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The university system is fucked.

I've been working in this industry for a few years now, but have been self taught for much longer. I'm only just starting college and I'm already angry.

What does a college degree really mean anymore? From some of the posts I've seen on devRant, it certainly doesn't ensure professional conduct, work ethic, or quality (shout out to the brave souls who deal with the lack of these daily). Companies should hire based on talent, not on a degree. Universities should focus more on real world applications or at least offer such programs for students interested in entering the workforce rather than research positions. A sizable chunk of universities' income (in the U.S. at least) comes from research and corporate sponsorships, and educating students is secondary to that. Nowadays education is treated as a business instead of a tool to create value in the world. That's what I signed up for, anyway - gaining the knowledge to create value in the world. And yet I along with many others feel so restricted, so bogged down with requirements, fees, shitty professors, and shitty university resources. There is so much knowledge out there that can be put to instant practical use - I am constantly shocked at the things left out of my college curriculum (lack of automated tests, version control, inadequate or inaccurate coverage of design patterns and philosophies) - things that are ABSOLUTELY essential to be successful in this career path.

It's wonderful that we eventually find the resources we need, or the motivation to develop essential skills, but it's sad that so many students in university lack proper direction through no fault of their own.

Fuck you, universities, for being so inflexible and consistently failing to serve your basic purpose - one of if not the most important purpose on this earth.

Fuck you, corporations, for hiring and paying based on degree. Fuck you, management, for being so ignorant about the industry you work in.

Fuck you, clients, who treat intelligent people like dirt, make unreasonable demands, pull some really shady shit, and perpetuate a damaging stereotype.

And fuck you to the developer who wrote my company's antipattern-filled, stringy-as-all hell codebase without comments. Just. Fuck you.

Comments
  • 26
    A degree nowadays is just like an ID card or passport, you just show them for verification.
  • 13
    👏👏 Perfect rant. You nailed it.

    And I agree, education is just a big load of horseshit. It's completely turned into a business and you have to fall in the trap because w/o a degree no one fucking even looks at you, forget actually looking at your skill/talent. What a sad world we live in.
  • 7
    Have a bunch of final year CS classmates who doesn't know debugging, like using valgrind to check for memory leak or why a seg fault occurs. Lol rly. When I do something out of the norm (stuffs not taught in classes and are found on the Internet with simple Google-fu), they'll be like "aw man, you're so smart!" Lol rly.
  • 10
    No amount of programming can teach you calculus. Had to take 4 calculus classes and a hell of a lot other classes to get a well rounded education. Had to write code in Pascal , Cobol, Fortran and assembler. Had to take network classes and build a clinic application using DB4.
    College degree is extremely important and will remain so.
  • 2
  • 5
    Typing it out because i am too lazy to search for the image:

    Don't have college degree, you are of no use to us.

    Have a college degree, forget all you were thought.
  • 5
    @iakar I agree that programming can't teach you calculus. But we now face the same problem, just in a different field. I can teach myself calculus using free online resources, such as khan academy. Why should I have to take out 50,000+ in loans to accomplish the same goal? A college degree is important, yes - especially in today's world, but inherently it feels worthless. There's value in hard work and networking too, but you don't need college for that. Mark Twain put it best when he said "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

    @Mitch377 you bring up a good exception. Congrats on the experience 😊 not all colleges are as awful as I made it seem, but some definitely need improvement.

    @rayanon word. I have seen a couple companies hiring talent rather than degree (rackspace and dropbox I think) which made me want to cry with joy. There is still hope.
  • 0
    In thise good old days, we had this one:https://youtube.com/watch/...
  • 0
    Could not have ranted it better.

    This rant right here. All day long. Truth has been spoken this day.
  • 0
    <slow clap>
  • 3
    I'm more like "It's teachers fault"

    Yeah, you'll say "Hey, don't blame them, if you want to learn, do it by your own", and yeah, that's alright but you have to admit: Bad teachers discourage people.

    I had quite the luck in having some awesome teachers (not everyone of them), that I have to admit, halfway the university, I thought about call it a day, but they were the reason I didn't.

    A degree, on the other side, it helps you to "reach" certain spots you wouldn't be able without a lot of connections (oh yeah, this is the main rule of private universities, people pay for the networking, not the education).

    I see myself getting a degree and helping me to have a scholarship so I can leave this horrible country I live in, so I see the university as a way to improve like a person.
  • 1
    @Jase Apocalypse sounds good
  • 0
    Just finishing college this year, and dammit, you make some good points. It makes me sad that I have to learn git, design patterns, PHP, Python, Unit testing and lots of other stuff just because someone thought they were not as important as Haskell or Prolog or fucking accounting. What am I supposed to say when I go to a job interview? And how on earth is it possible that people like you who probably know much more stuff are having trouble finding decent jobs?
  • 0
    @mohammed wait, where are you from dude?
  • 0
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  • 0
    I think many can think about such an education system and how much it suffers from stagnation. It is necessary to change and improve education systems as quickly and efficiently as possible. I can assure you that there are quality methods in this article Just take a look at how they describe the future of the education system.
  • 0
    totally agree
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