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Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 11:24 am
by Charles256
Moocat wrote:Would you really want to work for a job that takes applicants strictly based on if they have a degree or not? I'd rather work for a company known to employ the best in the field rather than a bunch of people with pieces of paper anyone with a few hours a week on their hands can get.

However, I'm not asking if a degree is worth it strictly for job obtainment. I'm asking it more from the perspective, if there were a choice between hiring (lets say a contractor) a person with a 4 year degree (no experience) or 7-10 years active experience which would you rather have working/serving you? I realise I may have been somewhat misleading in the first statement, I'll go back and change that :)
Whoa whoa whoa! Slow the train up. Anyone with a few hours a week on their hands can get? Do whaT? Have you went to a real college? Not ANYONE can get it. Hell, I know A LOT of people that flunked out of college and guess what, they had at least 10 hours a week on their hands (a few being 3, ten being a lot:) ). It takes dedication and time. Hell, for some programmers college is their first introduction to project deadlines (a.k.a. homework). While I do not fall in that category I think it's a great experience for the newb. programmer.

edit: and while I'm thinking bout it, why not ask a more fair question. Someone that has a 4 year degree or someone that has 4 years real world experience? I'd rather have the degree because chances are he's been taught good coding practices at the very least as opposed to our self taught guy which probably has picked up some bad habits. let's assume he didn't though, then we can say our 4 year degree guy knows more because he was being forced to learn more quicker, due to the apce of college. but let's say our uneducated guy was extremely dedicated and was busting his nuts, then we can say our college guy has the ability to grow better because he was also taught code in general as well. i.e. coding theory. which our home made guy might have picked up but I'd say the odds are against it. Not to forget, our 4 year guy probably got himself an intern which means not only does he have some real world expereince (most of my buds do side jobs while in college) but he also has that paper. the other guy has some experience, but no paper. hmmm..... your original question is akin to asking " your playing baseball, do you want the ant on your team or 'insert famous baseball player' ?" :-D

jshpro2 wrote: ...but not the idea of an education system, but I would have to agree with Roja that you won't get pretty fair without a degree, the question is though, does a degree have anything to do with a persons knowledge base and I would have to disagree with anyone that said it does.
And I would have to disagree with you, while there are exceptions to the rule, it does take work to get a degree. And during this work tthere's at least a 50% chance ( a statistic completely made up, right now) that at least 50% of that knowledge(another made up stat:) ) will stick with you or at least go hide somewhere in the back of your brain.

edit:
BTW, if you know some complete idiots that got their CS degree that doesn't show that educations are wasted. Rather it shwos one of two things.
1) that school is a joke and don't hire from there.
2) that person cheated the system and should be beaten. :)

note:
to avoid getting myself reprimanded, hugs and kisses to all you people I made angry :-D

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:02 pm
by josh
Charles256 wrote:it does take work to get a degree
I am not disagreeing with you on this point, and I never said it didn't take any work
Charles256 wrote: And during this work tthere's at least a 50% chance ( a statistic completely made up, right now) that at least 50% of that knowledge(another made up stat:) ) will stick with you or at least go hide somewhere in the back of your brain.
I don't know about 50%, but at least you admit you fabricated those statistics, now of course you will learn a lot in college, but will you really learn anything that isn't freely available in the public domain? Will you learn to think individually? The fact is not everyone learns best by listening to someone lecture about it, I learned PHP by reading the manual, reading tutorials other people wrote about it, and by real world experience. Now obviously some things cannot be learned by real world experience, like for instance a doctor, but there are other ways to learn things besides going to school.
Charles256 wrote: BTW, if you know some complete idiots that got their CS degree that doesn't show that educations are wasted. Rather it shwos one of two things.
1) that school is a joke and don't hire from there.
2) that person cheated the system and should be beaten. :)
your first point sells what I am trying to say exactly, the degree should be worth-less, but so much emphasis is being placed on the degree that complete idiots are getting high paying jobs while creative geniuses are denied interviews. It is possible for a complete idiot to graduate with a high grade from a reputable school. It is possible, and I have seen it happen many times.

