What I have heard / seen happening to the education field, is that it seems to be fragmenting into two sections, the information side and the assessment side. The information side is getting cheaper than ever, but its really the assessment side which is the gateway to employment. Therefore I am of the opinion that spending money on performing the RHCE exam, and teaching yourself from the many availble resources on the internet, along with maintaining a publicly available code repository, is probably a wiser use of the money than a code school.
On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 9:23 PM, Dawes, Andrew M. <[email protected]> wrote: > On September 18, 2014 at 4:39:25 PM, David Madden ([email protected]) > wrote: > > A 4 year liberal arts degree is, for some reason, almost required to get > in at the bottom of jobs that don't really need a college education but at > least have a chance at advancement. > > This is an issue I see from the inside all the time. Students graduate > after four years and take a job that uses very few of the direct skills > they learned. On one hand, that isn’t our goal at a liberal arts college… > we aren’t just trying to teach specific skills, we’re trying to teach > people how to learn and how to teach themselves; ultimately they will need > to. > > On the other hand, I see students that could have done just as well > skipping out on college, jumping into the workforce at 18 and getting four > years of on-the-job experience. Even making minimum wage, that puts them up > 4 * 48 * 40 * 7.25 = $55k instead of $150k in the red. > > Several studies say that the lifetime earnings with a college degree are > ~$1M higher. Even if that is true, you can also just invest the > college-tuition at age 18 and get the same return by 65. > > College isn’t for everyone, and fortunately, there are other options; some > very good free ones! Personally, I would be very worried if I were in a CS > department at a university. Low-cost CS education is online first and will > be very hard to compete with. I’m not immune, but science is hands-on > enough that the in-person aspect makes a big difference. > > -- > Andrew M.C. Dawes > Associate Professor of Physics > Pacific University > > amcdawes.com > > _______________________________________________ > dorkbotpdx-blabber mailing list > [email protected] > http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/dorkbotpdx-blabber >
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