Posts made by worden2

@jmoore I'll give you an example from current events at my College. We just started an optometric technology degree. We "inherited" it from the University down the road. They had and still have an optometry/ophthalmology degree, but saw no need to maintain the tech side of things. We do AASs anyway so we took it over. An ophthalmologist or optometrist does not grind or shape lenses or do fittings, etc. A technologist does not have the ability or authority to do prescriptions. Each depends on the other, and you might want to say the person with the medical degree might be "above" the person with the technology side, but in fact when you balance the time and money they put into their respective careers, the trade-off is negligible. The Doctor cannot make money with out the technologist, and the technologist has no job without the Doctor. It's a symbiotic relationship even if there is an element of hierarchy involved.

@scottalanmiller I know for my first MS degree what interested me was the program was the best combo of IT and business I'd ever seen. Since then I've gotten into education as my "business", but I'll never lose sight of the purpose in it all.

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

Ok yeah that was weird. If it works for them then fine. So tech without any business purpose I suppose is what you mean.

Exactly. Tech for the purpose of tech, stuff that isn't legal or viable or reasonable in a business. In this case, weird VDI problems that are never mentioned, no talk of cost or applicability (even at the home gaming level), use of totally ridiculous amateur tools when enterprise tools would do a better job for free, etc. That show is a bench show, for good reason as bench is a far bigger market than IT. Every home user likes cool bench stuff, only good businesses enjoy IT stuff.

In their defense the tagline for the guys doing the video is "because we can". They're certainly living up to that...

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Does college have value? yes and know.

There's the T-shirt people! Not what SAM intended I'm sure, but...

@quixoticjeremy Saw that... beautiful!

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

@scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days.

It's a lot like how people recommend using a Raspberry Pi to learn Linux. All it really does is make them spend their time learning the Raspberry Pi and they forget what they were actually there to learn in the first place.

I would say it makes more sense to use the RPi to learn what nooks and crannies we can stick computers into. Not simply embedded systems, but one that dynamically responds to I/O variances, etc. It's also a pretty good intro Python platform.

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

The biggest focus should be business and liberal arts. I want to see students with accounting, psychology, economics, general business, writing, public speaking and similar training. I can teach the tech that I need, I have to no matter what.

This is why I won't teach at a training "school", and it is not simply a technical or vocational school.

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

I'm going to post another thread for you @worden2 that I think will be helpful in your endeavor to find ways to improve university quality.

I look forward to reading it

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@worden2 said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

So for reference, student loans, for those able to get them (many of us cannot so these are not realistic numbers, many students must use credit cards for this) run from 4.3% to 6.8%. That's the first step.

Actually, 8% is far more common on US Gov't loans, even when the mortgage and other markets were FAR below that. The mandated cap is 8%, and on repayment it stayed at the cap even when it didn't have to.

I was trying to be insanely conservative with the numbers to make sure that there was absolutely no way anyone could say that I was skewing it towards not going to university having an advantage. In the real world, I know it makes my case far more.

Eight percent though, wow.

It was really fun in the last 8 years watching interest rates near zero and yet NOTHING happened to the student loan rate. It was pegged at its maximum the entire time.

@dashrender For me personally, it's almost stressful, because as an IT educator I straddle both realities. As for your last point, my wife and I just had our 20th anniversary, btw. I know of what you speak, but do not speak of it!

I've gone through this thread, and other than agreeing with a lot of it and learning how much I want to watch @scottalanmiller and @Dashrender sit in front of a camera and discuss just about anything, I have some fundamental questions on the topic and comments in general:

• Can we really assume working in IT without a degree is as viable as it was before? My thoughts are "yes and no" since it is so much simpler to start a small business than it's ever been before with IT, but what about simply "getting a job"?
• I cannot and will not equate the assumption that you are out of the working world or wasting your time while in college. Maybe partying was or is a common occurrence in some or many experiences, but it was not mine. I have never done college without working at least 30 hours a week and often 40 to 50. Ironically, I think I would've gotten more out of college had I been able to go full time.
• I had the experience of being 20+ years old when starting college, and working 2 and 3 jobs before that knowing I couldn't break that cycle. I went to university and I did. I can't say it's because of university specifically, but I do think there is an intangibility to going beyond HS and then into a career. You have to go to HS. You choose to go to College/University. When you get out you are motivated to make something of that. You might be the person that is motivated to do that out of HS, but more generally you are really motivated to do it when you get out of college because you chose to do it, and many employers see that value, in my experience and opinion.

Now, full disclosure I'm a college professor at the CC level. I'm not promoting this opinion out of any sort of CYA or job-security mentality, I assure you. Also, when it comes to the financial and time costs for college, those are very real, and the source of where I agree with a lot of what I'm reading here. I think the elements beyond money and time have to be accounted for (pun intended). There are intangible benefits to the College/University experience that matter. To put it in academic terms, they are qualitative and not quantitative. I could go on, but in the interest of the time value it takes to read this...

