nick256
nick256
Sep 5, 2018 · 1 min read

First of all, I completely agree that universities in the US are overpriced. I don’t get why Americans don’t come to Europe, where universities are free or extremely cheap. But…

You’re completely missing the point of higher education. University teaches you how to think, not 2018’s coolest new frameworks, libraries or programming languages. Those are transient skills. In uni you get taught how to learn, it does not spoonfeed you knowledge. It teaches you all the knowledge that would fall through the cracks if you were to teach yourself, because you would focus on practical stuff only. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know and thus, it’s very hard to seek said knowledge.

I started coding at 14, so I was already self taught when I went to university and I was working as a developer throughout. Still, I have learned a ton of stuff that is incredibly useful to me both as a developer, a computer scientist and an engineer. Not immediately practical stuff, like language syntax or algorithms I immediately apply in my work, but those are, frankly, not what science is about. Yes engineering or compsci courses are not aiming to produce code monkeys, they are geared towards producing scientists. People who design and build technology. Not the ones using the tech that’s already built.

nick256

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nick256

ECE student. Futurist with interests in Blockchain, BCI, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Security and many more