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From: sullivan@aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Re^2: CS education
Message-ID: <1989Dec5.155727.20983@aqdata.uucp>
Date: 5 Dec 89 15:57:27 GMT
References: <5866@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Organization: aQdata, Inc.  Western Region -- San Dimas, CA
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From article <5866@ubc-cs.UUCP>, by manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis):
> 
> But that's what a university is supposed to be. We aren't supposed to be
> training people for careers (even ones as software engineers); rather
> we're supposed to be producing intelligent, educated people whose major
> strengths are problem-solving and disciplined creativity. 

Nonsense.  Doctors, lawyers, librarians, teachers, and musicians all
got practical training in college.  Why don't CS students?  When my
wife went to school to be a librarian she wasn't just taught why it is a
good thing to catalog materials, she was taught how things were cataloged.
She was actually given practical assignments that helped her later in her
career.  Now, Turing machines may be swell but I sure can't see how they
helped my problem solving skills, much less my career after school.  There
are things I am learning all the time that are basic to computer programming/
software engineering that I wish would have been taught in school.

And why is it Universities can't produce "intelligent, educated people whose
major strengths are problem-solving and disciplined creativity" who are also
better trained for careers, since careers are what most students want, anyway?
Just another pet peeve.
-- 
Michael Sullivan          uunet!jarthur.uucp!aqdata!sullivan
aQdata, Inc.
San Dimas, CA