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

So for reference, student loans, for those able to get them (many of us cannot so these are not realistic numbers, many students must use credit cards for this) run from 4.3% to 6.8%. That's the first step.

Actually, 8% is far more common on US Gov't loans, even when the mortgage and other markets were FAR below that. The mandated cap is 8%, and on repayment it stayed at the cap even when it didn't have to.

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

Example, instead of A+ material, you offer Net+ material. Slightly more advanced, way more applicable. They will wash out at the exact same point, but you won't have to waste a whole class for other students in order to do it.

Actually, we had a Network+ class but traded it for a Cisco I class. The A+ has been there the whole time even so.

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

Even so, with open enrollment we have to have certain barrier classes to see if our students are serious about what we teach and if they wash out of an A+ class then it's a good thing for them as well as us, right?

I get this point but I don't agree. I'm 100% for open enrollment, I believe that this is the only good way to stay competitive as a university. I take open enrollment schools more seriously than others because they focus more on actual academic competitiveness rather than arbitrary and artificial factors.

But having a useless class that might actually teach things that need to be untaught or, at the very least, wastes time in an already short curriculum that is needed for actual skills, is not a good idea. Have students wash out of useful classes. Test their technical ability and interest. An A+ class would wash me out and I'm a seven figure person in the industry. I might not be everyone's favourite student (actually, I often am) but I'd drop out of college if I took an A+ class and thought that that was what IT was going to be about. Instead of testing their academic ability, you are testing their patience in some cases.

No need for that. Make them take a real class with real material. If they wash out due to lack of ability, fine, you have lost nothing (compared to now.) But if they don't wash out because real material held their interest, you've won not only a student you would have lost, but possibly your best student.

I concur on not thinking A+ has anything to do with actual IT. On the "wash out" comment my thought process was more along the lines of if they can't handle that material then they're really going to struggle with classes on up the line. I'm commonly telling my students that A+ isn't any more than a "baby cert" also.

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

"A+" Hardware/Software

You have a college program in "middle school level education with a pointless certification for minimum wage labour at best buy"?

What is the purpose of a curriculum like that? All of the jobs are minimum wage or similar. And all are as open to high school students as to graduates.

This is like requiring basic typing for a degree.

Youtube Video

Exactly. We eliminated typing as a class for a business admin degree over a decade ago for instance, and I think we're at the point now where A+ is headed that way also. Even so, with open enrollment we have to have certain barrier classes to see if our students are serious about what we teach and if they wash out of an A+ class then it's a good thing for them as well as us, right?

@scottalanmiller I can assure you that we never lose sight that these are vendor tools. In fact we simply use them as tools to get our students what we believe is a good academic education. Having said that, this is why I'm here with all of you, to make sure we keep our eyes on the ball.

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

The reality is, teaching IT as a serious of singular, long, focused disciplines doesn't work. That class in systems administration would really, really benefit from some discussion around networking. That networking class makes no sense without a systems class. That programming class would have been good before that systems automation class. That database class depends on a certain about of system knowledge. That systems class would have benefited from people understanding database workloads and so forth.

Why teach them separately when you can teach them together?

We do, but we have separate programs within the School, so you can get a degree (AS or AAS) in Database Management, but not without courses in Network Communications, "A+" Hardware/Software, Computing Logic, Systems Analysis and Design... you get the idea. I think the idea of "blended" classes deserves more attention, but as you probably know, the "silo" architecture is ever-present.

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

Back to curriculum... one thing that might be well suited for an AS focused world (which I believe that you said was the program) is simply going to "Topics in IT 1" and "Topics in IT 2" and so forth. Make them so general that the department simply then gets to decide the order and content so as to build up a core understanding by the end.

That is a component, for sure. We're doing Assoc. of Applied Science to be clear, so keep in mind our degrees correspond to HVAC, Electronics, Supply and Logistics, and similar levels of more-than-just-training. We're NOT ITT for instance, and even as we're trying to meet demand for our students we will not promise more than we can deliver or become a diploma or training mill.

@irj said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 So this is one of those get certified while getting a degree schools like WGU?

Yes and no. I don't think my college is going to start employing "course facilitators" instead of professors, and simply point students to the material and expect them to grind through it. On the other hand, as a 2 year college we're not diving too deep into theory and abstracted concepts because of the time scale we're at. Does that clarify it? I do know one of our graduates is doing the WGU thing right now as part of a BS and is getting their MCSA as part of it. Personally, I think we use the certs as external validation that we're staying relevant, but when I see the A+ and other certs not keeping up (the latest A+ cert finally eliminated floppy drive questions!) I worry we're slipping behind as well.

@scottalanmiller We're doing 2 year degrees, so getting students into intro jobs is just fine for us, to put it in perspective. What I can't do and won't promote is becoming a cert mill. Our industry-led advisory boards are very clear; students need to get soft skills from us as much as the technical skills. That IMHO is why college is still relevant in IT. If anything a college graduate has learned how to learn, and the speech and history and english classes produce well-rounded applicants at the very least.