On 5/12/2011 11:12 AM, Ryan Byrd wrote: > Isn't that the same crapola as people comparing self-taught programmers to > university CS graduates? Who would you rather hire? Does college training > make a difference? Discuss. Ryan, in my brief half-a-day with you (years ago) in person, I am guessing you can agree that this sentiment will and already has started a timeless and silly debate. I think the definitive undefined answer is thus:
College training can make a great deal of difference in some people, especially in people that really don't need a college education to do anything they want to do. More accessibly put, college educations these days, especially in technical fields, should in most cases be giving people a foundation that you can count on being there, and nothing more. You can't expect talent, expertise, professionalism, intelligence, or even capability. All you can expect is that they know the textbook materials, so maybe some formulas their job requires are still there. In any job, you want someone that's smart and does things. Technical or not, there are better ways to tell if they can do the job than a degree of any kind. A degree just shows they can fit a mold when told. It belies a certain cultural affinity, maybe. At the end of the day, though, it's not what you know, it's what you can do that will matter. Sometimes the doing will require knowledge to do, but college isn't going to have that in the most efficient package. So ambiguously I will say go to college if you want to appease the HR manager gatekeeping the dream job you wanted at that established company everyone is trying to work for. Go to college if you want to learn a large body of data that may or may not be useful to you later in life, but will hopefully be interesting to you if you are getting your moneys worth. Go to college if you want to achieve that dream and make your parents proud or what have you. Do NOT go to college if you think it will make you smarter or better prepared to do a job. It can, but it's really not college that's the deciding factor. -Tod Hansmann /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
