I can't help but wonder if the fundamental problem is just that we spent decades pretending that a university degree was some sort of useful job training in the first place. As a professional software developer, I think my computer science degree is not actually all that important. Sure there are some relevant concepts, but they're ones you'd pick up on the job anyway.

I don't regret getting my degree (back in 2009), but I think requiring a person to have one is a dumb job requirement.

Frankly, we shouldn't have so many people going to university in the first place. There's a lot of people it's just utterly wasted on, and it drags down the entire apparatus as a result. In a sane society we'd have much more apprenticeships, vocational training, etc.

▲

rspeele 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even though the degree really didn't teach you what you'd do on the job, it was a signal to employers that 1. you were capable of learning stuff when needed, 2. you didn't give up on doing hard things, and 3. they wouldn't have to explain to you what a loop or a class is.

With rampant AI cheating it's no longer a guarantee of any of those.

	▲	gobdovan 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I do not think I had a single university course that was not ultimately assessed through supervised written tests. That matters, because homework was never a reliable anti-cheating mechanism. Even before AI, you could just pay someone smarter to do your homework for you, or ask older students for their assignments (and sometimes even their test questions, there's even a pg essay on this [0]). You can cheat as much as you want on homework, but it won't help you on supervised written tests. At some point you have to sit down, unaided, and show that you can solve the problems yourself. So I do not see how AI substantially weakens the signaling value of a degree, at least in systems where the degree is backed by in-person written assessment. It may make take-home coursework less meaningful, but that was already the weakest part of the signal. [0] https://paulgraham.com/lesson.html
	▲	overgard 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't know, I went to a pretty well regarded CS program but some of the people I graduated with are definitely not people I'd want to work with. They might have hypothetically known what a loop is but I wouldn't expect them to put one to good use.

▲

the_af 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For Computer Science in particular: it's not supposed to be job training. CS is an education closer to math or science (in fact, at my university it belongs to the department of hard sciences and math). If you like that (and I sure did!) it'll be worth your time. If you're just looking for job training, you're looking in the wrong place.

My university CS program didn't even teach programming in any of the major classes, it was assumed you'd learn on your own or by doing one of the optional workshops.

There's a lot of stuff taught in academic CS that you simply won't learn on the job, or if you do, it won't be as rigorous and you'll be missing the fundamentals.

▲

gobdovan 5 hours ago | parent [-]

What program was this? It sounds much closer to what I wish my CS degree had been. In my CS program, the courses I actually enjoyed were the math-heavy, but always optional, like computability/decidability/complexity, cryptography, etc.

The mandatory "practical" courses were often much worse. For example, I studied relational algebra on my own, plus a few chapters from Kleppmann's Data-Intensive Applications book, and it was painful to realise how shallow it made the mandatory database course look.

I agree that CS should not be mere job training. I think many CS programs are neither rigorous enough to feel like math/science and prepare you for proper academic work, nor practical enough to be good vocational training. They sit in a bad middle ground, where academics teach industry-lite.

	▲	overgard 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Industry-lite is a good way to describe it. I remember having a 300 level class which was supposed to be about real world application architecture but it was essentially just about making UML diagrams (because the professor happened to be on the board of whoever was in charge of UML.) Nobody serious (even at the time!) uses UML.

▲

jimbokun 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My computer science education has been invaluable for my career.