Regarding your second point, weeding out the cheaters, how do you propose companies do that?


I think your arguments overlooked the other aspect, which is great people that could have greatly improved society were not given the jobs they deserve. On the other side of that argument is people that have been very successfull without college education:

Ray Kroc
George Washington
Noel Coward
Bill Gates
Dr. Dre
George Bernard Shaw
Jackie Collisns
Ernest Hemmingway
Colonel Sanders
Mark Twain
Abe Lincoln
Whoopi Goldberg
Jim Carrey
Tom Cruise
Thomas Edision
Henry Ford
Ben Franklin

Colleges should be a place where people go to explore and broaden their horizons, and explore new fields but they are not.

Companies need to stop the ignorance and start hiring based on skillset, not the ability to memorize facts and write them on a test.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:20 pm
by Grim...
I'd like to add Eddie Jordan to that list, no degree and very dyslexic (can't do his alphabet or anything), but he ran his own F1 racing team.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:22 pm
by Grim...
Charles256 wrote:your playing baseball, do you want the ant on your team or 'insert famous baseball player' ?
I don't care how famous the baseball player is - I want the baseball playing ant! :D

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:33 pm
by Charles256
Grim... wrote:
Charles256 wrote:your playing baseball, do you want the ant on your team or 'insert famous baseball player' ?
I don't care how famous the baseball player is - I want the baseball playing ant! :D
I laughed sooo hard when I read that:-D

back to the other guy...
great, you can name exceptions to the rule. However, the rule still wins, even if there are exceptions (no matter how many). :-D

i.e. 2+2=4 wins every time over 2+2=6 ( a number system where 2=3, just to illustrate exceptions to the rule of 2+2=4)

and... college isn't just lectures, it's RTFM!, tutored by others, practice,practice,practice,RTFM! going on constantly. :-D and btw, there are real world experience doctors, but only go for them if you're trying to avoid paperwork;)

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:54 pm
by josh
And in my previous post I agreed with the rule that you aren't likely to go places without college, I wasnt naming those people trying to say college doesn't help you land an interview, I'm saying the great things those people did for society would have not happened, had their success depended on a degree, the way our society is going your success will depend on a degree, I'm not saying the fact doesn't add up, I'm saying it shouldnt

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:59 pm
by Charles256
and i'm just saying CS is one of those fields where I won't lose any sleep over companies demanding a degree.....

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 1:08 pm
by hawleyjr
If a company has a stack of applications typically (In my experience) the first apps weeded out are the apps w/o a degree. It doesn't matter what you degree is in. Just that you have one. Degrees reflect a level of general knowledge and commitment. Of course work experience is important and frankly you will learn more by working than you will in college. However, I've seen a lot of examples where extremely good programmers are being paid 40% less than their counterparts with a degree.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:11 pm
by timvw
The advantage of being in college is that aside from getting experience with the "pre-chewed" stuff you usually have a lot of spare-time that you can use to get other experiences (if you want to). I know a lot of students that do some programming in their spare time, that adminster a couple of nix boxes, that experiment with latex.

In my experience, without a degree your application usually (like it or not) ends up in the trash can. Here is a possible reason: Overhere, in Belgium, there are a lot of people with 5-10 years experience in IT but without a degree. They where attracted by the salary when the internet was booming. But they never really learned something valuable to the company, so they are the first to be fired...

The problem is that a employer doesn't want to spend too much time to figure out if someone is really worth something. And a degree is a good indication..

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:47 pm
by dallasx
jshpro2 wrote:I am against the current education system, it pretends to promote individuality but actually punishes everything but conformity, including unique thinking.
You hit the nail on the head.

