn.
Unknown Unknowns
I read most of the score 2 and above threads and the one that really stands out is the one below and cetialphav is absolutely correct about the unknown unknowns being the greatest level of ignorance that a person can experience.
by cetialphav (246516) on 2011-06-25 12:48 (#36569282)
In almost every project that people do in life, the biggest risk of failure comes from the unknown unknowns. These are the things that you didn't know, but that you didn't even realize that you didn't know. The known unknowns are straightforward to deal with. If I decide to start a business, I know that I know nothing about business tax issues, but since I am aware of that I can consult experts and educate myself. One of the benefits of general education is that you make your set of unknown unknowns smaller and the space of known unknowns bigger.
It would be more accurate to write "statistics are the plural of an observation" but I was certain you would understand my reply as a reply and not standing on it's own - and it was YOU that introduced "anecdote" in the conversation in an attempt to belittle an observed trend. Adding in your own description and then belittling your own description is disgusting but I'll assume that it was not deliberate but merely forgetful.
What the graduate students observed turned out to be the same as comparing the results of similar tests between countries and the comparisons matched the observations. In the past the USA did not slip so far behind. It doesn't appear to be a case of increasing standards elsewhere either because there has been seen to be a need to provide an increasing number of remedial courses to make up for an observed decline. I don't know if you are cheering and waving the flag for a country that must never be seen to do wrong, are young and take it personally or actually think that what is being observed by others is not happening. All I know is that I've read a variety of opinions from people in education that are very worried about declining standards and are trying to work out how best to deal with that - I assume that they do know what they are writing about even if they would never use a phrase such as "wicked smart". I'll assume you know about your area of expertise as well and are just using phrases like that to be trendy and to fit in with all the others with a reduced vocabulary.