<story><title>Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already</title><url>https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/936615043126370306</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drewrv</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I&amp;#x27;m naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education.&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we want clear class divisions. One would never refer to law school or medical school as &amp;quot;vocational&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>wnoise</author><text>&amp;gt; CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming.&lt;p&gt;Well, that&amp;#x27;s because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>codingdave</author><text>&amp;gt; One would never refer to law school or medical school as &amp;quot;vocational&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Sure you would. They are 100% vocational schools. Their cost, acceptance rates, time commitment, and difficulty level may be higher than other vocational schools, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t change what they are -- 100% focused on giving you the knowledge and skills to do a specific job.</text></comment>
<story><title>Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already</title><url>https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/936615043126370306</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drewrv</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I&amp;#x27;m naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education.&lt;p&gt;I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we want clear class divisions. One would never refer to law school or medical school as &amp;quot;vocational&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>wnoise</author><text>&amp;gt; CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming.&lt;p&gt;Well, that&amp;#x27;s because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toasterlovin</author><text>Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.</text></comment>