I'm a Software Engineer, graduate in my birth country Venezuela. I have to say, as collage is free (since 1960), was an advantage to choose to do the studies, but even if it was paid, I would probably end up studying anyway. I have no regrets about it, as I learned so much things outside the programming itself, that I did not learn that much as I learned by myself. But, the other subjects, that many may find unrelated, and insufficient to justify the cost of a collage, did make a different for me.
What do you think? Is collage underrated? Can you truly self learn every there is needed to be a good professional?
Top comments (7)
When I went to college, they did not have a degree in software engineering. It had a degree in computer science. (It has since added a software engineering degree, but I'm not going back.)
If your desire is to be a software engineer, there was a time that many people learned how to be a software engineer on their own. I work with some absolutely brilliant software engineers, who were entirely self-taught.
The difficulty these days is there are 100+ applicants for every open position. If two candidates look about the same, but one has a degree, it is a big advantage. If two candidates have never held down a position before, and one has a degree, and the other does not... well, I cannot imagine many places hiring someone without any education or experience. Maybe the opportunities are different in Venezuela.
That being said, I've obtained every one of my jobs because I knew someone, and was recommended. I had several jobs as a software engineer before I had finished my degree. I (probably) did not need my degree to get any of my positions; I got my degree for my own edification. It is as much a testament to determination and perseverance as it is to having completed the coursework.
I think it is good to have if you know what you want to do. In the USA at least the inflated costs of college simply are not worth it if you are still exploring life imo and I think the $1.5 trillion in student loan debt is indicative of this. If, however, you know you want to get into software and are ready to start learning then I think college is a great.
You do not require a college education to have a career as a software engineer, but having a college education can expand your career options.
I think there's a bit of bias here because you received a free education. While I concur there's always a value-add by having one, I believe the decision to comes down to a cost benefit analysis, and if there's a cost involved, understanding what your goals are, whether that be career or life.
Trying to climb the ladder? College education really helps here
Only interested in building what's given to you? Bootcamp will get you the bare essentials if you're cost conscious
Although I do think you're able to self learn the bases to being a good professional, getting a degree is an advantage. There's lots of free resources to learn a programming language but some stuff is left behind because it just works. If you're lazy to go that step further or just don't feel like it is necessary, you can code in Java without using delegations, sub-classes and generics, but in college you're actually obligated to learn and use those features. You also get some knowledge from the professors that I don't feel like you get online.
I think it might be abit overrated as I had a degree because I had the opportunity to get it at a very short amount of time which is 2 years compared to the usual duration in my country that is 4 years.
I find that after going through university, I really hate it alot cause there is alot of theoretical knowledge.
Which is actually quite boring as I had never understood what is reason to being taught these knowledge since most of the time, they don't like to link it with real world examples.
Which makes it really difficult unlike the trade school I was previously in. I believe bootcamps might be similar as well I guess.
I find that it is just a piece of really expensive paper and does not do much besides getting the foot in the door.
Which the amount of developer jobs is plentiful in the market that anyone with decent skills is able to get themselves into the industry very easily without a degree.
In America, college is generally overrated. Like some of the other commenters have pointed out, there are plenty of professionals who are self-taught.
I'm one of them; in fact, I actually train college interns, coordinating directly with university professors at two major local institutions, despite not having a degree myself. Even the top professors at those schools agree: in programming, your college-learned skills are worth absolutely nothing in the industry at large until you combine them with workplace experience. That's equally true of self-learners, which makes college moot for many programming jobs.
Of course, in this country, college is seldom free for anyone. You're usually incurring a significant debt that will follow you around for the next decade-plus of your life. If you can go for free in your own country, by all means, do it.
Further confusing things, many jobs do consider a degree to make an applicant more attractive. However, I notice many companies often only use degrees to distinguish between people of roughly equal experience and qualification. Between two mid-level developers with 5 years of Java and SQL, the one with the degree has that "something extra"; however, between a BSCS candidate with 2 years Java and SQL and a self-trained candidate with 5 years Java and SQL, 5-year-guy will usually win. Thus, if you lack a degree, you can almost always overcome that bias with sheer breadth and depth of experience, such as with a vast open source portfolio.
(P.S. If an HR department is too dense to see past the $30K piece of wall art to consider industry experience, you don't want to to work there anyway; you're bound to work with Wally, Asok, and the PHB.)
I usually tell people to look at it like this: if you prefer guided learning, college may be a good investment; if you can learn independently, don't waste your money.
NOTE: The above doesn't apply to scientific and academic branches of the computer industry: true computer science (a branch of mathematics, only tangentially related to programming), computer engineering, systems analysts, network architecture...these generally require degrees, and for good reason.
I absolutely agree. It's frustrating when most interview advice can be boiled down to spend months studying your algorithms and theoretical engineering concepts. Suggesting CodeWars to "brush up on your language skills" really means "solve the problem in as little lines of code as possible to reinforce knowledge of obscure algorithms."
If a candidate can write good code but not use the right phrases in an interview, they'll be passed up. College will teach those phrases, but work experience will teach using it in practice. I'm mainly thinking of Big O and stuff like that since formal engineers will toss around phrasing like N+1 and go on and on about performance only using Big O phrasing when a self-taught dev will know not to use nested loops but is less likely to know how to say that. It's things like that that end up gatekeeping positions to only people with degrees, which then continues the cycle of only valuing employees with degrees.