<p>fatpig554 on this topic, 2 times out of 9 is not every thread…I can talk about it all I want…But I will stop bragging…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yet I think that’s the real crux of the problem: why are they not within the university’s scope? What’s wrong with the notion of universities teaching marketable skills?</p>
<p>I agree that there are a few schools - unfortunately, mostly the lower-tier ones - that offer computer network majors. But even those majors generally tend to concentrate on the theory of networking as opposed to the actual practical skills of networking. Let’s face it: unless you’re actually planning to design your own router or, even more saliently, design a better version of TCP/IP, you don’t really need to know queueuing theory. The existing routers and protocols already have proper buffering and resending capabilities already baked in. </p>
<p>You recommend that students who want to learn practical networking skills should simply attend a local ITT or comm college. But again, why should they need to do that? Why can’t they learn those skills as an integrated part of their university education? </p>
<p>To be clear, I am not advocating that students be forced to learn those skills. Those who don’t want to learn are free to take other coursework. But those who do want to learn should be able to earn college credits that advance their status toward graduation. After all, colleges offer credits for other practical skills: Stanford famously offers a highly popular CS course specifically on how to design Iphone apps, and used to offer one on designing Facebook apps like Farmville. MIT used to offer, and may again in the near future, a course on Web applications, the goal of which was that every student who finishes the course should be able to design an Amazon or Ebay all by themselves. So why can’t schools offer courses on practical IT skills such as router or server administration? </p>
<p>[CS</a> 193P iPhone Application Development](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/]CS”>CS 193P iPhone Application Development)</p>
<p>[Captology</a> Notebook: 105 students join Stanford Facebook Course](<a href=“http://credibility.stanford.edu/captology/notebook/archives.new/2007/09/105_students_jo.html]Captology”>http://credibility.stanford.edu/captology/notebook/archives.new/2007/09/105_students_jo.html)</p>
<p>[Software</a> Engineering for Internet Applications (6.171)](<a href=“http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/one-term-web]Software”>Software Engineering for Internet Applications (6.171))</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But who said anything about stopping at the CCNA? Why can’t university coursework take you all the way to the CCIE - or even multiple CCIE’s (of the various flavors of CCIE - or even the CCA designation? </p>
<p>Furthermore, just because the CCNA may be easy, does that mean that it shouldn’t be taught by universities? Let’s face it - plenty of universities offer plenty of easy coursework and, heck, entire majors that are easy. Surely we can all think of certain courses in our universities in which you can put in very little study time and still pass the course. Such college courses, frankly, could be passed by most high school students, because the material and grading is easy. Hence, if universities can offer easy courses like that, I don’t see why they can’t also offer a CCNA-type course, despite its lack of difficulty. </p>
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<p>The question is not what the difference is between EE/CS and IT - we all know that. The question is, practically speaking, where do all of the EE/CS grads end up? And the fact is, many of them do not obtain “real” EE/CS jobs, but instead take IT jobs. Nor is that a simple matter of coercion, as many of them want to take IT jobs. As I said before, one of the greatest advantages of IT is its geographic flexibility, as nowadays due to the complexity of corporate backoffice systems, every organization needs IT. But only a small minority of companies really need EE/CS employees, and those companies tend to be clustered only in certain areas of the country where you may not want to live. </p>
<p>What that means is that IT jobs are indeed relevant to the discussion of the career path of EE/CS graduates. I can think of many former EE/CS graduates who do nothing but IT work, and have done so for years. While we’ll never know for sure, I suspect they’re making just as much, if not more, than they would have if they had actually stayed in EE/CS. </p>
<p>To be sure, I agree with you that engineering does offer greater potential to develop. It does offer the potential of higher pay - essentially, it offers higher variance. I therefore certainly agree that highly enterprising and entrepreneurial individuals such as yourself probably are better off pursuing engineering.</p>
<p>But not every EE/CS student is like that. Many of them are satisfied with a middle-class lifestyle that allows them to live practically anywhere in the country and still allows them to find work. These students are probably better off learning IT skills than, say, an advanced algorithms course as is required in many CS majors. Let’s face it: if you’re just going to be configuring/administering servers and routers, you don’t really need to know how Bloom filters or Huffman coding really works.</p>
<p>hey Sakky, very impressive statement!
