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State Colleges May Offer Best ROI On Comp Sci Degrees
jfruh (300774) writes "PayScale has recently released a survey of various U.S. colleges and majors, and determined, perhaps unsurprisingly, that computer science graduates of elite colleges make the most money in post-graduate life. However, blogger Phil Johnson approached the problem in a different way, taking into account the amount students and their families need to pay in tuition, [and found] that the best return on investment in comp sci degrees often comes from top-tier public universities, which cost significantly less for in-state students but still offer great rewards in terms of salaries for grads."
Unfortunately, you have to be a finance major to understand the report.
But the Finance major can't possibly be a CS major, unless he went to college twice, which would means he can't plan anyway. Regardless, if he went for Finance first, then to CS, he obviously realized that CS was better. But, if he went for CS first, then for Finance, he would then realize that CS was better. This catch 22 is the best proof why Agile is the preferred method even when taking college courses.
Have you read my journal today?
Combine that with lower salaries and you've got a winning combination for an employer.
You proved the point of the article with this statement alone.
A degree from a state university is basically toilet paper as compared to, say, MIT or Harvard or any other prestigious college/university.
Prestige isn't worth that much. Sure, I occasionally see job ads for people with pretty degrees - especially in status driven fields like finance. But they don't pay that much of a premium for those people.
Employers like indebted fresh graduates, because they're 1) idealistic and enthusiastic, having not had their souls crushed yet, and 2) a $1000 student loan payment makes it harder to quit when they treat you like shit and make you do the work of 3 people.
While that is plausible, do you have any evidence of such a bias?
A couple of intro classes, programming languages, discrete maths, use of the popular programming language d'jour, operating systems, data structures, algorithms and computability, compilers etc. Am I close to most people?
So basically the degree itself is a commodity, though not the person. So it doesn't really matter at the undergrad level if you go to Ivy or State. The foundation is the same. There may be differentiation at the graduate level, but that often depends more on your adviser and the adviser's reputation.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I thought April 15 was Happy Obama Day.
Doesn't MATTER where you went for it. Comp. Sci. IS Comp. Sci., no matter WHERE you took it. Imo (& yes, experience with 6++ yrs. of collegiate academic experience AFTER highschool & dual degrees on my end), it's what YOU PUT INTO IT that counts & matters, in the long haul. You could go to "worstschoolinUSA U", but if YOU put in the time, hard work & effort (not as bad IF/WHEN you love doing what you're into & studying), it pays off, no matter what.
APK
P.S.=> Personally, I feel *IF* you blew all that extra ca$h on some "prestigious university" (& I went to a fairly highly esteemed Northeast US school, on combined academic + athletic scholarship (see Letter K) -> http://lemoynedolphins.com/spo... ), you wasted your money - actually come RIGHT DOWN TO IT? Any field can be an "autodidactically self-taught one" - look @ math & Ramanujan for example... it IS, doable.
So, I can't agree with you on what education is REALLY about - learning jobskills.
(So, I can't agree that your viewpoint's the correct one that pays off OR why you should be doing schooling beyond highschool really... So sure, as far as payoff? Your view sometimes it does do so, but I am speaking PURELY from the perspective of knowledge you gain only, not politics - you went to school to learn something you could earn a living from, since the "other guy" customer CAN'T or WON'T do the job, himself - the school you go to, no matter how "pretigious/elite" it is, won't do THAT for you)... apk
The MIT or Harvard, for a degree in Computer Science doesn't offer you superior education, it just looks nice on your resume. This is all fine and good to try to get a job first job. However after time less and less is dependent on where you got your degree from, just that you got a degree.
Now we have some employers who get impressed by the fancy name, but those balance out by the ones who get turned off by it. Because they often create pretentious workers who think they know it all and are not willing to learn the real way of doing things, or listen to the experience from the guy who doesn't have such a fancy degree.
In general companies do not like their employees with a lot of debt, because they are under more stress, and stress causes more irrational behavior. Sell their car, sleep in the office, or just get snappy at customers.
