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After 4 years of college and nearly one and half years of working, i havent yet found out how what i learnt in college was useful to me in my professional life. Everything i learnt in my college i easily could have learnt from the right book or from the millions of how to tutorials available on the internet. Most of my friends work on technologies that weren't on our college curriculum ,which was probably last updated in 2001. I guess this is the case with most colleges. Take any field, what is is that a college degree gives you which you couldnt have learned on your own. Its more probable now than say 15-20 years ago, what with the amount of knowledge that i available to us. All you need is a laptop and a broadband connection.
Critics to this idea may point out to my total disregard for teachers. My counterpoint to this is that i believe hands on training is much better than pure pedantism. Also with the web we have easy access to people with the same ideas and interests. Facebook groups and tweeps could replace your traditional classmates.
Then specially in India comes the question of jobs. Why will a company hire someone without a college degree. What i suggest is nothing new, introduce an internship program and give your intern/apprentice sufficient time. He will be as useful to you as any college graduate you hire after six months and also you will have a chance to correct a mistake if you hired the wrong person.
I still understand the reason for degrees in something like medicine, you cant directly intern at an hospital after a self reading of Grey's anatomy but does the same hold true for a computer programmer or even in the field of management.
Do you think i am wrong or you agree with my ideas. Do let me know.
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Yippeee. I'm the first comment-er :D
ReplyDeleteHonest Comments: please do consider "formatting" your text. Its brilliant, but with low readability, its a strain for the eyes.
Well, as for the topic. Its pretty interesting. A lot can be talked/debated about. I'm in the office currently, so will surely paste in my views when I get time.
Thanks,
krislogy
This article was written from the perspective of a commercial web developer or a related profession.However this might not be true for other professions.
ReplyDeleteActually it depends on a persons interest and perspective in life.The ideal way is to train the students early on during the end of school and beginning year of the university according to their interests.People who want to work for firms or in the commercial sector later on should be taught in a different way than people who want to take up an academic career.
One definetely needs a college degree if one wants to take up an academic career either in computer science,management or engineering.
In India currently most firms hire BTechs or MBA's in high numbers as their requirements are entirely different from that in other countries.
The same firms( Google,Microsoft,Philips etc ) hire a lot of PHD and even Post docs for their research work. There are lot of PHD's projects in most firms but the numbers are quite less in India.
Further one also requires an academic setting if one wants to do intensive research or theoritical work which is different from what most firms try to do in India.
Management graduates after their MBA earn quite a lot generally than professors who teach them.Here the difference is that people who apply the management theories are more in demand than the people who actually try to formulate them.This is due to the current industry standards and nothing can be done much regarding it.
However this should not stop people to leave the academic route and look for short cuts to earn money ( like Internships etc ) or work for firms soon in their career.This is good for practical exposure and makes them learn latest technologies.However with such an approach they can never learn the right tools to make their own tools or develop their own theoritical insights.
This kind of work might work in the I.T sector or other related sectors but is bound to fail with other areas like solutions to socio economic problems like infrastructure,energy etc
One cannot understand the poltical and socio dynamics of an electricity system unless one is trained theoritically.
People must be trained theoritically and academically to develop their own cognitive frames for understanding problems rather than using ready made solutions or tailor made concepts developed by others.
Therefore one needs to look at the topic from a more broader point of view.