Student debt relief/forgiveness

[SamSpade]

So if you are offended that you had to take English classes while pursuing a BS in an engineering field then really the fault is on you for choosing the wrong educational path.

Not offended. ACED those classes. They were just too easy, but I'm a very atypical engineering graduate. I went to an engineering school and simply gave up making references to literature or art or history. They looked at me like I had three heads.

But I also did well in engineering. Frankly, I wish our curricula had dumped a lot of the English and humanities requirements and had more practical hands-on type work.

And I certainly wouldn't fault employers for wanting their potential computer programmers to have a basic understanding of English and requiring a BA/BS for a position rather than multiple certifications which just show technical proficiency.

Except in forty years - it doesn't change. It's still true that your typical engineering student doesn't give a crap about that. When I was at engineering school, taking those kinds of classes was LAUGHED at. Called all kinds of names, but generally agreed upon to be useless to them.

And I am sure it works both ways - someone studying literature or business does not want to take math or chemistry. Just will never be useful.

And in practical terms, I'd rather my new DBA know about cyber security or network protocols than about how to write decent English. In my years as a programmer/engineer, I've had to work alongside a LOT of engineers for whom English wasn't even their first language. Others, they brag about the fact they NEVER ever read anything other than manuals for their work.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Oh I do know - and I know about graduate programs. Been in one, and my wife also. I just think bachelor's programs need to follow suit. They simply cost too much to waste precious dollars on "well rounded", especially in lieu of the fact it adds nothing to the degree. I think they follow an outdated idea of what university degrees are for. They used to be for rich kids to follow in Daddy's footsteps - just as prep schools taught Latin and Greek and a lot of other stuff that has no practical value in today's knowledge intensive careers.

I want them to change the entire approach. Totally.

A lot of higher level engineers must write technical papers, I have seen some really poor ones. When your employer wants to showcase their work and their engineer can't seem to string a coherent sentence together it really casts doubt on the product.

When a grad student I was the TA for technical writing and tried to get this point across, but it fell on deaf ears.

 

[SamSpade]

A lot of higher level engineers must write technical papers, I have seen some really poor ones. When your employer wants to showcase their work and their engineer can't seem to string a coherent sentence together it really casts doubt on the product.

Oh I've seen it. My conclusion however is that it's probably easier to teach a tech writer how to write about engineering than it is to get an engineer to write good English. I went to engineering school in the late 70's and 80's - and what was true then is STILL TRUE today.

Worse, my professors said it was true in THEIR day. And they would have been in school in the 20's.

My mom needed to learn algebra to get her master's in nursing. GOD THAT WAS AWFUL. I am not sure she ever really understood it - never used it - and I think just learned how to answer a test problem. She was however, a first rate nurse who had an uncanny sense of diagnosing patients within her realm of knowlege and experience. She was BORN to be a nurse - but I don't think she even understood arithmetic.

 

[SamSpade]

. GOD THAT WAS AWFUL.

Meaning - I spent hours teaching it to her. Almost as hard as teaching my intellectually disabled son.

I'm convinced that some minds just aren't cut out for some things.

 

[Merlin99]

Your point seems to be that you don't understand how our educational system works.

I assume by engineering degree you are talking about a Bachelor's. It's commonly understood in western educational systems that a Bachelor's degree is intended to give you a well rounded education with a specific focus (your major). It's supposed to verify you are at some level of post secondary general proficiency in several subjects, much like a high school degree or GED verifies a secondary level of proficiency.

You would find Master's programs to have far fewer general education requirements (if any), and PHDs will generally have none.

Trade schools on the other hand are not intended to be general education and so only have those courses (like basic math) as required to be successful in the trade.

Community College / Junior College usually has a combination of the two. You could learn general proficiency in preparation for advancement to a Bachelors program, or you can often focus on a trade and have very minimal GP requirements.

And as you mentioned, there are boot camps and industry certifications (especially in IT) as well as apprenticeships and other recognized ways of gaining recognized experience and training.

So if you are offended that you had to take English classes while pursuing a BS in an engineering field then really the fault is on you for choosing the wrong educational path.

And I certainly wouldn't fault employers for wanting their potential computer programmers to have a basic understanding of English and requiring a BA/BS for a position rather than multiple certifications which just show technical proficiency.

And the issue with foreigners barely speaking the language is kind of outside the scope. If they studied here and they got the same degree then they passed the same classes. They should have a good proficiency of the language. If your workplace just accepted a foreign degree with no such English requirement as equivalent, then that was a trade-off they chose to make.

That educational path is the requirement for the field though, most jobs won't take a vocational degree in place of a college degree.

