Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!manis From: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Are there still good teachers? Message-ID: <5900@ubc-cs.UUCP> Date: 7 Dec 89 03:38:50 GMT References: <8841@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1989Dec6.220957.26182@aqdata.uucp> Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca Reply-To: manis@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Organization: The Invisible City of Kitezh Lines: 44 In article <1989Dec6.220957.26182@aqdata.uucp> sullivan@aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan) writes: > There are some instances, >CS is one of them, where the only "job training" that can be had is >at a University. Not high school, not Fred's College of Electrical >Engineering ("Learn to repair VCR's and computers in four months!"), >but at a college. I don't know how it works in the US, but in Canada we have two year community colleges and four year universities. I've taught in both, and have had really outstanding students (and turkeys :-( ) in both. The colleges are very explicitly career training institutions. The Computing Technology program I taught in at Camosun College included courses in programming and software design, real time systems, operating systems, and file management. The students did really outstanding projects (Camosun College projects have placed among the finalists in the BC Technology Showcase for years [advt]). With college (2-year) students, I have found that the lure of money is a very strong one. `Gee, why do we have to learn this junk?' `Because there are jobs in it.' `Wow, what exciting stuff we're studying!!!' This is as it should be. Perhaps what Michael and Bill Wolfe are talking about could be best acccommodated in a four-year technical college, which is specifically aimed at career preparation, yet which deals with serious computer science/engineering. (Germany, for example, has both universities and `technical institutes', both of which issue degrees.) However, I do not feel that this sort of thing belongs in a university. (This is not an expression of snobbery; technical college graduates would expect to be paid more, for example.) As an aside, if (as Bill Wolfe said) I were forced to teach Ada, CASE, etc., I'd cut my throat. -- \ Vincent Manis "There is no law that vulgarity and \ Department of Computer Science literary excellence cannot coexist." /\ University of British Columbia -- A. Trevor Hodge / \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394