Sunday, October 30, 2005, 6:42:47 PM, I wrote: Please let me clarify that in my comments below, I don't mean that CS students shouldn't be trained in CS! (Good grief, I'm now a CS professor!). But they shouldn't get short shrift on everything else as they do in the "school" I refer to below. It sounds too Orwellian to me.
CA> I feel a need to weigh in here, even before reading any further responses in CA> this thread. CA> I agree very strongly with Arthur's statements. I think it's okay for CA> a company to give donations to education, provided no strings are CA> attached, but I would be happier if there were no need for such grants CA> in the first place. Education, especially prior to the junior year of CA> college, is about developing generalists. We need more wide-world-view CA> thinkers everywhere. CA> I didn't realize how strongly I felt about this until I visited a CA> Microsoft/IBM sponsored "university" in Salt Lake a year ago February. CA> They give students a B.S. in CS after 2.5 years of close to full-time CA> work (and charge an arm and a leg to do it). They prepare people CA> tailor-trained for Microsoft and IBM. I left thinking how much they CA> miss of a well-balanced, liberal arts flavor education that is CA> appropriate for a baccalaureate, even a traditional one in CS. They CA> skimp so much on non-technical subjects that it's criminal, in my CA> opinion. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool software developer (20+ years of CA> industrial experience), but I would never trade my broad undergraduate CA> experience for anything (I took so many extra non-technical courses CA> that it took me 5 years - I had 160 semester hours on my transcript). CA> It's so important that we don't throw growing minds in to a technical CA> tunnel. CA> Of course, from were I sit, few want to go into technical pursuits CA> anyway :-(. -- Best regards, Chuck _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig