Education

[Brian W]

I'm being pressured from my fiance's parents to go back to school and get a college education. They seem to be under the impression you can't make money unless you have a degree or certificate in something. My previous employer made 500k a year working for himself and he didn't finish high school. My father makes a good deal of money, he owns his own irrigation business, he went to college for biology (not business or anything relevant to what he does). So you can probably figure out my opinion on the topic.

So, what I want to know is how much does a degree help in programming and website design? Is it more valuable then work experience (time+cost of school + potential gain VS time - pay of customers).

 

If you can, please respond with your opinion, the level of education you have (if applicable), and how much you made last year roughly (if you are willing).

 

I guess in a sense I'm performing a study in order to determine my own opinion on the topic.

 

Thanks.

[roopurt18]

Individuals who succeed without degrees are the exception, not the rule.  Having a degree doesn't guarantee anything while not having a degree can be a substantial road block.  A degree is typically only important for that first job, but I wouldn't hold it past future employers to be weary of hiring someone who doesn't hold a degree.

 

I have a B.S. in computer science and a minor in physics.  I've worked full-time, approximately 6 to 8 hours per day, for almost five years now at two different small private businesses.  I think I started in the low 60K U.S.D. and am now in the low 70K U.S.D.; I'm not entirely sure because my wife handles all of the finances.

 

Honestly though I think a degree is just a special certificate that says, "Yes.  I can fall in line, complete a goal, and tolerate the politics and bullshit of the professional world."

[xylex]

Honestly though I think a degree is just a special certificate that says, "Yes.  I can fall in line, complete a goal, and tolerate the politics and bullshit of the professional world."

 

Not just can, but that you spent several years learning how to and accomplishing it.  I've worked in various environments over the years, and I would say that when working with experienced co-workers, it's difficult to tell who has a CS/technical degree and who has a non-technical degree.  But it's very easy to tell who has a degree and who doesn't.  At my current company, we wouldn't consider anyone who didn't have a bachelor's in something.

 

As for me, I have my BA in Sociology/Criminal Justice, and I'm slowly working on my master's in software engineering.  And making enough to pay the bills with a little left over.

 

This topic makes me think of the Dave Thomas quote - "We have 4,000 restaurants today, but if I had gotten my high-school diploma, we might have 8,000." 

[ignace]

At my current company, we wouldn't consider anyone who didn't have a bachelor's in something.

 

A BS guarantees the employer he will be able to do the job (in some form). The company I work for shares my vision and that's to not base your opinion on degree but instead base it on facts. Every candidate receives a few questions he needs to answer + an example program he needs to explain that tests his active knowledge on the workings of PHP and the manual.

 

And to be honest every time their is a new job opening it takes a serious amount of time and contestants to be filled. My advice: learn PHP well (ZCE well) and show off that knowledge during a job interview.

[Mchl]

Where I live a degree is a must if you want to get hired by a company. Never mind the experience, without a diploma don't even come to an interview. For freelancers it's portfolio that counts though.

 

[JonnoTheDev]

I have said this before but people who have experience are much more valued than graduates. You could come out of university and still end up with no employment. In my opinion it is good to have a certification however not always a degree. In the UK I would go down the HNC/HND route where you can also work around your education.

Graduates that I have employed had knowhere near the knowledge that I would have expected and required a lot of training that unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to give.

[cags]

I have said this before but people who have experience are much more valued than graduates. You could come out of university and still end up with no employment. In my opinion it is good to have a certification however not always a degree. In the UK I would go down the HNC/HND route where you can also work around your education.

Graduates that I have employed had knowhere near the knowledge that I would have expected and required a lot of training that unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to give.

 

++

 

I've got a degree, but can't find a job as I have no commercial experience with PHP.

[JonnoTheDev]

I've got a degree, but can't find a job as I have no commercial experience with PHP.

And this will be the case in most industries within the UK. The bottom line is that there are just too many graduates going for the same jobs. I sypmathize with you as it is tough. Most of the graduates that I employed we ended up paying them a really basic wage as they just did not have the knowledge or experience to justify higher pay. They could have been earning a similar wage in the same job without the degree by being self taught and would have gained the experience. If I had just finished University I would expect to get a well paid job, better than the pay that someone without a degree would earn. However, this just isn't the reality.

[Daniel0]

I have said this before but people who have experience are much more valued than graduates. You could come out of university and still end up with no employment. In my opinion it is good to have a certification however not always a degree. In the UK I would go down the HNC/HND route where you can also work around your education.