I wonder what I can do to prepare myself to be a future CS majored.</p>
<p>Anyone one that works as a software developer should be able to learn technology like programming for the iphone, windows phone, ASP.net, and so on without taking a class.</p>
<p>I have learn more about software development outside of the class room then inside the class room.</p>
<p>But who said anything about stopping at the CCNA? Why can’t university coursework take you all the way to the CCIE - or even multiple CCIE’s (of the various flavors of CCIE - or even the CCA designation?</p>
<p>The CC community college from my house has classes for—CCNA, CCDA, CCNP, and CCDP, and the college is one of the top ten community colleges in the USA.</p>
<p>But anyone with a CS, CpE, EE background should be able to learn this stuff without taking a class. You could buy a few books from Cisco press, setup a home network with 2-4 routers and 2-4 switches for less then $1,000. This way you can get hands dirty</p>
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</p>
<p>But that’s precisely the problem: as I said, not every CS major actually becomes a software developer, or even wants to be. By a similar note, most history majors do not become professional historians, most psych majors do not become professional psychologists, most poli-sci majors do not become professional political scientists (presuming such a job even exists at all). One could even take the math major - from which most CS departments at top universities are direct outgrowths: not all math majors will work as professional mathematicians, or want to. So why should we assume that every CS major is going to work as a software developer? </p>
<p>See below. </p>
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<p>Well, what can I say? Not everybody lives near your house or to any of the other top 10 community colleges in the country. </p>
<p>But more importantly, what you’re saying only highlights the core of the problem: that community colleges may actually be teaching more useful skills than are the engineering departments at top-ranked universities. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If not, then that begs the question of what exactly is the benefit of studying engineering at a top-ranked university. </p>
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<p>Which speaks to my point exactly - why should they have to learn that material outside of the official course curriculum? Obviously they can do that, but why should they need to? Why can’t those materials actually be incorporated into the official university infrastructure?</p>
<p>For example, instead of having students buy Ciscopress books with their own money, why don’t the university libraries buy those books and make them available for lending? After all, any library of a major university will own boatloads of books, archived periodicals, and academic journals that, let’s face it, practically nobody ever reads. So why can’t they also buy the complete volume set of Ciscopress or OraclePress books? </p>
<p>You say that students can purchase their own Cisco networking homelab, and I would agree, but again, why should they have to? Why can’t the university provide a fully-equipped CCIE-level lab for students? </p>
<p>You say that students can learn IT skills outside of the official course curriculum, but why should they have to? Why can’t they be counted as official course credits? Like I said, colleges count plenty of other unusual courses for college credit. For example, as I said, Stanford offers college credits for its Iphone app development course. Many (probably most) colleges offer credit for physical education courses that teach skills such as golf, tennis, martial arts, or dance. For example, Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart infamously completed the unit requirements for his degree at USC by taking a course in ballroom dance with his girlfriend. Berkeley not only offers courses for credit that teach students how to play the guitar, they even offer a course about Batman, a course about the vampire motif throughout literary history from Dracula to Buffy to Twilight & True Blood, a course on the Harry Potter books and films, and a course about the TV show Mad Men. </p>
<p>[Leinart’s</a> one class: ballroom dancing - College football- NBC Sports](<a href=“NBC Sports - news, scores, stats, rumors, videos, and more”>NBC Sports - news, scores, stats, rumors, videos, and more)</p>
<p>[DeCal</a> : Guitar Class I](<a href=“My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid”>My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid)
[DeCal</a> : Bookworlds: Harry Potter and the Marauders’ Quest](<a href=“My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid”>My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid)
[DeCal</a> : Batman as American Mythology](<a href=“My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid”>My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid)
[DeCal</a> : Mad Men](<a href=“My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid”>My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid)
[DeCal</a> : Bookworlds- From Coffins to Cullens: The Evolution of the Vampire](<a href=“My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid”>My Dating Tests – What I learned to avoid)</p>
<p>If top universities can offer courses about racquetball, guitar playing, and Batman as part of the official curricula, I don’t see why they can’t also offer official courses on Cisco networking or Oracle database administration. I agree that enterprising students can always go outside of the university to learn whatever IT skills they want. But why should they have to? Those students who want to learn how to dance tango or play golf don’t have to.</p>