In fact, in one of my business classes we watched two films comparing the US, German and Japanese school systems at the high school level or equivelent.
US: Significantly lower completion rate, promotes individual success, business tends to ignore most drop outs.
German: Promotes success in teams, larger companies embrace vocational students because the workforce is the backbone of the company.
Japan: High completion rate, promotes the value of teams working toward the success of the organization.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:54 pm
by dallasx
Charles256 wrote: BTW, if you know some complete idiots that got their CS degree that doesn't show that educations are wasted. Rather it shwos one of two things.
1) that school is a joke and don't hire from there.
2) that person cheated the system and should be beaten. :)
What it really shows is that CS majors might go back to college to get another degree since outsourcing to computer science related fields to India has become a HUGE problem.

My friend was talking about going back to college and mastering in Business because of outsourcing. He works for a huge government defense contractor.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 3:54 pm
by Charles256
um.i'm confused..you sight a study from your class regarding high school level..then move on to talk about college?? :?

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 4:00 pm
by dallasx
Charles256 wrote:um.i'm confused..you sight a study from your class regarding high school level..then move on to talk about college?? :?
Yeah, sorry about that.


As far as college goes:
The actual process of college may seem worthless, in terms of the direct material you learn, but the overall "big picture" is what you really get out of it. By this I mean how you learn to think differently, approach problem solving on different levels and really learn about yourself. I see this by what my Leadership teacher said about it's not what college you go to, it's what you get out of it.

As far as having a degree or not, it just shows companies that you were willing to improve yourself at your expense and finish the job. Companies want longevity and see this, more or less, as a person who is most likely to finish something (whatever that may be).

Re: Degree or No Degree?

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 7:07 pm
by ody
Moocat wrote:Is having a degree needed for knowledge base?

By knowledge base I mean actually knowing your subject. I believe there are only two fields in which having a degree really matters, medical degrees and law degrees. Since these are the only two, I vote overall degrees are NOT needed for most careers fields. I think pretty much every career field other than the two stated can pick up just as good a knowledge base with self study as someone with a degree.

Edit: Since my statements appear to be somewhat misleading I will state an example:

If you had a choice between a 4 year college graduate with no (or little) outside experience or someone with 5-7 years (only college "credit" experience, no actual schooling) which would you rather pick? (I figure 5-7 years is somewhat the "equivalent exchange" conversion from 4 years of schooling since those with experience only tend to start earlier than those with schooling since we all know 4 years is sometimes a bit longer ;).

Would you rather someone building your computer program has years of experience? or years of only college?

I did not state both since I thought it would be overly obvious which person (in most "big business" companies) would be chosen between someone with an equal amount of college + experience or someone with experience only :p
From my point of view being hugely biased towards me I would have to say a big NO, a degree will get you no where unless you actually have an outside interest in what is you are studying for, so yeah doctors and lawyers will normally have that profession to aim for an off cause they require that steeping stone to there goal. However when it comes to the computing world you MUST have an outside interest to succeed, for instance a mod on this board I employed because of that (he showed ability, dedication and commitment), and it makes perfect sense to do it this way with the computing world, you can hack away at a computer as much as you want to learn your trade, a wanna be doctor just does not have that ability.

Just my 2cents.

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 7:13 pm
by Chris Corbyn
My $0.02 from someone whos' been there and done it.

I went to a very good university in England (Durham University). I studied chemistry which has no bearing on my existing career in PHP development which I'm extremely happy with (salary wise, prospect wise and job satisfaction).

My observation of what went on at university (in computer science especially) was lots of people passing coursework around and modifying it to evade being caught for plagiarism.... it happens *alot*. That in itself (and this is just my own observation) makes me think that experience in the real world counts for more than that piece of paper.

When I applied for my current job I was directly asked to leave all of my education out of the CV and focus upon things I have done in the real world. I didn't mention my education other than the institution I studied at and I got the job.

Don't get me wrong... I'm proud to have a degree. If it was me doing the employing, I'd like to see what education you have but I seriously wouldn't allow it to sway me that much if there were people who've been doing the job for real and have years of experience.

EDIT | Strangely enough the guy who posted just above me is the guy who gave me the job :P