What I Learned in College
Over at Nettuts, they’ve posted an article titled, “Should You Attend University for Web Development”. Reading the article, I found it pretty interesting that a lot of people feel college isn’t necessary for web development and that their schools are behind the times when it comes to web development. I’m not going to defend my school and say it’s totally up-to-date, because it’s not. I do feel however, that that’s the nature of the beast when dealing with web development and computer science in general. As I wind down in the Masters program, set to graduate in May, I can tell you these two things after six year of college: the CS program should not be about the what but the how, and college is just as much a social thing as it is an academic thing.
First, let’s focus on the academics. Computing, no matter what your focus, is an ever changing field. It would be impossible for every school to stay on top of every technology is out there. I’m not being an apologist, I am speaking the truth. The idea should not be, “I’m learning C#,” or “I’m learning PHP.” It should be, “I’m learning how to program, using PHP.” I learned what Object Oriented Programming is and I can apply that to any language. I’ve learned the semantics of an imperative and a declarative language. I learned algorithms, and should be able to implement them as long as I know how certain language behaves, and I’ve learned how to teach myself that. Heck, my school doesn’t even have a web development major, and I consider myself a damn good web developer.
Beyond that, you learn the social skills you should have whether your profession be computer scientist, web developer, engineer, etc. There is a huge focus in our program on team building and communication. Human interaction isn’t something Google can teach you (yet). In our Masters program (in Software Engineering) we learn about process, eliciting requirements, etc. While you can learn some of this stuff with experience, hearing about it in a classroom certainly expedites the process.
But college isn’t just about academics. I will attribute a good amount of my social skills, professionalism, and 90% of my connections to going to college. I got involved in extracurriculars, networked, and made some amazing friends that challenged my way of thinking and got me to try new things. Again, that isn’t something you’re going to find on Google.
College should not just be about teaching you X. It should teach you how to learn. You should get some leassons in being social. It should give you some experiences you can’t get anywhere else. Those who say, “I don’t need to go to college to be X,” aren’t looking at the big picture and will never be the best at what they do.