 

[Clem72]

She was however, a first rate nurse who had an uncanny sense of diagnosing patients within her realm of knowlege and experience. She was BORN to be a nurse - but I don't think she even understood arithmetic.

No knock on your mom, but nurses (today at least) are absolutely not supposed to diagnose patients. Triage at most. But they ABSOLUTELY DO need basic arithmetic. They need to know fractions and at least some very basic algebra to understand how to administer the medicine the doctor proscribed. Unlike when you pick up meds from a pharmacy that already has the correct dosing and schedule the hospital uses standardized quantities and different ways to administer it (it's not pop two pills and see me in the morning, it's how much saline to I need at the current drip rate to properly dilute this medicine so it's administered over 3 hours).

 

[Gilligan]

When a grad student I was the TA for technical writing and tried to get this point across, but it fell on deaf ears.

I took a technical writing course in grad school and it turned out to be one of the most career-useful/valuable courses I took. The other courses I took, that I hated at the time but also turned out to be immensely valuable IRL, were those to do with statistical methods and data analysis.

 

[Clem72]

That educational path is the requirement for the field though, most jobs won't take a vocational degree in place of a college degree.

It's not though. Some of the most famous computer scientists have degrees in Physics or Math and not specifically IT related. And most of the names you think of today didn't have a degree at all (Gates, Wozniak, Zuckerberg, etc).

Sure, if you are applying through HR to get stuck into a corporate machine like a cog, then you need the right degree. Most everyone I know who was highly successful in computer science or related fields started with just a high school degree. They got an entry level job with a small shop and worked their way up. Once you have experience that far outshines credentials.

A lot of smaller employers will pick up IT staff just based on their certs. Microsoft dev certs and cisco networking certs will get your foot in the door with companies right outside the gate at Pax. If you have a CCNA/CCDA someone will hire you for cyber work today.

One of my friends was a co-developer of SIRI working for SRI, he now works at Amazon now and makes ungodly amounts of money. He started out contributing to FOSS projects while still in school and used his portfolio to get an internship with SRI without even going to college. Another friend worked at a mom and pop grocery store and wrote a new point of sale software for them (ran on an AS400 of all things and I think it may still). He now runs a company selling his point of sale software and is fairly successful. Another friend of mine actually has a couple of degrees but nothing IT related, he started making flash games for New Grounds in the late 90s or early 00s and parlayed that into a video game business.

 

[SamSpade]

No knock on your mom, but nurses (today at least) are absolutely not supposed to diagnose patients.

Nor did she do that in an official capacity. She would let doctors know etc. and give her reasons.

However, she didn't work often in that capacity. In a career that spanned 35+ years, she went from visiting nurse to O.R. nurse (and actually scrubbed once with Ben Carson) to psychiatric nursing - to - eventually - nursing administration.

She just had a keen eye for that sort of thing. My point was - some people just don't get math. Like at all. My youngest doesn't. As long as you show her HOW to set up a problem, she can do it, but if another problem is presented differently she has no clue, because she doesn't know what it means.

When I worked construction, the guys didn't know a lot of science, but damn if they couldn't add measurements and break them down into where to mark a board or map something out. I might have a fence running down a property, and off the top of their head they could shout out to the 1/8 of an inch where each board should go.

I can only do the most basic of home repairs. I worked for a guy who believed my inability was just lack of attention to detail. But this just wasn't borne out by observation - HE could grab a 2x4 and a circular saw, and within seconds - without measuring - saw off off a 3/8" shim, a 1/2" shim and a 5/8" shim. Three cuts, 1, 2, 3. I couldn't get it done right even after measuring carefully. He could look at a stairwell and tell me how many sixteenths it was out of square. I mean, holy crap.

I CAN however, usually solve math and programming problems by inspecton in about the same amount of time. A fact I try to hide so people won't bother me.

SOME people are good at stuff, others aren't.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

HOWEVER - back to my original point -----------

I think we need to adjust how we educate people in this country, if we are to compete worldwide. We simply cannot have schools charge obscene amounts of money for what they offer, and having the government pay or guarantee money just makes it cost more. Exorbitant pricing however, is going to keep lots of very bright minds out of university. Scholarships notwithstanding, college is STILL the purview of the well heeled. Or the soon to be deeply in debt.

This needs to change NOT because we need to give away degrees - we have to compete in a world that has adapted to making skilled people.

 

[Clem72]

I think we need to adjust how we educate people in this country, if we are to compete worldwide. We simply cannot have schools charge obscene amounts of money for what they offer, and having the government pay or guarantee money just makes it cost more. Exorbitant pricing however, is going to keep lots of very bright minds out of university. Scholarships notwithstanding, college is STILL the purview of the well heeled. Or the soon to be deeply in debt.