A degree from a State University vs a prestigious college isn't toilet paper, especially if you are interested in going to the corporate world. Your education in a State School espectially for undergrad work is probably better then the big names. Why? They get more professors who want to teach undergrads, vs the big names where you have more professors involved in their own research projects and teaching undergrads is one of those useless chores they need to do. So you have undergrads getting better teaching, and more time understanding the content, and less time just being bullied by the professor who wants the class to fail out so he can use the rest of the semester on his research.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's an educated assumption. If you look at it from the employer's point of view.. what are they looking for? Cheap, not good. Easily abused, not possessing self-respect. Indebted, not independent. They want interchangeable cogs that will accept horrible treatment, because it's cheaper to treat employees like shit than it is to treat them like human beings.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
April 1st, don't care.
Yes, brag about that Harvard CS degree. lol.
A degree from a state university is basically toilet paper as compared to, say, MIT
Maybe? Maybe not.
After your say second job do they look at where you graduated? Not usually unless they are some sort of school snob. I have not met many of those in my job hopping.
Employers like indebted fresh graduates
So you get a head start on work life balance too?
While you may be trying to justify that you have huge debt and went to some 'big' school. The majority of those working out there did not. You are worrying about how say 1% of the population spends its time when you need to worry about the guy next to you.
I am nearly 700k dollar wise ahead of most of the people I work with. Because I picked 'good enough' paths and stay away from debt.
Not everyone is a rock star. Those guys are *rare*. Though everyone thinks they are. Most people are average. Once you come to accept you are average. You can get on with your life and away from the lies your parents told you.
chances are that you didn't pay as much to go to that aggie school, so you don't have as much debt
I paid front to end on my education ~30k from a 'aggie school'. I have made from that nearly 1.5 million dollars. That is a seriously awesome ROI. I have 0 debt. Because it was blindingly obvious that the dudes who came in to sell loans were *SELLING* me debt. I did not need debt, I need money.
You are advocating that I spend 3x-4x to get the *same* education with a better sticker on it.
Computer science has pretty little to do with what people actually do in the real world. I use it once and awhile. But 99% of the time I am hooking up forms to fill in some database somewhere. To actually use the CS skills I would need to work in games. I decided spending all my time at the office was destructive to my persona and my wallet.
Combine that with lower salaries and you've got a winning combination for an employer
Here is a tip. When you interview you are also interviewing the company. Look to how they treat their employees.
Debt interest is the eraser of wealth. That and taxes.
No, I didn't, I contradicted it. I don't know where these folks got their numbers (probably from the PR assholes at these universities) but in my experience, if you've got a degree from a public university like I do, it goes on the last page of your resume in very small print, lest it work against you.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
indeed, with less debt you don't need as large of a salary. This opens more jobs because more people are willing to hire for less!
Berkeley is, if the (UK) Times Higher Education Supplement Rankings are to be believed, one of the top 10 universities in the world - and top three in engineering and technology. I'm pretty sure that constitutes "elite" standing. But in this article, it's treated as a "top-tier public university." Is it both?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Aaaand we're done.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
With what you said here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... except that even at postgrad/postdoc levels, it STILL is what YOU yourself make it (how much time, study, & effort you put into it, & I also mean how much ABOVE & BEYOND the 'std, academic success formula' of "for every 1 hour of class, you should study 3++ beyond it on your own" etc./et al) - I still think that even @ those levels, it's MOSTLY what you put into it, to get the MOST out of it.
APK
P.S.=> Other than that though? I am with you, 110%... apk
So it's not actually based on evidence? Two can play at that game.
There's the other side of the coin, namely, that a employee who wracks up a lot of debt is more likely to making bad workplace decisions (since they've already demonstrated an inclination for doing so) or engage in theft and embezzlement (because they have huge financial incentive to do so).
...and there's my alma mater sitting tied for 11th :-)
The school that, I will most emphatically add, cost me less for the duration than Harvard costs per *semester these days!
Elite colleges and universities don't necessarily have better programs. The real advantage to going to an elite college is the contacts you make. In a state school you're likely to meet someone who has to work 40 hours a week and goes to school part time. That person is simply working towards a degree and will not make any contacts and probably few friends.
