Reply to: would you like fries with that degree?

[speling bee]

Before or after his finals?

In his second year IIRC.

[zeitghost]

Before or after his finals?

[speling bee]

Our ex-esteemed customers have had all sorts of success.

From those now working for Cosworth, those who went on to do PhDs at Imperial & Kings, to the one who attempted to blow up the Twin Towers back in the 90s.

You can never tell quite how useful a degree might be.

One of my undergraduate department student colleagues started nice and early and murdered his girlfriend and buried her under the floor boards. Very sad story.

[Pondlife]

Our ex-esteemed customers have had all sorts of success.

From those now working for Cosworth, those who went on to do PhDs at Imperial & Kings, to the one who attempted to blow up the Twin Towers back in the 90s.

You can never tell quite how useful a degree might be.

Yousef?

I was 'studying' in the Eng dept of a nearby establishment in 93 and recall men in jackets having a poke around in our Elec Eng dept.

[zeitghost]

Our ex-esteemed customers have had all sorts of success.

From those now working for Cosworth, those who went on to do PhDs at Imperial & Kings, to the one who attempted to blow up the Twin Towers back in the 90s.

You can never tell quite how useful a degree might be.

[speling bee]

Yes, so was my maths degree but it didn't teach me anything I've directly used in my career. They did try and teach me some programming (in fortran) but at that point I already had too many good habits for them to screw me up.

My degree is in Roman History and Latin. It was excellent training in analytical skills, and also in murdering your family to become Emperor, which is surprisingly transferable to the business environment.

[doodab]

My Comp Sci degree years ago was pretty useful. It covered a wide variety of areas - logic (gates), computer graphics, the business side (consultancy), mathematical proof of code (Z) and analysis (SSADM - my USP in my early career). And yes, a fair bit of programming though they oddly decided to stop teaching C++ in favour of Pascal because 'we're not here to prepare you for industry'. Most students still used C++ for their final projects though.

Yes, so was my maths degree but it didn't teach me anything I've directly used in my career. They did try and teach me some programming (in fortran) but at that point I already had too many good habits for them to screw me up.

[doodab]

In fact it seems that taking one of the 'old-fashioned' subjects - hard sciences or arts is a much better starting point for high level jobs than the more specific 'media studies' type courses.

Many employers used to understand this and hire graduates onto training schemes with the view that they would spend several years working in different parts of the business before settling into a chosen career path. Whether they liked the situation or not is a different matter, but it does seem those sorts of graduate jobs have dried up.

[Smartie]

They were never designed to. Historically CS departments were an outgrowth of the maths faculty, and concrete implementation was seen as a loose end. Even something vaguely useful in the real world like designing and analysing an algorithm is an exercise in abstract maths, there is no need to actually implement an algorithm to prove it correct or analyse it's complexity.

My Comp Sci degree years ago was pretty useful. It covered a wide variety of areas - logic (gates), computer graphics, the business side (consultancy), mathematical proof of code (Z) and analysis (SSADM - my USP in my early career). And yes, a fair bit of programming though they oddly decided to stop teaching C++ in favour of Pascal because 'we're not here to prepare you for industry'. Most students still used C++ for their final projects though.

They had a point, to an extent. University isn't all about preparing people to slot into a particular industry role. It should however help students to understand what they find interesting and what kind of career they might want.

In fact it seems that taking one of the 'old-fashioned' subjects - hard sciences or arts is a much better starting point for high level jobs than the more specific 'media studies' type courses.

Of course, one of the big problems today is that many businesses expect a ready made worker - someone to 'hit the ground running' without further investment. That's pretty unrealistic.

[speling bee]

I dunno , my cat sitter is a lovely girl, her last medical research contract ended two years ago and now she is a professional pet carer. She enjoys it but what a waste.

Have you ever considered that she may still be combining the two careers as a freelancer?

[doodab]

I was very lucky. I chose to study maths because it seemed like the route to understanding life, the universe and everything. In retrospect I may have been better off with physics but that's a different story. Either way, I was never worried about getting a job when I chose my course, I just wanted to be a man in a white coat and I assumed that employment would naturally sort itself out.

To be fair at that point in my life I had had no difficulty finding jobs and had even been courted by potential post-uni employers (as were most bright local kids) so I had no reason to think it would be a problem.

[socialworker]

I dunno , my cat sitter is a lovely girl, her last medical research contract ended two years ago and now she is a professional pet carer. She enjoys it but what a waste. My own sprog worried me by blithely assuming, having been told that any degree would mean a good job, that a history degree was a good idea. Turns out city law firms like history degrees, though I tend to think her Oxford MA and the independent sixth form were big factors in her getting a training contract, one of 15 out of 800 applying. While I fell sorry for today's yoof, I think having to pay back a loan might have concentrated my mind a bit instead of letting myself drift into a music degree.

[darmstadt]

I have six degrees...of separation from becoming someone else...maybe even:

[KentPhilip]

Dman I was just considering a degree in hang gliding

You don't need a degree for that - just a crash course..

[lilelvis2000]

Indeed, children are shepherded down this route.

(However, I don't knock a proper arts degree that was taken without a job at the end of it. It would be sad if the sum of deeper human knowledge becomes distilled only into what is required for specific careers.)

Back to the main point, Poles and other foreigners come here and get jobs or start businesses because they have a hard-working or entrepreneurial mindset, not because they have a degree.

It makes sense to do a degree if you need it for your preferred career, or because you are very interested in a subject, but not because it is merely expected of you.

An interesting read. Only just started it - seems like a "if I can do it, so can u" type of book. The Education of Millionaires | Michael Ellsberg