As a college student, I think I can respond to this.
> Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done.
At least for me, it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it, especially for novels and literature. Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?
Edit: note - we don't have any literary modules in my course - any reading would be voluntary.
> What I mean is the reflexive submission of the cheapest cliché as novel insight.
I distinctly remember being penalized for any insight that didn't fit marking criteria back in high school english lit. If ChatGPT-like writing is what'll get me to pass, so be it.
> Attendance is a HUGE problem—many just treat class as optional.
Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs. This is very uni/course specific though
> At least for me, it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it, especially for novels and literature. Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?
This reads as though the goal of reading is to bolster your career opportunities as a developer?
If it's not connected to your career then it shouldn't be viewed that way, it should be viewed as a kind of leisure and the challenges/rewards involved should be compared to the alternatives there (i.e. is the investment in time of being able to understand more complex novels returning a level of personal fulfilment that makes it potentially a more rewarding focus than some more immediately gratifying leisure activity)
It may still be of very low value but viewing the prospect specifically as being damaging to your career opportunities seems like an incorrect perspective to be starting from.
Seeing everything in an utilitarian pov frightens me. I'm a university student, I love reading, I love acting, I love spending my afternoons riding my bike to the seaside or to the tuscanian hills. Nothing of this is going to make me a better developer. But I can't imagine a world in which I don't read, in which I don't get to know people acting or working at the venue meeting other performers, or feeling connected to the Earth with flowers blooming and birds chirping
I would love to do that. In fact my first year was way more relaxed and closer to your experience. I would spend hours wandering the countryside on foot and traveling the country.
Now that graduation is inching closer with no financial backing, it's just not feasible to spend time on anything other than maximizing employability
It makes me so sad how correct this is. I don’t know what the proper term for it is, but it’s the dynamic where everyone works 9 - 5, and then someone wants to get ahead so works an hour later, and then in 2 months everyone is working 9 - 6…until someone else wants to get ahead and starts working until 7. The competition is so stark and the perceived penalties for not meeting a base level of success are so unpleasant, we all need to descend to the most boring and lifeless versions of ourselves to match those who are naturally boring and lifeless.
Sounds like a version of the tragedy of the commons. Or maybe even the prisoner's dilemma, as in every individual chasing their narrow self-interest and making the matter worse for everyone instead of collaborating and making it better for everybody.
Just don’t do that? I’ve never had a problem leaving at 5. Been doing this for 2 decades now.
Live below your means, save enough money so that a year of unemployment won’t kill you, try to work on interesting problems, try to stay in the top quartile for output (You can definitely do this without staying past 5. At most companies you can do this working something closer to 9-1 if you really focus during that time), don’t be a dick, and don’t worry about the rest.
I think POVs in forums are often much more about framing a thing to justify your beliefs than actually hitting at your own personal implicit values (it's plausible the poster believes leisure is a waste of time and lives by that belief but I doubt it) so I wanted to stick with the original POV approach to highlight the ways it seemed incorrect.
What I wanted to say, it is that it might happen in the future to not have time or will to do those things. Due to stress or long job hours (...) but the guy says that as a uni student he doesn't have the time because he prefers to focus on being a better developer. I read for pleasure especially at evening or at night. in those moments, especially when in the bed, I definitely wouldn't be coding
> I distinctly remember being penalized for any insight that didn't fit marking criteria back in high school english lit. If ChatGPT-like writing is what'll get me to pass, so be it.
I Can't Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems
> Oh, goody. I’m a benchmark. Only guess what? The test prep materials neglected to insert the stanza break. I texted him an image of how the poem appeared in the original publication. Problem one solved. But guess what else? I just put that stanza break in there because when I read it aloud (I’m a performance poet), I pause there. Note: that is not an option among the answers because no one ever asked me why I did it.
It's hilarious to explain you can't be assed to read a novel for a class that is about literary analysis and then also say It scares me as well how little interest my peers have in actually learning.
Part of the idea of courses that aren't direct job skills is that you will have done it and learned from it.
This is nice when you have the time to sit down and enjoy literature at a leasurly pace. It's not nice when it's one of many obligations that comes with its own deadlines and tests.
In fairness, this is the standard university experience and has been for many decades. You either figure out how to balance your time and make the grades or you don’t.
Sure, and making the grade often has nothing to do with getting the job (e.g. just because you have a CS degree doesn't mean you're a shoe-in for that dev job you applied to). But since tests and degrees are simply indicators, not absolute proof, that you're qualified, people fudge tend to things every step of the way; it's turtles all the way down.
> When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?