This needs to change NOT because we need to give away degrees - we have to compete in a world that has adapted to making skilled people.

I agree with this. Education should not be as expensive as it is. And there will always be a place for the traditional higher educational route, but yes I think focusing on trade schools and apprenticeships would go a long ways towards fixing the issues.

 

[SamSpade]

I agree with this. Education should not be as expensive as it is. And there will always be a place for the traditional higher educational route, but yes I think focusing on trade schools and apprenticeships would go a long ways towards fixing the issues.

DEFINITELY agree with apprenticeships, but along the lines of what we've been doing at my workplace - having summer interns come in, learn the ropes in exchange for a job offer when they graduate.

We had something in school we called co-op - where a student would take a semester off as a paid intern at a company - and return to complete schooling. They might do co-op a few times but I ALWAYS noticed they were MUCH BETTER than their fellow students, especially when it came to hands on work, such as in labs and design. Because they'd spent six months DOING it, for money.

Trade schools will get you into a trade - and I am looking at that for my youngest, whose skills are significant but they don't translate into academics (for example, she has a seriously incredible memory).

What I think will work just as well is something more like technical boot camp, but for various professions. I know people in other countries who get certified in a profession, but they only go to school for it for less than a year. So they might emerge a botanist, but with a defined specialty. Ditto veterinary science. And so on. And it's not extremely expensive.

I think the well rounded education thing is going to run it course - just as secondary education that is just for the upper class has. We have to compete with nations MUCH bigger than us - we need to pump out skilled laborersand technical people in greater pecentages - or they will eat our lunch.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Oh I've seen it. My conclusion however is that it's probably easier to teach a tech writer how to write about engineering than it is to get an engineer to write good English. I went to engineering school in the late 70's and 80's - and what was true then is STILL TRUE today.

A lot of places simply won't pay for two people to do the work one can.

Also an engineer that can't communicate properly will never pass journey level pay and can't demonstrate their value to their employer.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

We had something in school we called co-op - where a student would take a semester off as a paid intern at a company - and return to complete schooling. They might do co-op a few times but I ALWAYS noticed they were MUCH BETTER than their fellow students, especially when it came to hands on work, such as in labs and design. Because they'd spent six months DOING it, for money.

Many were selected because they were the better one to begin with.

 

[SamSpade]

A lot of places simply won't pay for two people to do the work one can.

Also an engineer that can't communicate properly will never pass journey level pay and can't demonstrate their value to their employer.

Well - I think I write rather well. And I have had bosses say they enjoyed reading my weekly reports, which I thought was odd, because none of my brilliant humor came through. It does however, come from MANY years of doing what I enjoy best - writing.

I'm not talking about an inability to just use English. But I do work all day with mathematicians who seem to write papers that maybe only other mathematicians can get, because when I present their work to other programmers, they all shrug. Because in programming, words like "AND" and "OR" are not interchangeable, and logic has to be right or it's not going to work. They frequently make references to data sets and items they've never defined, because they are used to proofreaders who are also mathematicians.

I'd say that those eggheads can't speak English, because they can only commuinicate what they think but not what they want. A good paper has to be more than good English - it has to be clear and explain the problem precisely to someone who's never seen it. They go nuts when I ask them to clarify the gazillion places where their words are ambiguous - because they don't see it.

I do remember I've been on teams where we had one or two people whose specialty was to do such stuff - they needed technical expertise but having them do the writing freed up our engineering geniuses who otherwise would squander too much time trying to write.

 

[Gilligan]

I do remember I've been on teams where we had one or two people whose specialty was to do such stuff - they needed technical expertise but having them do the writing freed up our engineering geniuses who otherwise would squander too much time trying to write.

That's exactly how my 30+ year working relationship with @stgislander has always worked. He engineers, builds, tests, and delivers, all kinna cool control systems. I write about what he's done and take all the credit.

 

[Kyle]

That's exactly how my 30+ year working relationship with @stgislander has always worked. He engineers, builds, tests, and delivers, all kinna cool control systems. I write about what he's done and take all the credit.

Yeah, but he has the Premiere Parking Space at the office.

 

[Gilligan]

Yeah, but he has the Premiere Parking Space at the office.

He holds some kind of company record for how long he's been awarded the Employee of the Month parking space.

 

[Sneakers]

Yeah, but he has the Premiere Parking Space at the office.

Right next to the dumpster, IIRC.

 

[Gilligan]

Right next to the dumpster, IIRC.

For convenience. It's one of the many (few?) company bennies; he gets to dump all his trash there, in exchange for a very modest deduction from his pittan...er...paycheck. .