In an elite college, it's important to the college that you make friends and contacts that's why they're expensive. It's the quintessential college experience. No only do you make friends, but alums help graduates. Even the most minor private college knows this and will encourage student collaboration.
I've worked in various different work environments, but thankfully nothing as horrible as that. I do know that employees with kids and a mortgage are seen as being easier to manage than contractors with large nest eggs or even employees with a sufficiently large "f.u. fund", for authoritarian managers that is. On the flip side, people in the work force who are rich and independent enough to not have to put up with any crap from their manager, are there of their own volition, and probably like what they do. Such self-motivated, happy employees generally make for better employees.
I have certainly never come across an employer who favours or actively seeks out indebted job seekers in order to have a tighter control over their workforce.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Public universities may offer the best ROI on degrees, but when it comes to the ROI for drop-outs, Stanford, Harvard and MIT have the market cornered.
You assume that anyone gives a shit about the quality of education once you're trying to get a job, they care about WHERE you went, not if you got a good education or not.
Yeah, bullshit. What color is the sky on your planet?
They want their employees as stressed out as possible, because they think that's the way they'll be the most productive. They're wrong, of course, but that doesn't mean they don't work people to death. If someone acts up they'll just fire them and replace them with another cog.
Again, nobody gives a shit about the quality of education, they care where you went. Let's say you've got two resumes on your desk. One is from someone who had a 4.0 at Aggie U, the other is from someone with a 4.0 at Harvard. Guess which resume winds up in the bin with no further scrutiny? Hint: It's not the one from the Harvard grad.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Notice that the article specifically mentioned top-tier state universities. Berkley, U Michigan, Georgia Tech, Chapel Hill: these are all state schools that are as good as or better than many elite private schools. Their CS programs might not be quite as strong as Harvard's or MIT's, but the quality to tuition ratio is definitely higher.
I'll put my "toilet paper" State College Comp. Sci. degree up against your Ivy League degree any day.
Yeah, your post is pretty much bullshit. A CS degree from Harvard isn't worth anything more than any other college. They aren't known for their science or engineering program. One from MIT is worth more due to their reputation in the field, but no more so than a couple of other top schools like UC-Berkley or UIUC which are public (or Stanford which isn't)..
Basically there's 3 tiers of degrees. The elite CS schools (about the top 5-6) earn bonus points, but more is expected from you. Then there's a middle tier of about a dozen schools with a good reputation but not up to the elite. It may help you get to an interview, but gives you no bonus points once there. Everything else just lumps together in the yes he has a degree box.
Please note that online degrees, MOOC certs, University of Phoenix type schools, fall under no degree at all.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
If you're after a good solid education, state schools do offer the best ROI for undergrad studies. I went to one, and was able to (barely) pay for it myself with a small amount of student loans, summer work and a little savings. Undergraduate education, from a content perspective, is very similar everywhere. I have a chemistry degree, and almost all undergrad chemistry programs are the same -- 2 survey courses, 2 organic chem, 2 physical chem, 2 analytical chem, 4 or 5 different lab courses, 4 or 5 electives (which vary based on what the schools' professors are concentrating on.)
The main differentiating factors I've noticed with private schools are the networking opportunities in and out of school, and the "cushy" factor. Even in a high tax state like New York, the state universities are pretty Spartan as far as accommodations go. Lately, states have been spending lavish sums trying to catch up in terms of sports facilities, etc. but they're still not a Harvard or Yale. Students going the state university route need to understand that they're going to get what they pay for, and likely be ahead of their private university peers in terms of raw dollars in debt when they get out. They need to be self-motivated and mature enough to handle their own affairs -- outside of class, everything at a state university is like dealing with a state agency. You're one student of thousands, and no one but you is going to care if you fail out. As far as opportunities go, private schools do give you a leg up. There are certain jobs you can't even hope to interview for such as white-shoe consulting firms or investment banking, who almost exclusively recruit from Ivy League schools. In my experience, this only applies to your first job or two, however. I've interviewed both public and private college grads, and there's an equal distribution of qualified people in each camp.