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<p>Experience does matter and that’s why there are so many suggestions on this board for CS students to do coops and internships. I started work programming business applications after a year of college and didn’t get my undergraduate degree until my 30s. I started working in engineering in my mid-20s but there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand that all of the CS grads knew and expected everyone else to know. So I went for an MSCS and learned what they knew that I didn’t know.</p>
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<p>CS programs teach theory which is relevant for a career. Tools, hardware and software change but the basic building blocks of software engineering remain largely the same over long periods of time.</p>
<p>IT skills are useful for a short period of time. You have to upgrade to new releases or new products. Your employer may send you for training or you might learn it on your own or take courses on your own dime.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of something cool that CS majors can do that IT majors generally can’t. There are a lot of open source projects out there that mostly assume that those working on code are software engineers. The CS major can go dig around the code, learn it and understand what it does and make modifications and add new features. Doing this as a hobby can get you job offers (it’s happened to me before - even when I wasn’t looking for a job).</p>
<p>Why aren’t there IT degrees? Well, there are. But a lot of schools like to call them CS degrees because they think that they are more marketable.</p>
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<p>The problem is that teenagers and their parents generally do not
understand the distinctions between the CS, IT, CE and CIS majors and
the jobs looking for those majors. I have long wanted to write a book
explaining the differences as I often run across conversations of: my
kid really loves computers and wants to study computer science. The ACM
or IEEE (don’t remember which) has some really nice documents on this
topic but they aren’t readable by the average person.</p>
<p>Again, the problem is that colleges want to label IT programs as CS
programs because they think that the CS name is more marketable to
both students and employers.</p>
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<p>Yes, CCs can teach you skills that get you a job fast. There are lots
of areas like this: nursing, dental assistant, mechanic, etc. The idea
of computer science is that it provides you with the theory for your
career. You start out slower but your top-end potential is higher.</p>
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<p>They aren’t part of the degree and they shouldn’t be. You’re learning
practice and theory which are useful parts of CS for certain
careers. If you want to go into IT, get an IT degree. Most CS programs
assume that you can figure out a lot of stuff on your own. Well, some
students can and some can’t and those that can’t need more
spoon-feeding or get weeded out. This is how it works in the real
world. I recall my manager stating that I was starting a new
consulting gig on Monday (this was the Friday before). He told me that
it would be in COBOL on a new hardware platform. I had only looked at
a few COBOL programs in the past - never had programmed in it
before. I went to one of the bookstores in Cambridge and bought a book
on COBOL and was up and running on Monday. That’s the nature of the
industry - you are expected to figure things out for yourself.</p>
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<p>Oracle releases a new version every two years. Do you really want to
take up that much shelf-space with every revision?</p>
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<p>I would assume that they do if they are teaching that kind of course.</p>
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<p>Not part of the curriculum nor should it be.</p>
<p>You could get credit for learning how to use your cell phone or iPad
too.</p>
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<p>I suspect that there is no demand in CS programs.</p>
<p>If you want a course that isn’t offered, you can request one from the
department. If they think it useful, they could offer a directed studies
course. If enough people wanted one, they could run one subject to being
applicable to the CS degree. I’d suggest looking that the ACM document
on education as I think that a lot of CS programs run off that document.</p>
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<p>I’m 51. My manager is 63 and he’s retiring in a few years (he and his wife both have good pensions). My remaining coworkers range from 45 to 55. We had one person in his 20s that is leaving for another job. There are certain jobs that are better when you are young and certain jobs that are better for older people. You have to manage your career for your age. I’m actually doing that. You’re just talking about it.</p>
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<p>Looking out for budget cuts is a normal part of career management in any field.</p>
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<p>I’ve been working with the same group of engineers since the mid-1980s. We have far more work than we can do at the moment. There are many that I work with that have been her for ten to twenty-five years.</p>
