I work with a guy who went to an Ivy League school.
Recently, he had to take some classes at a local community college for a certification.
Now all I hear is him grumbling about (and I quote), “I can’t believe I wasted all that fucking money when I was young and dumb! The community college classes were better-taught, smaller and just all-around higher quality than the classes at my school. And that cost me $45,000 a year. I got ripped off.”
He’s not the first one I’ve heard say that, but he’s the first I’ve heard in person.
Nothing wrong with going to an Ivy, of course — but realize you’re probably buying a name and social networking, and not an education. And that name and social networking can be very expensive.
Dude probably had enough social capital to start out with that it made little difference to him.
Have you noticed any patterns as to who is self taught and who has credentials (degrees) in similar positions to yours in your line of work?
In my experience, community college classes versus public university versus private are a mixed bag. I would not say the community college classes here are better taught, smaller and higher quality than these other institutions, especially since this institution wants everyone using Pearson. In the humanities, perhaps. But otherwise? Nope. To be fair, science math and computer instruction is lacking in most institutions so why pay 3x the price?
Some patterns I’ve noticed is that former military people are over-represented in IT. I speculate this is due to the fact that often the most motivated folks for whom college isn’t the right choice often join the military, and then because IT generally also doesn’t require a degree and pays well, they venture into that field after their discharge.
I’ve also noticed those who have formal degrees only rarely have a degree in anything related to IT (CompSci, MIS, etc.) but rather have transitioned into the field after not liking their chosen occupation. For instance, the guy I was talking about has some sort of degree related to finance but now he’s a high-level network engineer. Seems to be at a higher rate of cross-field transference than in other fields, in my anecdotal experience.
From what I’ve heard from others, I agree about your assessment of instruction in those three fields are lacking everywhere. It’s just not something that anyone puts much emphasis on. Good students are expected to swim no matter what. The rest, we seem not to care about so we let them sink.
From what I’ve heard from others, I agree about your assessment of instruction in those three fields are lacking everywhere. It’s just not something that anyone puts much emphasis on. Good students are expected to swim no matter what. The rest, we seem not to care about so we let them sink.
It probably has everything to do with using those classes as a sorting mechanism. This thinking trickles down to classes which are not used to weed people out of STEM careers, but basic mathematical, scientific and semi computer literacy. I took a class where the designated tutors had no fucking idea how to help me. And by “no fucking idea”, I mean two of them said flat out they had no fucking idea and the third literally sat on Google for a half an hour trying to figure something out he had done two weeks prior. I can use Google on my own. This…was very mechanical.