alt Hacker NewsUniversities consider themselves pure and isolated from lowly industry.
Industry demands specifically university degrees to gatekeep positions.
And then we leave teenagers to figure out the puzzle by themselves. I think it's a disservice to the youth.
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While I have my issues with the system, many Soviet-controlled countries implemented a two-tier higher education system that solved this by having one tier be focused on practical subjects and the other on theoretical ones.
Yeah, I got duped by this. Did a CS degree because that's what you're "supposed" to do to get a programming job, and it was almost all theoretical junk I had no interest in. I hated it. I think I learned useful things in like, two of my classes. I knew more about programming than all but one of my instructors. It was awful and going through that degree program is one of the biggest regrets in my life. But hey, I get to stick "CS Degree from University" as the very last line on my resumes, I guess. Woo.
Universities produce research, and students; Students produce industry, and the body politic; Industry and polity produce university funding.
A cycle I like to call, the "ring-bugger."
I'm not saying it's right, or acceptable, or particularly moral… But I agree that by obscuring the facts, we only serve to confound the decent and good-willed of our students.
Edit: derp.