Since tuition is going way up at both the public and private levels, students who don't already have the money saved really do need to do a cost-benefit analysis. I probably would have had a better experience at somewhere like MIT or Stanford, just because I would have been studying with more smart people. But, I didn't have the money for $100K+ tuition. Students need to stop and think whether the caché of a big name school offsets the huge expense. They need to think about things like:
If the answer to any of these is "yes" and the student has a pot of money, they should go to private school. Otherwise, they should save their money. If a student is willing to hustle a little to get their first job, their accomplishments at that job and the connections they make will carry them through the rest of their careers. They probably won't reach stratospheric heights of corporate power, but talented students graduating with in-demand degrees can still do well.
I do have one problem with that ranking there. If you look at the actual methodology, it appears to be entirely subjective. I noticed the school I attend for my masters is ranked worse than 100, where another school, which I did my undergraduate at is ranked some 40 spots higher. And I can say from personal experience, the school I'm doing my graduate work at has a much better program, and the students know there stuff a lot better. The place I did my undergrad from, 95% of the students I wouldn't hire today, the school I'm doing my grad work at, I would hire 95% of them.
I have certainly never come across an employer who favours or actively seeks out indebted job seekers in order to have a tighter control over their workforce.
I have only once: it was an Indian who loved H1-Bs as he could abuse them all he wanted because they'd have a hard time leaving. I did a couple months of contract work there and I could tell that it didn't take long for him to grow to dislike me as I would stand up to him all of the time.
Harvard has a CS program?
That's been the opposite of my experience
I didn't go to an Ivy League school so I can't verify this first hand but I would suspect that both Public and Private schools offer much the same in terms of what you learn while you are there. The big advantage, I suspect, in going to a Private school is the people you meet and the contacts you make rather than what you learn in the classroom.
Think about it - who goes to expensive private schools? Sons and daughters of alumni. Kids of successful parents. Kids of wealthy foreign families. Those are tomorrows movers and shakers. Getting to meet them over a beer at the campus pub forms potentially long term relationships that might help you out down the road.
So the real value is more in who you meet than what you learn. It's not what you know it's who you know.
If you even have your GPA on your resume after you graduate from college, I would question quite a bit anyway
Only if they are clueless.
They are assholes and you really don't want to be working for them. Run!
Anyone with a 4.0 from anywhere deserves a phone screen at a minimum, assuming they have relevant experience. As others have noted, as you get more experience, what you have done professionally becomes far more important than where you spent your undergrad days. Where you did your grad degree(s) is given more weight, but even then, it's what you did with your time there.
You have apparently had bad experiences in corporateland. I would suggest a few years in startups maybe.
Having worked with bosses, and been part of the hiring process... Those big college names mean very little. Perhaps an equivalent of 2 more years of experience.
So we got Person A with 4 years experience and a State Degree and we got a Person with 2 years experience and a Ivy League Degree, then we will have a crap shoot. Just because of the difficulty of getting in the school means that this person has a good track record of working hard. But that is about it.
However the real value of a good education isn't getting the job, but keeping and advancing in the job. If you know your stuff then you will advance, if you just an arrogant prick unless you truly mastered the art of BS and Networking (not common with people with just a CS degree) then you will probably stay at your position while others work up.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
> The MIT or Harvard, for a degree in Computer Science doesn't offer you superior education, it just looks nice on your resume.
Computer Science is severely improving in many universities, but the top-tier univeristies for Computer Science really do provide a CS education that's a step above what's available in most places.
This isn't liberal arts where it's money and alumni politics. Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Carnagie Mellon, and Harvard have *fantastic* undergraduate education for computing and engineering. There are a good number of state schools that have become comparable, but they've earned their reputation for a good reason.
This comes from someone without a degree.
NJIT does not cost $130,000 for an undergrad degree. Not even close. It costs me $30,000 without financial aid so this chart is off by 100k for some reason...To me this looks like a bogus chart where they over estimated the costs of cheap schools to make bourgeois private schools look better.
I know very few people who actually went to university to get an education. And even fewer employers who care more about "Education" than "degree." Nearly all of the people I work with and went to college with went for a degree.
If you could do the job you want to have for the rest of your life the day you leave high school (like most software engineers who actually write code for a living - assuming some learning on the job) then your greatest ROI is to get an accredited diploma from the cheapest, fastest university you can go to.
You are filling in a checkbox, not seeking an education... don't fool yourself.
A degree is a practical expense for most people. An "education" is a luxury afforded only for the very rich. Don't go into crippling debt to get an education, you (basically everyone) can't afford that crap. You can study and learn on your own, later. You are there for a degree, and don't forget it.
An entire generation of people seem confused about this. They think an "education" is worth going into massive debt, they think an "education" will get them a job that will pay the bills... well, I should use the past tense, because nobody thinks that anymore. According to what I have read about "Millennials"
Degree as part of a structured career plan = good idea
Education as a "career will follow" plan is OVER, it was the case in 1965, but you will enjoy a lifetime full of debt and meager earnings if you use that "plan" now.
If it seems harsh and anti-education I am sorry. I am all about learning, but novelty $100,000 sheepskins, sold at 4% interest to first generation college students with no career plan - really boils my blood.
It is really disappointing that in my lifetime we have managed to shift seeking an education from an empowering experience to hopelessly and permanently hindering the lives of middle and lower class people.
Aaaand we're done.
Cool I can have the last word then... :)
Aw, because you want to justify having some better piece of paper than me?
How much does a 6% loan cost you on 100k over 30 years? It is ~50k. 50k I can put towards something else.
If you do not think interest and taxes erases your wealth you are *really* stupid. I am giving money to people who give me something very intangible in return. It is called a bad ROI. Perhaps you may want to swing by a school and take some accounting classes. I noted you ignored my actually net worth to pick on something I bothered to work out.
I have the spreadsheets (and math) to back up my assertions. You have vague hand wavy 'this is better'. And you have a 'prestigious' degree?
You are going to need to lose the arrogance. There is one huge thing that gets you better jobs. It is attitude you shared with former co-workers (you know references and 'hey you used to work with so and so'). I have personally made sure some former co-workers stay that way. Not because they sucked at their jobs in fact quite the opposite, my other co-workers agreed quite quickly too. Because they were office poison. You are heading down that path young man. You will find yourself with no job prospects even with your ivy league degree.
Your ivy league degree gets you only a small opportunity. You are overestimating what it means (which is ok it is clear you seem to lack experience despite your lowish SD id). You will quickly find no one cares anymore. Computer programmers are a practical sort we want to know if you are competent and can get the job done. Your degree will open some doors but you will find it closes others (as you are following the people who were just as arrogant as you before then). However after job 1 or 2 you will find no one really cares at all. If they did you would see it on the resume boards.
I applied for other universities, but when it came down to it I found that going to Oregon State University was the best bang for my then-limited buck. And I've been very happy with my CS degree.
In addition to getting an education, you are getting an alumni network.
I have friends with MIT/Harvard degrees, and when they are looking for a job, they go to the alumni network and get access to VP/C-level types that they have never met on the strength of the college connection. This translates directly into good jobs that would not have been available if they went to State College.
You don't have to be a finance major to understand that the calculations were flawed. They only count the amount spent on tuition. They don't count the cost of your human capital and the opportunity costs involved. Investing in yourself is not like investing in the stock market because you only have one life to invest in. So you cannot just compare the difference in tuition between a state school and Stanford because you are also giving up a portion of your young life to your educational pursuits.
Their highest 20 year net ROI/yr school was University of Virginia, but they only returned $1.3 million in total. Stanford returned $1.7 million. So even though the annual ROI was greater at the University of Virginia, you are still leaving $400k on the table by not choosing Stanford. And considering you can borrow money at 6.8% interest, it only costs you $90k more after interest to go to Stanford instead of the University of Virginia (if the loans are paid over a 20 year period).
So the only correct calculation is that going to Stanford will net you an extra $300k versus going to the University of Virginia (obviously this is not a very precise calculation though).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
No, the mit/harvard/stanford degree is the ticket to get into the startup club. Without that, you are not getting money, they will just go to the guy with a copy of your idea, who went to the correct school.
It depends what type of CS work you want to do, for instance in Health and Biotech, Harvard looks REALLY good. I think there are really even more tiers than that, but also the OP's costs are completely wrong, though I'm betting those are the average actual out of pocket costs (Harvard students for instance almost universally qualify for a certain amount of scholarships.)
