Representing such an example of work in a job application / resume / interview would be more valuable to me than a college degree. Due diligence and persistence — in the face of real-world, difficult, hundreds-of-moving-parts technical issues — are worth every penny.
EDIT: Yes, college degrees require due diligence and persistence, but they offer no indication of the willingness to exercise those skills _after_ college. This work does.
academic achievements, relating to actuall work, is a drop of piss in an ocean. my experience at a university actually made me lose respect for academics.
edit: who ever is downvoting is romanticizing the achievements of scientists of yore. or thinks that MIT is the norm.
no, for the most part its publish or die, ive heard professors refer to students as "harvest" and laugh, while copying slides off of google. ive seen professors lie their way into grants.
all that contrasted with how the industry actually works and its needs, and what it actually require the universities to produce.
yeah, ive become a achievement oriented cynic. titles truly only make me think less of a person if thats all they have to impress with.
i dont believe there is sense in naming it so people can scape goat it anf solve things by avoiding one bad university. because i think the BA/MA system is a road paved with good intentions. but its leading us to hell.
naming any singular entity would just make us think its them to blame, and i believe the problem is endemic.
i sat once on a table with PHD students and complained about the quality of introductory courses, where i was then sternly put back in my place with "a university does not prepare for work! it prepares for research!"
i told him someone should tell that to all the students enrolling to CS in hopes of careers.
not all maybe true, but its more likely most. maybe its this cynism.
solving this isnt easy, i would just like to open a school myself, and offer guidance / support for people struggeling as i did myself back then.
and my advice to most people who want to pursue CS is to do it via apprenticeship and later approach a technical university.
the drama/pitty is that this is a process that starts at 17. when we are most clueless.
> "a university does not prepare for work! it prepares for research!"
This is what universities have always believed that they are for. PhD courses in particular. There used to be a separate category of school that was both technical and employment focused; in the UK these were called "polytechnics", in the US they would be things like the Texas Agricultural and Mining College. For complex reasons due to both the class system and the set of accidents of history that caused a lot of startup founders to come from places like Stamford, they have become a "unfashionable".
EDIT: Yes, college degrees require due diligence and persistence, but they offer no indication of the willingness to exercise those skills _after_ college. This work does.