At 7:10 PM +0000 12/21/02, nrf wrote: >The thing about comparing degrees to certs is that they aren't totally >comparable because they serve different purposes. The degree is designed to >teach you general knowledge - basically to teach you how to think.
and pass academic tests. Outside the sciences and engineering, there's a tendency, fortunately not universal, for the professor to want answers that agree with her or his particular viewpoint. I've had some, however, that would give you an A on a paper that tore apart their viewpoint, but did it logically, according to the academic rules. > >Let's face it. The vast majority of college graduate use very little of >what they actually learned in college. How many English majors really get >jobs where they do critical analyses of Elizabethan poetry? Perhaps not Elizabethan, but you do bring up the interesting possibility that some of the Cisco test writers' language skill comes from Old English. Other languages are possible, though. I remember some documentation on OSPF demand circuits that were, at best, a word-by-word translation of Old High Norse, Heian Period Court Japanese, or Klingon into modern English. I knew the developer and knew he didn't write like that. To figure out what the documentation was saying, I reviewed the RFC, tried some commands, and did drop a note to the guy that wrote the code. If his code was like that writing, it wasn't what we usually deprecate as "spaghetti code." It was code made of stale g'agh. > How many math >majors really spend the rest of their lives doing proofs and theorems? Yes, >there are some (particularly those who choose careers in academia) but they >are in the minority. The majority go into the working world and take jobs >that have very little association with whatever they studied. > >But that's not really the point. Unless you really are going to be a >professor, the goal of an English degree is not so that you can memorize >Chaucer. The goal is to provide you with a solid grounding of general >knowledge and training in critical thinking and creativity - skills that >improve your productivity as a worker. This is a valid point. There are ways to show critical thinking and creativity, with demonstrable experience being a start. Participating in engineering and computer science forums (societies like ACM and IEEE, organizations like IETF and NANOG) is another way to establish a reputation, as well as speaking at trade shows/local professional meetings and publishing in the trade press or more formal media. This IS an area where you can do something on your own, if you take the initiative. > >Certs, on the other hand, make no bones about trying to provide you with a >broad education. Certs are designed, ideally, to measure your knowledge of >specific skills. Period. > >As stated by someone else on this thread, the CCIE may prove to be valuable >in the network engineering profession, but has essentially zero value in any >other profession. And a fairly specific part of network engineering, which is Cisco enterprise support oriented. As currently defined, it has relatively little relevance to ISPs, and doesn't test large-scale design skills. >For example, you can't get your CCIE and then decide you >wanna be an investment banker. But you can do that with an MBA. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=59722&t=59481 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