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</p>
<p>This is very good point.</p>
<p>I am on a project now in which I have a technical project manger who is about 10 years younger than me. There is one other guy who is older than me and BOTH of us stay on the technical side. Both of us have fairly high technical “job titles”. When the technical project manager goes on vacation, he appointed another team member around his age. Some of the younger team members asked us two older member why aren’t we leading or fill-in managing the project…BECAUSE WE DON’T WANT TO!..Both of us are probably make more income than the younger manager and we get to go home at 4:59pm. No meetings, no after-hours conference calls, etc. Both of us have already done the manager thing at some point of our careers and have learned that it is not about the “title”, it’s about what you like and keeping the checks coming.</p>
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<p>CS programs supposedly teach theory which is relevant for a career. Yet the fact is, that often times is not the case. Many (probably most) CS programs are offshoots of math departments and continue to retain a strong theoretical mathematical flavor, despite the fact that, except for highly specialized subfields such as robotics or algorithm design, you don’t really need to know that much math to be a perfectly competent software developer. </p>
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<p>Some IT skills are useful for a short period of time. But others seem to remain valid for years, possibly decades. Let’s face it: Cisco IOS 15 really isn’t all that different from IOS 11.3/12 (which one was the version available in year 2000). Yes, there are obviously some new features. But come on - interface addressing, BGP, OSPF, RIP, frame-relay, PPP: the basics are all the same. Commands such as ‘show ip route’, ‘show ip bgp’, ‘show run’, ‘show ip ospf database’ - they’re all the same. A former CCIE who hasn’t even touched a router in the last decade could fire one up and learn the new features in a jiffy. </p>
<p>Or take UNIX/Linux. Let’s face it, most Linux commands are the same as or are easily derived from UNIX commands that existed from at least a decade ago. A grizzled UNIX veteran from the 1980’s could pick up Linux in less than a few months. </p>
<p>More importantly, the underlying protocols change very little. The current version of BGP as delineated by RFC 4271 is at least 90% similar to that of RFC 1771, which is 15 years old. How much has really changed about OSPF since RFC 2328 from 12 years ago? Sure, some new features such as OSPF from ipv6 (which practically nobody uses), but the basic workings are the same. Once you’ve learned that stuff once, you rarely have to revisit it. </p>
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<p>Sure, they could do that, but do they? What I remember about the CS major is students having barely any time to do anything else outside schoolwork, as some homework assignment or project was always due. </p>
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</p>
<p>Why? If a ballroom dance class can comprise part of Matt Leinart’s sociology degree, then why can’t an IT class comprise part of somebody’s CS degree? If I can earn college credits for learning yoga or racquetball, why can’t I do the same with Cisco routing? </p>
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</p>
<p>But the fact remains that, like it or not, they are part of the curriculum at top schools, and nobody is moving to abolish them. I would therefore argue that learning IT skills is at least as intellectual and theoretical as learning how to play golf for credit. </p>
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</p>
<p>If it’s available at your school. What if it isn’t, which they aren’t at most top engineering schools? As you said yourself, most students do not understand the difference between CS and IT. </p>
<p>It once again calls into question what exactly does it mean to be a ‘top’ engineering school. See below. </p>
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<p>Why not? If physical space is the problem, you can sell or discard the old version once you have the new version. Or keep it, if you wish. After all, most universities archive plenty of old issues of periodicals and journals that practically nobody actually reads. </p>
<p>As far as having to obtain new versions of OraclePress every few years, I don’t see this to be any more problematic than universities subscribing to highly obscure academic journals that practically nobody actually reads. For example, many universities feel obligated to have the latest issue of ‘Naval Research Logistics (NRL)’ despite the fact that practically nobody has read the old versions of NRL, or has even heard of that journal at all. There’s not exactly a mad dash of students rushing to the library whenever the newest issue of NRL arrives. If they can offer that, surely they can update their set of IT books every few years. </p>
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<p>I agree: there is no demand amongst the faculty for an IT course. And sure, you, as a student, can request such a course, but they have to approve it. What if they don’t? And frankly, what incentive do the powers-that-be have to be change? They’re not being judged on the skills of their undergrads. They’re being judged on their research output, with which offering useful IT courses does not help.</p>