Graduates that I have employed had knowhere near the knowledge that I would have expected and required a lot of training that unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to give.

 

What kind of graduates were you looking at? Computer science is not the same as software engineering for instance. They're somewhat related, but the difference gives you the same problems with hiring a theoretical physicist to do applied physics. With a bit of training, he could fit the job, but that doesn't change the fact that in the short-term you would be better off with an applied physicist.

 

Similarly, how does the courses the graduate took match up with what your company does? You'll have the same problem with experienced autodidacts, because would someone with experience in embedded programming be suited for a web development position?

 

Also, when looking at the graduate, did he do the bare minimum to pass his courses and get the certificate, or did he research on his own beyond what the courses covered and practice in his free time? The former person will be guaranteed to be inferior.

 

Did the graduates have a BSc, MSc, PhD? That kind of makes a difference as well.

 

TL;DR, there is no such thing as "experience is better than degree" or vice versa. The answer is "it depends".

 

More than likely, your graduate candidates were either a) people who didn't make a very great effort in university, or b) people who were specialized in areas unrelated to your company's specialty. The thing you get out of a degree is experience. It just didn't happen to be the kind of experience you were looking for.

[KevinM1]

Computer science is not the same as software engineering for instance.

 

You need to stop saying this.  Many universities don't make the distinction.

[JonnoTheDev]

TL;DR, there is no such thing as "experience is better than degree" or vice versa. The answer is "it depends".

 

More than likely, your graduate candidates were either a) people who didn't make a very great effort in university, or b) people who were specialized in areas unrelated to your company's specialty. The thing you get out of a degree is experience. It just didn't happen to be the kind of experience you were looking for.

 

Yes, I totally agree with this. It does depend on the type of degree against the job in question. The graduates that I employed had done their degree in software engineering, not just a generic computer science degree, however the modules that they had chosen had mostly all been web development. They had achieved good grades and were keen to work however I was stunned at just what they had been taught on their course. It just didn't scratch the surface in the real world. Our graphic designer had much better results as he chose graduates from graphic design courses. They were able to hit the road running without issue.

 

I think with the current climate companies want to employ people who can hit the road running and get straight on with the job as opposed to spending time training. This is especially true with a small company like ours, so experience will always take priority over a degree.

[Mchl]

One thing I can tell you, is that industrial automation engineers are the best coders ever! If you have opportunity to hire one, do so! And pay them handsomely!

 

Also, I happen to be an industrial automation engineer.

[.josh]

If you have some decent people-skills, degrees are practically worthless.  You can very easily learn what you need to on your own, claim you went to xyz university and land a job. Is that lying? Technically... but it's kinda hard to feel bad about it when Average Joe Company does not actually check your credentials.  Universities do not offer you something you cannot get on your own.  All they offer is a 3rd party seal of approval, to give a company reassurance that you can do what you say you can do.  At the end of the day, companies don't give a shit about pieces of paper; they give a shit about the needed job being done. 

 

When you are sitting in an interview, they are looking for confidence.  Your technical knowledge means jack shit if you aren't confident.  Having some xyz paper in your hand means jack shit about whether you are a lazy bum, procrastinator, asshole, etc.. those things are just as important, and arguably MORE important than actual technical skills.  That is not to say that you don't need technical knowledge.  What that means is at the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you got it, if you can convince them of that.

 

...but I would not be so quick to tell them that getting a degree is not your style...a degree is a good way to get your foot in the door if you don't have the people skills and have gained the knowledge on your own.  So telling your future in-laws that a degree is not necessary won't really work unless you do have the knowledge and know how to "work the room" - and have plans to actually put that to use (do you? have you told them?).

 

Thing is, the very existence of this post and your thoughts within it and statement of in-laws bitching...makes me believe you don't have the people skills (..and do you even have the actual knowledge that going to college offers?). 

 

Bottom line is you aren't making as much money as they think you should be making.  It sounds to me like you're working some min. wage job or not making enough money to pay the bills, or just not making the amount of money they consider to be "okay", so your in-laws are worried/bitching that you won't be able to provide for their daughter. 

 

It sounds to me you are inclined to believe that going to college is not a necessary step, but do you actually have an alternative plan?  Because pointing out how others succeed w/out higher education means absolutely nothing: it does not somehow make YOU move up.  It takes real effort and work just the same to do it w/out college. 

 

[Daniel0]

Computer science is not the same as software engineering for instance.