If you think of education as trying to lead people into being whole humans, seems like literature and philosophy (properly taught) are some of most critical subjects.
I want this to be true, my arts degree says I even put my money where my mouth is, but university has largely become viewed as vocational training. You do it not to become whole, you do it to become employable.
I'll do that when I can be confident in my ability to afford food. Being a "whole human" just isn't a priority when you might literally become homeless
This feeling will never go away because it’s not caused by circumstances, it’s caused by anxiety.
You’re a student ostensibly studying computer science at University. Taking a few hours a week to stop a smell the roses has zero chance of being the thing that pushes you into homelessness.
When you start working the anxiety won’t go away. You’ll always have the next thing to worry about. What if I lose this job—I only have 6 months of savings. Then you get married and it becomes—if I lose my job my spouse will divorce me. You have a kid and it becomes “Sorry honey I have to work late. Dinner
with the family isn’t a priority when the kids could literally become homeless if I lose my job and we can’t afford good schools.”
You can’t fix the anxiety by accomplishing the next goal. It’s never going to be enough. You have to learn to live with some uncertainty or you’ll end up miserable.
Also from a more practical perspective, there are advantages to being a more well rounded person. The best programmer is rarely the highest paid. Soft skills are at least as important. Being a well rounded human is a big part of those soft skills.
I’m not saying you necessarily need to be well versed in literary fiction. But having a wide breadth of knowledge comes in handy.
Sadly this is true. I make about $200k/yr gross, have a working software engineer for a wife, and have enough in retirement that I could “coast” on contributions for the next 30 years and be fine in retirement. I still can’t be rid of the financial anxiety I started with. My childhood involved a homeless shelter, my college years included struggling to make rent and buy food, and those experiences forever colored how I see and treat money.
>You can’t fix the anxiety by accomplishing the next goal. It’s never going to be enough. You have to learn to live with some uncertainty or you’ll end up miserable.
There is definitely a difference in quality of life due to less worrying once you or your network have sufficient assets and passive income such that short term volatility does not mean you or your kids go hungry/shelter-less.
> At least for me, it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it, especially for novels and literature. Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?
The disconnect here is that your professors are assigning you work like this because the purpose of a university education is to broaden your horizons, challenge you, and force you to think about _how to think._
The fact that you're treating it like trade school is your problem, not the university's.
> I distinctly remember being penalized for any insight that didn't fit marking criteria back in high school english lit.
Good for you. High school writing has nothing to do with university-level papers.
> Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs. Some lecturers are also just incompetent with barely any understanding of what they're teaching in the first place...
Your issue, again, is that you're arrogantly assuming you don't have anything to learn from things you personally haven't prioritized. A major role of a university education is to beat that idea out of you by showing you how wrong you are. Pity it isn't sticking.
> ...though this probably wouldn't be as big of a problem in better universities like Ivy Leagues where the author works
What the actual fuck, dude? Ivy League? Right in the second paragraph: "I teach at a regional public university in the US."
I went into this article kind of annoyed at the stereotyping of "these kids today," but way to go reinforcing the article's points. Damn.
The disconnect here is that your professors are assigning you work like this because the purpose of a university education is to broaden your horizons, challenge you, and force you to think about _how to think._
this would be fine if it didn't cost as much as a new car and my career did not depend on it. I can broaden my horizons for free at library
> The fact that you're treating it like trade school is your problem, not the university's.
When (for many people) going to college almost necessarily means accruing 5-figure to 6-figure debt at the infancy of their careers, they sure as shit better have some sort of marketable skill to justify and remedy that debt coming out of it.
I understand the sentiment of higher education being useful for broadening one's horizons, challenging you, teaching you how to think etc; but you should be arguing in the _positive_ for these things to be available to everyone without a paywall.
Federal loans are enough to pay for a state school (especially if you do your general education at a community college). Income based repayment means you’ll never pay more than 10% of your discretionary income for 20 years (income above 1.5x the poverty level for your family size). If you never make more than 1.5x the poverty level, you’ll never pay back a dime.
College is financially attainable for just about anyone.
> Income based repayment means you’ll never pay more than 10% of your discretionary income for 20 years
So a 10% hit to your income for at least 20 years isn't significant? What percentage of someone's student debt works under income based repayment?
> If you never make more than 1.5x the poverty level, you’ll never pay back a dime.
So... your suggestion is to live just above poverty so you won't have to pay student loans?
> Federal loans are enough to pay for a state school (especially if you do your general education at a community college)
Sure, there exists ways to go about getting a degree which doesn't _have_ to have a massive financial burden for decades, but what percentage of degree holders (Or, those who have student loans) took this path? Is this a pragmatically fair expectation for 17/18 year olds to make?