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<p>Which is, sadly, an heretofore unproven claim. Is there really any hard evidence that learning computer science theory truly does improve your top-end potential? If so, then why is it that so many highly successful computer science pioneers never finished their degree at all, or if they did, never actually majored in CS? Last year’s Turing Award winner, Charles Thacker, never majored in CS. Nor did Richard Stallman. And of course we all surely all know of the billionaire boys: Gates, Jobs, Allen, Zuckerberg, Dell, Ellison - none of whom finished college. Janus Friis of Skype fame never even finished high school. Apparently the lack of theoretical schooling didn’t seem to hurt any of them.</p>
<p>If a student want to work with servers, routers get a IT degree. But it hard for someone who works with router and server only to get a job as a Software developer…but it easier for a software developer to get a job working with routers and servers.</p>
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<p>We had a reorg about six years ago and my manager’s manager asked all of the senior people if we wanted to go into management. Everyone said no. So he asked the junior people. One person said yes. I’ve been a manager, project leader and have started a few businesses in the past. I’m happy with my income and benefits. There are other things in life besides money.</p>
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<p>Or, better yet, have the top engineering schools offer an IT degree, as most of them today don’t. </p>
<p>In the interim, I see no reason why they can’t offer IT courses for credit, in the same way that they offer courses on racquetball, taekwondo, and learning how to play the guitar for credit.</p>
<p>But why pay for the classes when you can teach yourself?..Save your-self money</p>
<p>A IT program would not be in the Engineering College…Most of the time it is in the College of Business</p>
<p>Just looking at the number of software engineers who are non-CS majors and the earlier-mentioned heads of Microsoft and Google can tell you that you do not need a full Computer Science degree to succeed in I.T.</p>
<p>Hell, I took about 80% of the CS program while being a Math major. Really, all you need from the CS department is Algorithms, Data Structures, Programming Languages and Operating Systems (and their prereqs) and you can pretty much do software development. I have a BS and MS degrees and have worked in I.T. and neither of my degrees are in CS or I.T…and that was by design.</p>
<p>As far a my career, I like that I settled into the database industry. Every company has to keep the data somewhere, so I might as well focus on an area that is always needed. Since Oracle and SQL Server puts out a new release every 2-3 years, I can pretty much ride a nice 2-3 year wave every time.</p>
<p>GLOBALTRAVELER, I know what your saying…I got my first developer job without a college degree…I just showed the company a few code samples.</p>
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<p>You need to know the theory where I work. There are a ton of jobs out
there where you do need to know the theory and getting the CS degree
makes you a candidate for those jobs. You may also be interested in
going into research where you’d need the background.</p>
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<p>Hardware changes tend to be slower than software changes.</p>
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<p>We support a variety of Unix variants in an extremely complex
environment. We have a staff of Linux IT people that have to work
moderately hard to keep up and maintain multiple versions.</p>
<p>Then we have people that maintain and add features to Linux - whole
different ballgame.</p>
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<p>How much does Oracle change from release to release?</p>
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<p>Some do. Gogetters do. Yes, there’s a ton of work but there are also
breaks, summers and winters.</p>
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<p>Take a look at the ACM guidelines on IT vs CS.</p>
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<p>Examples please.</p>
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<p>Go to a different school.</p>
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<p>No it doesn’t if you understand the distinctions.</p>
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<p>Oracle’s documentation is available on the web.</p>
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<p>I find those publications useful from time to time. Boston College does
carry a ton of obscure print publications and it’s nice to be able to
look up something that isn’t available online.</p>
<p>At my son’s school, they have access to an online library called Safari
which has a ton of IT and programming books which he can read from his
laptop.</p>
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<p>You go somewhere else for it. No big deal.</p>
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<p>I’m talking about money, your ability to move into a new position,
your ability to learn new products, your ability to invent.</p>
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<p>You don’t have to finish college to learn theory. Some do learn it on
their own without the benefit of a degree. But they are small in
number. Look at the job postings for the companies that these people
run or used to run. They all want CS or EECS degrees.</p>
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<p>Roger Federer plays a fairly unique style of tennis. I would guess that
the vast majority of people couldn’t imitate his style and performance.</p>