 

You need to stop saying this.  Many universities don't make the distinction.

 

If we go with Wikipedia for starters, the following are some of the sub-fields of computer science that are listed: Computational geometry, type theory, computability, algorithms, data structures, cryptography, machine learning, natural language processing. If we look at "Software Engineering" we have things such as software design, QA, testing, and software development and methodology.

 

Engineering is the practical application of science.

 

From our department, here are some of the recent titles for thesises:

"Gyroscopic Mouse Input for Wall-Size Displays: Improving interaction using Estimated Point Of Focus"

"Better time series forecasting using machine learning"

"Sensoric CSP Networks"

"Automatic detection of emphysema in 3d CT scans"

"From Automatic to Adaptive Data Acquisition - towards scientific sensornets"

"Semantic Patch Inference"

"Curve Evolution in Subspaces and Exploring the Metameric Class of Histogram of Gradient Orientation based Features using Nonlinear Projection Methods"

"Distributed Fluid Simulation on Multiple GPUs"

 

None of those sound like software engineering.

 

This isn't software engineering either:

Founded in 1965' date=' the Department of Computer Science is a center for research and education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Strong research groups exist in areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, foundations of computer science, scientific computing, and systems.[/quote']

 

Here they make a distinction between CS and SE as well:

The Computing Laboratory - Oxford University's Computer Science department - is at the heart of computing and related interdisciplinary activity at Oxford. It is a centre for research in computer science and software engineering' date=' with research strengths crossing conventional disciplinary boundaries into areas such as computational biology, linguistics, medicine, and quantum physics.[/quote']

 

Now lets have a look at some famous computer scientists. Neither Turing, Dijkstra or Knuth are known as "software engineers".

 

In this particular topic, we have neil.johnson who thinks (and I'll assume for the sake of argument that he is referring to CS; I've seen similar remarks by other people before) that the CS graduates he had been looking at do not have the qualifications needed for the programming positions he has. Then there is cags, with a CS degree, who was unable to find a job because he apparently didn't learn what the employers required in university. Both of these cases speak for the fact that CS isn't the same thing as SE.

 

If some CS departments market themselves as SE educations then clearly they are the ones who are at fault seeing as it turns out that the CS curriculum by itself isn't adequate enough to fill a SE job position. It is also partly the industry's fault when they sometimes require candidates with a background in computer science when it is clearly not a computer scientist they want.

 

I think I'll stand by my comment you quoted: CS is not the same as SE. Related? Yes. The same? No.

[cags]

I disagree with Daniel0 here. The title of the degree is irrelevant to a very large degree, at least at the University I went to. The only difference between my Computing Science degree and a Software Engineering degree were the required modules. In fact with my Computing Science degree I could have done the same modules as any other degree in the CS department, which is why I choose it, for the flexibility. I could have studied the EXACT same modules as somebody studying Software Engineering yet I would still graduate with a Computing Science degree. I'm not saying that it means the two degrees are the same, but you can't guarantee the two are different. SE is just a subset of CS in my opinion.

[JonnoTheDev]

In this particular topic, we have neil.johnson who thinks (and I'll assume for the sake of argument that he is referring to CS; I've seen similar remarks by other people before) that the CS graduates he had been looking at do not have the qualifications needed for the programming positions he has.

No, this is not the case at all. All my graduates did Software Engineering and mostly chose modules in Web Development. None were from a Computer Science degree. My argument is that what they had learnt over the 2-3 years of their degree within the web development modules did not even scratch the surface of what skills are required in the real world. It took a lot of time to train them up to the standard where they could work on a clients project. This is why I have the opinion that experience is more valuable than a degree and seems to be the opinion of current employers.

[.josh]

Okay comparing degrees is fine and dandy but I think the overall point here is whether a(ny) degree is worth pursuing in the first place. 

[JonnoTheDev]

Okay comparing degrees is fine and dandy but I think the overall point here is whether a(ny) degree is worth pursuing in the first place.

Absolutely.

IMO A degree is worth pursuing if you are guaranteed, or have a good chance to find work in your area of study that a person without a degree cannot. Also I would expect a level of pay higher than that of non-graduates. If your area of interest is looking more towards experience then I would most definately not go down the degree route and opt for a work based apprenticeship scheme if available. This would mean starting on a low wage but gaining valuable experience along with doing a recognised qualification.

 

When I left school in 1997 I chose to do an apprenticeship in Web Development. Not going to university was the best choice I ever made. I have friends who went to university and are way behind in my eyes, plus they have a large debt that they will be paying off for a long time.