How do you resolve the "while the total average balance (including private loan debt) may be as high as $41,618"[0]
>So a 10% hit to your income for at least 20 years isn't significant?
It's not a 10% hit to your income. It's 10% of your income over 1.5x the poverty limit. And it's capped at whatever the payments would be under a 10 year repayment plan.
And it's not at least 20 years, it's at most 20 years. If you make more $80k or so you'll pay less under the standard 10 year plan, so you'll pay that. Which for $40k in deb is something like $450 a month (about 6.75% of your income).
>So... your suggestion is to live just above poverty so you won't have to pay student loans?
That's clearly what I said...of course it's not. The point is that worst case scenario you make under 1.5x the poverty limit you make nothing. If you make a little more than that you pay a 10% tax on the money over that (up to about $60k then it goes down).
>Sure, there exists ways to go about getting a degree which doesn't _have_ to have a massive financial burden for decades, but what percentage of degree holders (Or, those who have student loans) took this path? Is this a pragmatically fair expectation for 17/18 year olds to make?
In 2020 around 6% of students took out private student loans. And private student loans represent only around 7% of all student loan debt, so most of them don't have a massive financial burden because they qualify for income based repayment.
>How do you resolve the "while the total average balance (including private loan debt) may be as high as $41,618"[0]
The vast majority of that is federal, which qualifies for IBR, so isn't a massive burden. Don't take out private loans unless you're going to an Ivy League school, or med school.
I simply don't agree that an IBR loan is a good enough deal to not justify one needing useful and employable skills coming out of higher education.
The utility of a degree, from what I've seen, _does_ end up being better than the accrued debt on average, but the distribution of these cases (I simply imagine) leaves enough people on the margin to be harmful.
If you don’t have family money, you probably need to have a plan for what you’re going to do as a career even if college is free.
My point is that whether they need a marketable skill or not has very little to do with student loans. Provided they go to a state school.
If you borrow $40k to go to a state school, the most you’re going to pay is something like $450 a month for 10 years. Any degree no matter how vocationally useless will allow you to make more than $450 a month extra than you otherwise would have.
There are of course cases where this doesn’t hold, but you’d almost have to try for it not to be worth it. The program is good enough that I think we’ve mostly reached the point of diminishing returns, and there are other things we could spend additional money on with higher ROIs.
Completely false. I went to one of the cheapest accredited colleges around, I received the maximum pell grant, and my federal loans covered about 65% of the tuition. I worked full time through college to cover the remaining tuition and books.
If we're using today’s numbers, max Pell Grant is $7,400 per year. You can borrow $5,500 in federal loans as a freshman, $6,500 as a junior, and $7,500 as junior/senior. So the average is $6,750 (independent students and student's whose parent can't qualify for a plus loan can take out more).
That's $14,150 per year. Let's take one of the highest cost of living states--california. Cal state LA: tuition and mandatory fees: $7,160, books: $1,054.
That's about $6k a year more than you need for tuition and books. Obviously this isn't going to cover all of your living expenses, so you're going to need to work or live with family.
But if you're an independent student, with the larger loan limits, you could get close if you live really cheap.
> The Trump administration has gotten rid of applications for income-driven repayment plans from the federal aid website.
The change occurs as the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked income-driven repayment plans in its February ruling. That means former President Joe Biden's SAVE plans and PSLF options are no longer available.
The numbers I quoted are still valid. What changed primarily is that it went back to 20 years. Up from 10.
“ Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) reopened the online income-driven repayment (IDR) plan and loan consolidation applications for borrowers. The application was temporarily paused to comply with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals injunction issued last month, which directed the Department to cease implementation of the Biden Administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan and parts of other IDR plans. Because the online application incorporated provisions subject to the injunction, it was necessary to revise the form, making it unavailable to borrowers in the interim. Paper loan consolidation applications were available to borrowers during that time.”
There's so much to unpack here. I'll start from the bottom.
> better universities like Ivy Leagues where the author works
The author gives their background in the second paragraph of the article (did you read it?): "I teach at a regional public university in the US. Our students are average on just about any dimension you care to name"
> Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs.
a) It appears that no one is reading the docs, as the author discussed at length (did you read it?)
b) A lecture is always faster than reading. A lecture is cliff notes. A lecture is the person who knows more than you teaching you the most important bits of the docs.
> it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it
You stated that the lecture was too slow so you just read the docs. Here you state that there's not enough time and benefit to reading. Which is it?
> It scares me as well how little interest my peers have in actually learning
Do you see that you're demonstrating that same disinterest? Reading isn't worth your time. Lectures are too slow and the professors are dumb anyway. Etc.
> Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position
This implies that there is some educational medium by which you are so deeply focused and involved in, that the author is unaware of, pointed directly at CV building and internship/job getting, that you simply don't have time for the lectures or books that the author's class covers. Is that correct? What is it? How much time are you spending on an average day CV building?
> can I really afford to waste my time like this?
Sweet summer child. You are a college student. You have all the time in the world.
Your post here, if anything, corroborates the author's perspective.
As a college student, feel like I haven’t met any college student with “all the time in the world” as the people say we have lol. Most of my friends who graduated feel like they have more free time after graduating than in college
That’s only because they got better at time management.
The average college student has almost a month off in December, nearly 3 months off in the summer, a week off for thanksgiving, a week off for spring break, and almost nothing to do for the first 2 weeks of each semester.
That’s nearly 6 months of nothing but free time.
People are just remembering how stressful it gets at exam time and near the end of the semester when projects are so and forgetting how much free time they had during the rest of the year.
> Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs. Some lecturers are also just incompetent with barely any understanding of what they're teaching in the first place - though this probably wouldn't be as big of a problem in better universities like Ivy Leagues where the author works
Memories of my degree 20 years ago. We didn't have (many) pre-recorded videos of lectures available to watch whenever we wanted at whatever speed we wanted, the way we do now.
Now there's a good range of lectures given away for free, I'm not sure even the top 10% of lecturers (beyond the best individuals in the world on whichever topic) are adding much value — In theory one could interrupt the lecture to clarify a point, but that's also a thing one can often do alone with the internet.
And that's for the best lecturers. We had some good teachers, but also some bad ones.
The C lectures were fantastic, the practical security sessions were fun (started with ~ "if you've already hacked this WiFi box, please log out so I can show everyone else how to break into it"), etc.
For the bad ones… there was one in my final year where I was using my laptop to record the whole session at 44 kHz (audio only), and the lecturer claimed that motion capture recordings couldn't go for more than a few minutes because that would be "several megabytes" of data. There was another who was giving us an example of formal methods, but they got the proof wrong and didn't notice (and had a voice that meant nobody cared). Another had an impenetrable accent, I might have understood a total of two words in the entire lecture, though I could at least follow the written material projected on the screen.
> The ratio of internships to qualified students is far better than 1:1200.
To be fair, for a person with several years of industry experience it feels like the ratio of applicants to openings for tech jobs really is some absurdly high number - high enough to where you can be out of experience-appropriate work for years, plural.
I don't know if the overall market can generalize to university internships however, which may be the disconnect.
However, I remember one time in the recent past where I was offered to interview for a position that was designed for recent graduates with no industry experience. They offered this to me knowing I had graduated long ago and already had industry work for a while. My conclusion was that after a whole two months of interviewing candidates, they simply could not find any recent graduates qualified enough for their own recent graduates opening.
I did feel some guilt being offered that position knowing it was supposed to have gone towards someone with far fewer opportunities to get hired than me. I don't know if this is an indication of the state of universities, recent graduates, hiring managers who write up the postings and don't know what they actually want, the job market in general, or some other factor I haven't considered...
Oh there really are thousands of people that apply to each job. But that’s because people who have a hard time finding a job stay in the market longer. Think of it as if there are 1000 permanently unemployed people who will apply for any job opening.
But if you look at unemployment and underemployment rates, it’s clear that the ratio is nowhere near as what it feels like just from looking at the number of people who apply to a job.
We’re in a job market downturn. It is definitely possible to be out of work for years.
But unless you’re in the bottom say 20% of developers that’s not likely to happen.
Even after the dotcom boom tech unemployment only got to 6.5% or so.
The Ivy league isn't teaching Dostoevsky any differently than from an 'average' school, and have a significant number of legacy and preferential admissions who wouldn't otherwise pass the academic standards that everybody else had to.
That's not the point at all though. The point is that the author is talking about how college students can't read and comprehend material, and the student refuting clearly didn't read or comprehend the material.
> Reading bores them, though. They are impatient to get through whatever burden of reading they have to, and move their eyes over the words just to get it done.
At least for me, it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it, especially for novels and literature. Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?
Edit: note - we don't have any literary modules in my course - any reading would be voluntary.
> What I mean is the reflexive submission of the cheapest cliché as novel insight.
I distinctly remember being penalized for any insight that didn't fit marking criteria back in high school english lit. If ChatGPT-like writing is what'll get me to pass, so be it.
> Attendance is a HUGE problem—many just treat class as optional.
Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs. This is very uni/course specific though