I still remember very vividly the moment the chairman of the computer science department told me:

Our job is not to graduate technicians

This response came as I was discussing with him the role of the university in preparing students for the job market. Yet, I, as well as the vast majority of students in that department, were expecting exactly the opposite.

Universities should stop promoting themselves as institutions that prepare their students for the job market.

They aren’t, and that’s OK. Professors want to do research; a lot of them don’t even want to teach, and they’re most definitely not the most qualified to teach industry practices—an industry many of them haven’t even practiced in.

The world would be a far better place if we stopped associating degrees with intelligence or capability. The world would also be in a better position if we stopped considering alternative means of education as “lesser.” We would all be better off if not having a university degree were normalized.

The topics taught in a computer science program are very important. Mastering these topics takes a lifetime.

Why are we torturing everyone in these multi-year programs where, in the best-case scenario, students come out on the other end with a “mental index of relevant topics” but not necessarily any depth indicative of any level of mastery?

A university degree in tech is always an ineffective proxy indicator.

Universities are awesome. I wish I could go back and do more studying now that I know how to study and what. However, they are not programs designed to prepare anyone for the job market.

They can’t keep up.