Do Geeks Need College?

Manuka writes "Salon has a neat article debating the issue of whether college is worth bothering with for geeks." The article references an old Slashdot thread and throws out some interesting comments and statistics on the subject.

Comments

Geeks, go to college.

[Frater 219]

Don't go to college to learn to be a better geek. Academic computer science won't turn you into a system administrator, Web designer, or Perl hacker. You won't learn how to optimize a kernel configuration, recover files from a crashed disk, build a fast database, or tell your boss nicely that his ideas about information technology are stupid or violate the laws of physics. You may learn a lot of good theory -- but you could pick that up elsewhere, too.

Go to college to learn about culture, or history, or philosophy, or literature. Go to college to sit up late nights screaming at your best friends about what an idiot Rene Descartes was. Go to college to watch your best friends do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go to college to find out what the hell this postmodernism thing is that Larry Wall's always on about. Go to college to refute postmodernism, and to be called postmodern for doing it. Go to college to meet people who will be impressed with your intelligence instead of thinking of it as threatening.

Don't go to an easy college, and don't go to a place that lets you get by doing nothing but technical stuff. Go to a place that makes you do a lot of heavy reading and writing. Take tough courses. Learn to write well; not only will it help when your boss asks you to document your project, but it'll also help you sound better on Slashdot and USENET. Don't scorn "well-roundedness" or "communications skills"; the stars of geek culture are no bunch of illiterates.

Study music. Music, as Pythagoras demonstrated, is a form of mathematics, and musicians, like hackers, keep pounding on their work in search of the Right Thing. Study psychology and sociology. They represent our attempts to figure out how the systems called the human mind and human society work, so that we can make them work better.

Read Nietzsche. Refute your parents' religion. Then refute your refutation.

Get into politics. Which politics don't really matter -- be a socialist, or a libertarian, or even a Republican if you have to. Go to activist events. Take politics courses. Insist on bringing up free software in the middle of your classes. Derive the Debian Free Software Guidelines from the works of John Locke.

(Damn. I'm rambling. I sound like that fake Kurt Vonnegut graduation address email forward that whoever-it-was turned into a song. Use sunscreen.)

The usefulness of college/university

[Christopher Thomas]

From my own experiences and what I've heard from many others on Slashdot and elsewhere, I get the impression that there are two kinds of college or university.

Type number one is a place where people go to drink and have sex. The professors range from mediocre to truly incompetent, and nobody really learns a whole lot even if they do pay attention in class and do all of the coursework. People who have been through one of these colleges generally say that college is a waste of time. In a college like this, I agree - it is.

Type number two is different. The professors actually know what they're talking about, and many are quite bright indeed. The coursework is actually challenging. No matter how smart you are, you'll be picking up new concepts and then working your butt off to prove that you understand them. The courses that you are taking are relevant to your chosen career and teach you things that you will use after you graduate. You also learn how to learn, as many others have pointed out. I have the good fortune to be at a university like this, and it has proven invaluable for my work in the software industry.

A complaint that I sometimes hear from people who don't like college is that none of the courses are interesting. IMO, this isn't necessarily a problem with the college (though it can be for the first type of college). I was very lucky, and chose exactly the right course stream; my courses match my interests almost perfectly. But, if I'd chosen Electrical Engineering instead of Computer Engineering, I'd be stuck doing analog circuit analysis when what I really want to do is design ICs. This would not only have presented problems after graduation, but would have made my coursework alternately difficult and boring.

My advice for those pondering college is to think carefully about what they want to learn about, and to pick a good school at which to learn. This might mean a hideously expensive school, or it might not. However, if you pick a bad college or university, your time there will be a dead loss.

Likewise, picking your field is important. If you choose incorrectly, you will be forced to work your butt off learning things that just don't interest you. Don't be afraid to change fields once you have already enrolled; it's better to lose a year than to stick with something you don't like and lose four years. It will still be worth it.

If you do find a good college or university and manage to get into a field that truly interests you, then IMO you will almost certainly find post-secondary education to be worthwhile.

That piece of paper...

[jabber]

Is not very important to you. It's just a piece of paper, right?

I have a little metal ring in my pocket. On it are flat little piece of metal, with teeth. Worthless and useless, right? Too thin to cut food, too thick to pick your nails. Oddly, they fit locks. I can easily get into rooms and cars that are otherwise inaccessible to me.

I can secure my house against thieves, get into my car and drive myself to my job. I can get into my office, in which lay confidential and propriatary materials. I can check my PO box for mail.

I wouldn't have any of these things without my keys. And, I wouldn't have any of them without my degree.

A college education opens doors.

It teaches structured thinking, but most geeks already have that skill. We've argued the value of a college education and the experience of University ad nauseum here on /.

It turns out that it's a unary argument. One can not make an informed decision about it, since you either do or do not have the experience. A comparison can not be made, since it would be like men trying to compare their experience of manhood with the experience of being a woman. We do not have the means to be objective here.

But, without a doubt, that little piece of paper opens doors. Some people without it get quite lucky, but they are a significant exception to an otherwise unnoticed majority. Most people who do not have the degree, do not get as far as those with the degree. It's not flame-bait, it's fact.
Without a degree, you start as a tech, and you need to prove yourselv constantly, to advance. With the degree, you start at a higher level, and if you continue to prove yourself to advance, you advance faster and higher.

Bill Gates' success not withstanding, a significant majority of executives, CEOs, CIOs, managers and others who make lots of money, is college educated, (sadly) with business degrees that exceed the Bachelor level.

Get your keys. You don't have to use them, you can still use a crowbar or a credit card to open those doors, but keys make it a) easier, and b) socially acceptable.