Not sure what university you went to or degree you got, but I actually have a CS degree from UNT (which is on the list) and no those numbers are pretty damn accurate (they might even be low for a 20 year ROI, running paper napkin math mine is actually a lot higher atm). Just because you have a bad anecdotal experience does not mean that is the baseline for everyone.
Yes, mine is anecdotal too, but the numbers they posted back me up and may even undersell my experience so far.
...what you put in to it. I went to a local state university for CS, and I studied hard and did well in school. Four years later I had my BS in CS in hand having paid less than $15K in tuition (and that wasn't all that long ago). I got a job locally with the help of referrals by professors who had good working relationships with many of the local tech employers. In short, my entire education was a helluva bargain, and helped launch my career.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. A degree from a state university is basically toilet paper as compared to, say, MIT
Clearly UVa, W&M, JMU, and GMU are all garbage schools. Or Berkeley. Or Texas A&M.
Have fun with your debt, hope your spin at the job lotto is worth it.
For the main state unis around here, freshmen get contacted by phone from the likes of Google, Facebook, Intel, IBM, AMD, Microsoft, etc. Unless those are bad companies for which to work. Most of the people at my work graduation from our local state university, in which the city has a population of under 30k, and we've lost several employees to Google and Microsoft in the past few years. We're a small shop, so those several people represented about 10% of our admins.
Are you aware that UVa and Berkeley are both public universities with very low resident tuition?
You also often get internships in your local area.
I pity today's college student burdened with obscene tuition. When I decided to go back to school (because of a non-existant social life) my choices were pretty open - I had good undergrad grades and a mind-blowing GRE. Tuition/fees at UT Austin c. 1970 was under $700 a *year* and I rented a quite decent duplex for $135 a month. Planning to spend most of my time chasing coeds, I opted for a not-so-high-pressure state school over an expensive, high-pressure, prestige school. Never regretted it - chasing coeds was great fun until one caught me and I had to finish my PhD. But I came out w/o any debt and I'm still head-over-heels crazy about that girl.
Alas such school fun is no longer possible, both tuition and academic pressure is now obscene at UT. It's today's students who have to walk 5 miles in the snow to school, uphill both ways. Damn, but I wish they could share my lawn.
Gee, look at all of those state colleges on there.
Its almost like he had absolutely no clue what he was talking about.
1.) A license to practice the psychiatric sciences. 2.) A PhD in psychiatric sciences 3.) A formal examination of my "alleged mental state" (according to YOU, "Dr. Quack: 'SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk of /.' (lol))
??
* No? I didn't *think* so - hell, I knew not...
APK
P.S.=> You're nothing more than some libelous snivelling little ac troll - nothing more (that's certain, & no degree's required to identify THAT much about you - purest obvious truth)...
... apk
I got CS degree from state university. So cheap I worked my way through undergrad as TA and IT help. No debt. But no debt worked against me when I bought my first brand new car a year after graduating. They said having no debt and half the money for the car was a bad thing!
Prestige isn't worth that much. Sure, I occasionally see job ads for people with pretty degrees - especially in status driven fields like finance. But they don't pay that much of a premium for those people.
The prestige is a very small part of an Ivy degree's worth. The true worth comes in the connections made. Do you want all of your friends from college to be average state school graduates or Stanford graduates? I only went to a state school because I slacked off so much in my younger years, but even then my best early job opportunities came from past classmates tracking me down when they were starting companies (one startup and one consulting company). I can only imagine how much better those job opportunities would have been if my past classmates had been from Stanford, MIT, or Harvard.
One interesting theory about the value of weaker schools is that you will shine more in that environment. I got my last two jobs because former classmates remembered me as the one guy they wanted to work with. If I had went to Stanford I might not have had as good of opportunities because I could have just blended in. I may have been one of the brightest students at my state school, but probably would have been about average at Stanford or MIT.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You're right, a 4.0 deserves a phone screen, but not for the reason that most think. The purpose for phone screening a 4.0 is to make sure they took the time to have a few beers once in a while, to make it more likely they'll be able to work in a team.
