Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!emory!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Education
Message-ID: <7515@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 22:27:58 GMT
References: <47904806.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
Lines: 51

From perry@apollo.HP.COM (Jim Perry):
> You want the big professional bucks ASAP,
> you'll have to take humanities courses and you may as well try to get
> something out of them.

   As a MSCS candidate, with a 4.0 GPA and industrial experience
   besides, I have no intention of doing so... 

   Read my lips: No New Humanities!!! 

> [Naturally, every individual is different, and I know many gifted
> programmers/engineers who never made it through college at all but
> that I'd love to have working for/with me.  I don't know that I'd
> interview them based solely on a resume, though...]

   But Jim!!! They might not have all the Literature and Humanities!!!
   How could they possibly be good workers without that???   :^) 
   
From mjl@cs.rit.edu (Michael Lutz):
> I teach at one of the most stridently career
> oriented institutions in the land.  RIT unabashedly proclaims that its
> primary mission is the preparation of graduates for careers in a
> variety of professions from engineering and computer science to graphic
> arts and photography.  Yet the vast majority of my faculty colleagues
> would recoil in horror at the thought of providing the kind of
> "education" Bill Wolfe advocates.

  Congratulations, Michael: you've precisely identified the problem!!!
  
  If there were effective alternatives, career-oriented institutions
  which provided the type of education I advocate, then there would
  be no need for this discussion.   The free market would demonstrate
  conclusively that the nonproductive topics are in fact not necessary
  to professional career preparation, and that the career preparation
  component of a BS is quite simply being held hostage so that students
  can be compelled to study whatever the educational establishment wishes.

  It has been claimed that such topics are necessary for one to be able
  to intelligently vote; if so, establish voting requirements.  Right now,
  the criteria for voting involve physical age and nothing more, so this
  defense is not consistent with the present state of reality.

  In fact, when it comes right down to it, there is no justification 
  whatsoever, except for the Machiavellian fact that the educational 
  establishment is in a position to hold hostage the career preparations 
  of its students.  Unbundle the BS/BA and let the free market assign the
  true values of the career-preparation and irrelevant-topics components;
  then we shall see how the costs and benefits *really* stack up!!


  Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu