An "academic mercenary" speaks up

http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/

Quote:I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

Ok, that was for a couple of readers of my posts. There is way more interesting stuff in this mini-biography.

College is slowly morphing into pure theory, and nothing practical (at least at the vast majority of publics).

People don't understand a liberal arts degree is collegiate for "secretary". Even in the the USC system the CS program isn't that connected with reality. It's worse at Columbia than it is at the satellite system oddly enough (Breadboards? In CS? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?). However even at the best in the USC system, there's gaping holes. You won't find anything pertaining to System Administration. You won't find anything pertaining to practical applications of security (no pen testing, no code auditing). You won't find anything pertaining to modern interpreted programming languages like Python or Perl. Etc. There's some concrete useful classes such as Networking, Object Oriented Programming, Operating Systems, and Databases. But those weren't perfect either. Networking didn't cover modern fiber networks and 10 GigE. OOP was purely Java, and we didn't even touch the Java API until the 3rd semester (and final class) of those classes. Operating Systems was almost entirely Linux thank goodness, but we never really sat down with Linux to show the vast philosophic differences between it and Microsoft. I feel I could have taught a semester on that alone. Databases didn't discuss the ways to optimize field sizes and structure and indexing to achieve maximum performance and minimum table lock time.

I'd say in terms of practical knowledge, 80% is self taught. That's why I'm such a big believer in the open source model and the highly educational community that surfaces around it. It's why I'm a big believer in professional and semi-professional groups. By extension it's why I believe in a college sports website setup like ours instead of hundreds of separate communities. I put my money and my time where my mouth is, as a member of ACM, ARRL, FSF, EFF, and C4L.

I'm not sure if this is just because of the job market, but it seems employers have been convinced that they want that theory education in their employees.

My major "Recording Industry" sounds like a 2 year degree, which are often very practice oriented. But It is a "legit" 4-year degree, that was very practical in the teaching (along with the mandatory gen. ed. BS). Hands on and relevant to the industry. 4 years of college to replace 6-8 years of experience in the industry. I thought it would be the best balance of "practical" and "theorized" education in perception, but people with "History", "English", "Anthropology", etc. degrees are getting jobs (along with those having 10+ years experience in the field) when I'm doing something TOTALLY unrelated and, in my mind, unskilled.

(11-17-2010 10:25 AM)Raider_ATO Wrote:  I'm not sure if this is just because of the job market, but it seems employers have been convinced that they want that theory education in their employees.

My major "Recording Industry" sounds like a 2 year degree, which are often very practice oriented. But It is a "legit" 4-year degree, that was very practical in the teaching (along with the mandatory gen. ed. BS). Hands on and relevant to the industry. 4 years of college to replace 6-8 years of experience in the industry. I thought it would be the best balance of "practical" and "theorized" education in perception, but people with "History", "English", "Anthropology", etc. degrees are getting jobs (along with those having 10+ years experience in the field) when I'm doing something TOTALLY unrelated and, in my mind, unskilled.

I don't know the answer to this, although I suspect much of it might be this: HR. HR has a lot of influence over hiring, while adding little value. It's a great example of a repository for useless degrees, so they perpetuate the notion that liberal arts give you broad skills and the "ability to think" which are so useful.

At some point in time that may have been true. But liberal arts have been so corrupted that they no longer offer to develop skills for the students, and in turn, the students have simply turned to cheating. Thus any vestige of the benefits of a liberal arts education have been so utterly stripped, that they are a true deteriment for the graduates and any unfortunate employers.

Meanwhile, HR continues to push for hiring these candidates over ones with useful, applied skills, ignoring the obvious that you have to think to use those correctly and to use them well!

As far as the liberal arts degree is concerned, IMO those degrees have a purpose because a lot of our CEOs and government officials happen to have those degrees, even though I may not like it. Until those people stop having those positions, those degrees will reign supreme. Liberal arts degrees also allow better upward mobility even though its graduates may not be the best at the jobs they actually do, but they are usually the first ones to think outside of the box. Through my life experiences, thinking outside of the box leads to bigger opportunities than just knowing your job.

BTW, I'm not arguing against practical majors (I'm a Construction Management major, myself), but I also see the value in the liberal arts (Political Science Minor also).

(11-17-2010 10:38 AM)DrTorch Wrote:  I don't know the answer to this, although I suspect much of it might be this: HR.

That's interesting, and makes sense. I'm not complaining, because the jobs in my desired field aren't going to the liberal arts majors, they're going to the guys with 5-10 years experience and willing to work for the same paltry amount of $ I am. I'm just glad I'm doing something I don't completely hate, even though its not getting me anywhere closer to what I want to do with my life.

When I was a senior in high school I accompanied a friend to his college during his exams. I easily got into the room, was handed a test, and proceded to look for answers in cheat sheets we took with us and I gave him the answers. I got caught about half way through the 2 hour long test, was asked to leave and nothing happened to my friend. He passed the test, got a job with the government, attended my first wedding and died a few years ago before he could receive a dime from his pension. He was single.