Congrats, you've proved that the two aren't really significantly different.
Startups are generally known for expecting ridiculously long hours, and then shafting employees when the company hits pay dirt. I don't know why you'd recommend him to go that route.
I don't think it matters too much where you go to college. If you are good at computer programming, companies will try to snatch you up quick. Some people don't even go to school for it because they teach themselves how to program. Over time, it will matter less which school you came from but rather the experiences and interpersonal skills you have gained. This will help you greatly advance higher in both position and salary.
One thing I've found in the work world that they don't prepare you for at all in college is the work environment. In college, you take CS or engineering classes, and you do the work on your own, frequently in the solitude of your own apartment, or at the library where it's quiet. Then, when it's time for an exam, you take it in the classroom, and talking and discussion and other noises are not allowed. This should all be changed, because it doesn't reflect the modern work environment.
First off, students should be required to do all their programming assignments and exercises together in one large room, at rows of open tables with no dividers between them. A class full of business majors or better yet marketing majors should be brought in and sat right next to them, so they can do their collaborative projects next to the CS/engr majors. The business/marketing majors can talk loudly all they want, and interrupt the CS/engr majors while they're working with various useless comments ("How's it going!"). The CS/engr majors should not be allowed to take their work anywhere else; they have to do it only in this environment.
When it's test time, the test should be held in a busy corridor. Put all the students at long tables together on the side of the corridor, so that all the foot traffic passes right next to them.
If you can't do your programming work with lots of noise and commotion and people talking to you and walking by you constantly, you have NO business being a programmer in today's corporate world where open-plan work areas are now the norm.
Startups are generally known for expecting ridiculously long hours, and then shafting employees when the company hits pay dirt. I don't know why you'd recommend him to go that route.
Yes, decent point. Long hours are common, true, and I generally have had the experience of startups turning into wind-downs, so no experience hitting pay dirt, BUT:
In a start-up you are less a cog and more integral to the success/failure of the company. The last start-up (sorry, "wind-down") I was a part of put me in the lead as the only in-house developer in the company. While the $ is maybe not as good, I found working with a smaller team to be much more gratifying than working as "corporate cog". That said, I'm working for a mid-sized company now, my bosses are decent, and it's OK.
So maybe better advice would be to simply find a decent company. Easier said than done, but there is a scale of crappiness in the corporate world, and asking around, it's possible to find reasonable places to work. Find your oasis.. (exercise left for the reader)
ROI on Comp Sci
Hahah! Good one. Almost got me. Everyone knows the best ROI is via nepotistic foriegn degree mill and a H1B visa. April fools!
There's a very large local company that requires your transcripts, regardless of how long you've been in the industry.
Congrats, you've proved that the two aren't really significantly different.
Oh yeah, one statement got us into a war that cost trillions of dollars and one statement made some people lose their crappy insurance plans. Even if you think both are bad, you cannot possibly think they are not significantly different.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Please note that online degrees, MOOC certs, University of Phoenix type schools, fall under no degree at all.
Lols. No, it's really nice for your parents to tape these to the refrigerator! For some IT jobs I imagine the un-degrees can be OK.
What you say about "gratifying work" doesn't just apply to start-ups, it applies to any smaller organization. Generally, the smaller, the more opportunity you have to be integral to the success/failure of the company and have a say in things and do interesting work. You don't have to go for a start-up to get this, just focus on small-to-midsize companies. Not all small companies are start-ups.
So I agree, find a decent company. However, that's MUCH easier said than done. My experience has been that smaller companies generally have more interesting work and you get more influence, but the pay is crap and the work environment is highly variable (some companies are horrible, others are great). Whereas at large corporations, the pay is generally good, and the work environment is predictable (not usually horrible, don't have to worry about harassment, not a lot of weird rules), but the work itself usually sucks, you're just a small cog and your work probably won't amount to anything.
Glassdoor.com can be a good way of seeing what other employees think of a company. I turned down a job interview recently with this after reading about how it was standard practice at this (mid-size) company to have cameras monitoring employees, even monitoring the bathrooms, to see how much time they spent away from their desks.
