Colleges are mostly useless for anything not technical, even then we force people through a couple years of irrelevant education to keep the costs up "to be well rounded."
Those skills in the two years you actually do relevant work got replaced with AI and now it appears all they are doing is basically extending the two years of irrelevant work to the full four years. AI changes month to month and teaching it has worse decay than writing technical info into a book.
"The four-year tuition for Ohio State University is estimated to be around $54,564 for in-state students (based on a 2024-25 annual tuition of $13,641) and approximately $169,692 for out-of-state students (based on an annual tuition of $42,423). These estimates include tuition and fees only; a more comprehensive four-year cost of attendance will be higher, factoring in room and board, books, and other expenses"
Not worth the cost.
Mountain_Skies•2mo ago
Perhaps break the two apart with the "well rounded" core being one degree (Associate of General Studies) and the major subjects another degree (Associate of [subject]). If you earn both, they get bundled into a Bachelor of [subject] degree. Employers could decide for themselves if they want to hire someone with just the technical skills and assume that the well-rounded part would either happen through socialization or not be relevant. I've found many of the university core classes I had to take for my degree to be useful in life but not necessarily useful for the workplace. Some, such as English composition, were useful in both.
downrightmike•2mo ago
They have already decided they do not want to hire anyone, well locals anyway. Damned either way
techblueberry•2mo ago
“ Employers could decide for themselves if they want to hire someone with just the technical skills and assume that the well-rounded part would either happen through socialization or not be relevant.”
While not entirely crazy, isn’t part of the assumption of being well rounded that it helps you own your own career? Like it seems weird to me to externalize this as if you have no power in it. I study things that aren’t technical because it makes me a better functioning person/employee.
College shouldn’t just be about getting a job, it should be laying the foundation that makes you a better worker 20 years down the road.
treetalker•2mo ago
College to train for working for someone else: to me, this always sounded like a glorified finishing school for wage-slaves.
ThrowawayR2•2mo ago
Yup, garbage in, garbage out. If a developer can't write clearly and precisely (and most can't write anything long-form worth a damn), they are not going to be able to prompt LLMs effectively; one of the L's in LLM is "language", for pity's sake.
Education (formal or not) matters _more_ in a LLM dominated world, not less. That's why people like Terrence Tao and antirez are able to get effective results out of LLM but the average LLM user produces slop.
downrightmike•2mo ago
Those skills in the two years you actually do relevant work got replaced with AI and now it appears all they are doing is basically extending the two years of irrelevant work to the full four years. AI changes month to month and teaching it has worse decay than writing technical info into a book.
"The four-year tuition for Ohio State University is estimated to be around $54,564 for in-state students (based on a 2024-25 annual tuition of $13,641) and approximately $169,692 for out-of-state students (based on an annual tuition of $42,423). These estimates include tuition and fees only; a more comprehensive four-year cost of attendance will be higher, factoring in room and board, books, and other expenses"
Not worth the cost.
Mountain_Skies•2mo ago
downrightmike•2mo ago
techblueberry•2mo ago
While not entirely crazy, isn’t part of the assumption of being well rounded that it helps you own your own career? Like it seems weird to me to externalize this as if you have no power in it. I study things that aren’t technical because it makes me a better functioning person/employee.
College shouldn’t just be about getting a job, it should be laying the foundation that makes you a better worker 20 years down the road.
treetalker•2mo ago