[Daniel0]

I could have studied the EXACT same modules as somebody studying Software Engineering yet I would still graduate with a Computing Science degree. I'm not saying that it means the two degrees are the same, but you can't guarantee the two are different.

 

And you don't think it's a problem that if a university mislabels the educations so that two different programs with different contents are given the same label?

 

SE is just a subset of CS in my opinion.

 

Well, then they're not the same. If A ⊂ B, then A ≠ B. People who study electrical engineering will also have to take some classes about physics, but that doesn't mean that that electrical engineers are physicists just because they use physics.

 

The problem with CS/SE is just that there aren't enough CS jobs so a lot of CS people end up doing what is essentially SE eventually. This brings us back to the mislabeling issue; people need to state more clearly what kind of qualifications they seek, and HR departments need to stop being retards.

 

In this particular topic, we have neil.johnson who thinks (and I'll assume for the sake of argument that he is referring to CS; I've seen similar remarks by other people before) that the CS graduates he had been looking at do not have the qualifications needed for the programming positions he has.

No, this is not the case at all. All my graduates did Software Engineering and mostly chose modules in Web Development. None were from a Computer Science degree. My argument is that what they had learnt over the 2-3 years of their degree within the web development modules did not even scratch the surface of what skills are required in the real world. It took a lot of time to train them up to the standard where they could work on a clients project. This is why I have the opinion that experience is more valuable than a degree and seems to be the opinion of current employers.

 

Okay, so then I made an incorrect assumption. Nevertheless, as my parenthesis said, I've seen that argument made before.

 

Your experience with the SE candidates doesn't say anything in general about that education though. You could just be unlucky that the SE programs offered near you aren't very good.

 

Okay comparing degrees is fine and dandy but I think the overall point here is whether a(ny) degree is worth pursuing in the first place. 

 

A degree is worth pursuing if it gives you the qualifications that your potential employer wants (of course you may still benefit socially and by getting a network, but this is irrelevant to the matter at hand). That's how comparing degrees is relevant.

[Daniel0]

This topic is also missing some pretty crucial information:

 

Brian W, what exactly do you want to work as? What kind of things interest you? What kind of skills do you have right now?

[.josh]

See IMO he's not necessarily caring at all whether xyz is specifically worth pursuing...I think he's just tired of his future in-laws hassling him and he wants to go back and tell them going through the effort to get some piece of paper is little more useful than having something to wipe your ass with.  As I have mentioned, that's fine and dandy if you actually have a "Plan B" and are pursuing it.

[Daniel0]

Problem is just that you can't say anything general about whether or not it's worth it pursuing a degree. It depends on which institution you get it from, and which degree it is. It also depends on where you live. Do you have to pay huge sums of money for it, or is it financed through taxes? It also depends on how much you know about the subject already. It depends on whether or you think you'll benefit from being around experts in that field and being around other people who are interested in that field as well.

 

There are just too many factors to make any blanket statement about the worth of an education. Again, the answer is "it depends". You can do quite fine both with and without a degree.

[.josh]

right, I more or less agree.  "Right tool for the right job" is always true, no argument there.  My point was that doing quite fine without a degree still involves a lot of effort on someone's part, and I sort of got the impression that OP was just looking for a reason(s) not to pursue a degree, without considering that those reasons are only legit if you actually put in the alternative efforts involved in getting to the same point w/out one.

[JonnoTheDev]

Agreed. It's definately something that you have to spend time looking into thoroughly before making a decision.

[KevinM1]

In this particular topic, we have neil.johnson who thinks (and I'll assume for the sake of argument that he is referring to CS; I've seen similar remarks by other people before) that the CS graduates he had been looking at do not have the qualifications needed for the programming positions he has. Then there is cags, with a CS degree, who was unable to find a job because he apparently didn't learn what the employers required in university. Both of these cases speak for the fact that CS isn't the same thing as SE.

 

I never said that CS and SE are the same thing.  Rather, I said that many universities don't make a distinction.  The university I went to never made a hard distinction - you graduated with a CS degree regardless of the electives you took.  The same goes for Boston College.  MIT lists the degree as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering.  Hell, even Stanford, which you listed, only offers a CS degree, with no distinction for Software Engineering.

 

Again, I'm not saying that the disciplines are the same.  They are not.  What I am saying is that the term 'Computer Science' is often used as a catch-all term by universities to describe whatever programming degree they offer.