Yes, but it shows they're both bald-faced liars. The insurance thing, while relatively small, wasn't the only thing Obama lied about. The whole NSA scandal is a much bigger one, and who knows what else he's lied to us about.
So why bother?
Run for 20-somethings by 20-somethings. Plenty of alternatives.
3 my hero.
I paid ~40k for school at the University of Wyoming. And that covered everything for 4 years: food, rent, game consoles, tuition, books, beer, etc.
I'm currently working on becoming debt free. I'm giving myself 3-5 years to pay off all of my debt, and that gives a good amount of breathing room for a comfortable/stress free lifestyle(as stress free as you can get with a career, anyways).
The bill for the Obamacare exchanges is still rising, and may yet reach trillions - give it time. And it really wasn't just "crappy" insurance plans that people lost. I know people who have been forced into major life changes as a result of this BS (admitted, people riding the financial edge to begin with, so an extra $5k a year simply can't be done, but there are many people like that today!). Meanwhile, almost all of the newly-covered come from the broadening of Medicaid, and the ability to cover your kids until they're 25. So we could have gotten most of the benefit with none of the exchanges or cancelled policies, had the point of the law actually been "to help people".
Neither president cared who he had to hurt to achieve his political goals. Moral equivalence in my book.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The transcripts is mostly to verify that you have indeed got the degree that you stated that you had, and less about nitpicking over your GPA. Sometimes they may go into detail about the classes you have taken. Did you just do the Required classes to get you Degree or did you choose to take some other classes.
Most people who have went threw college knows that there is always that professor who grades on the curve either Up or down. So the medium grade is a 2.0, and not every student takes that professor. Or the 4.0 student fills their classes with easy to ace classes.
For example my undergrad college usually has a valedictorian from the School of Art or the School of Music, and rarely from the School of Engineering. Just because the grading is very different.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No one cares about school after your first job. It really doesn't matter.
A good school gives an advantage in getting started (better internships, heavily recruited by the big players), which can add up to a lot over the first decade of employment. But mostly this is just admissions criteria: the guy who got accepted by Stanford would likely have out-eared the average state school guy even if both had gone to the same school, or both skipped college.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This article misses the fact that elite colleges are also typically the most generous when it comes to financial aid. I am studying CS at Yale. Yale's tuition + room and board cost is nowhere near affordable by my family. Nevertheless, I got a Yale scholarship that covers everything I cannot pay, and I will not be indebted when I graduate. My tuition is probably lower than a state college's (although they might provide some aid for cases like mine, but not me since I'm an international). And I am by no means a special case, 50% of the student body is on financial aid. The perception that elite colleges are out to strip you of your money and put you on a life-long debt is false. They are willing to throw money at you if you get admitted. Also, it is rare that anybody graduates from the CS department without any job offers. I admit that what I learn is probably not drastically different than what people learn at a state college. Still, it is much harder to make it above the curve here than it will be at a state college, and much more effort/focus will be needed to stay afloat. There is certainly a discrepancy in difficulty, and employers will probably appreciate that.
I thought the current obamacare program we have is due to trying to appease the party of no. Am I misremembering things? Personnally, I would have preferred a single-payer system. I just had to pay $130 for a work mandated checkup because my insurance declined to pay. Seems like a complete scam to me.
Is it a scam that you have to pay for your groceries? You sure can't live without food. We all have basic needs we should expect to pay for ourselves. That's why we get jobs and work and so on.
Some of us need charity to meet our needs. Charity is great - perhaps the most praiseworthy human act. But people who need charity to cover medical costs aren't any different that people who need charity to cover the cost of food, or shelter. We don't need a special system for each.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Count Grishnakh! When did you get out?
You're right, a 4.0 deserves a phone screen, but not for the reason that most think. The purpose for phone screening a 4.0 is to make sure they took the time to have a few beers once in a while, to make it more likely they'll be able to work in a team.
How does smoking pot make you a good team member? Or was it doing coke?
If your team can't tolerate diversity, then you have bigger problems than who licks acid with you.
Maybe they should have valedictorians from each school/college in the university.
How does it reflect on employers if someone failed a class, and later retook it? Or performed poorly (below what's necessary to count for the major) and retook it?
In deed there doe.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."