yosemitebabe, I used to hang around with the Otis crowd when I lived in LA, as well as the Calartians. We might have even run in the same circles. But like an idiot, I went back to my old school cuz I figured they’d be the only ones who would take me. I shoulda just enrolled at Otis. I won’t name my specific school, but from what I’ve said you could probably figure it out anyway. And besides, I will just repeat what a friend of mine told me, “it doesn’t matter how good your school is when you attend it, what you achieve is of your own work. It only matters that your school has a good reputation AFTER you leave it. Like when you hand out your resume.” And my old school has a good reputuation, one of the best. So I suppose it could have been worse.
Let me just say that I admire and agree with Edwino’s post. If you want to do serious medical research you need to put in the time and study to get a doctorate.
However, looking at things from my position (medical doctor who stinks at research and hates it) what I can’t understand is why it is considered so all-fired important to do research to get into certain medical specialties. When I go to an eye doctor I really don’t care how much time he has spent with the fruitflies, but don’t even THINK of trying to get an ophthalmology residency without publishing!
There is such prejudice against those of us who actually want to PRACTICE medicine. When I told my advisor in medical school I wanted to go into primary care she looked at me like I was insane. If you want to do research, fine, do research, get a PhD, and save the world, but don’t assume that just because somebody has published more papers or has more degrees that they are a better doctor!
By the way, you don’t need to call me Doctor-Bunny will do just fine.
I can tell you all what is worse than arrogant behavior of academics. Stupid parent whose kids are applying to college. I have become convinced that 99% of parents don’t actually care about their children getting a good education or enjoying their college years; the parents only want the bragging rights for when they are talking with other parents.
Exhibit A:
When I was applying to college, I chose to apply to a small liberal arts college in a major city. My father wanted me to apply to a college that’s in the same region, but in a small town. He insisted that this small-town college was more prestigious (they were about equal in academic repuation in reality), so I wouldn’t be able to attend a decent graduate school if I didn’t make the right choice. In fact, I don’t plan to attend graduate school at all, and I told him that, but he just wouldn’t listen.
My mother was obsessed with the statistics for the entering classes (average SAT score, number of National Merit Scholars, etc…), and she judged each school purely by statistics. Even a ten-point differential in SAT scores made a huge difference in her mind.
Exhibit B:
A friend of mine in high school didn’t want to apply to MIT. But her father did want her to apply. She refused to fill out the application form. So he filled out the application form and forged her signature. Now, if this girl wasn’t even interested in applying to MIT, why would she be interested in attending? Maybe the guy just wanted to be able to brag that his daughter was smart enough to get accepted, even if there wasn’t any chance of her attending.
Exhibit C:
The parents of another friend (rich snots, obviously) offered to buy her a new car if she would attend Harvard, but she wanted to go to a local university instead.
ChasE, Oh, I so know what school you are talking about! It wouldn’t be the same town that “little old ladies” (to quote the song) come from, would it? (I’m being obscure, but not that obscure!)
I thought Otis was a great school. I went when it was still in downtown L.A., near McArthur Park (the shittiest part of town.) Damn, I loved that school. You should have stayed. Otis, even though I am sure it had flaws, was so much less “uptight” then the school-which-will-not-be-named. (We heard tales about how suicides and divorces at the school-which-will-not-be-named were very high, but that may have just been a rumor manifested by attending a competing art school. But we heard horror stories from the school-which-will-not-be-named veterans, as well.)
I took a class at Otis that was so great - an art director from Motown taught it (it was about the business of illustration or something.) Anyway, she was able, through her endless connections, to get us to go on “field trips” to see many hot illustrator. (I was a main influence to her, because unlike some of my fellow students, I was actually AWARE of who was in the business.) I was able to influence my teacher to visit one of my favorite illustrators, Bill Rieser. (sp?) He is such a freakin’ fun, funky artist. (Very ‘80s.) He told how he gave up on the school-which-will-not-be-named, because they wanted to mould him into what THEY wanted him to be (a cookie cutter artist) and no matter what he did, it didn’t please them. Well, phooey on the school-which-will-not-be-named, he ended up with his artwork on billboards on Sunset Blvd! He did JUST FINE without their stinkin’ degree! (Though he may have gotten a degree later, I don’t know.)
Cartooniverse, yeah, you and me, cupcake! Man, this sure is bringing back memories!
Hey, my sister goes to SVA. I went the completely different route, and went to engineering school (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). I’ve seen a bit of what you people are talking about, especially the idea that good students should go on to get a PhD. Oddly I was never pressured in that direction at all ::remembers dismal GPA:: OK, maybe it wasn’t all that odd.
Well, then again, that average person would be wrong (speaking as a PhD computer scientist who’s one of the main architects and programmers of my company’s products).
I’m also responsible for hiring programmers to do some of the development I do, so I’ve had the opportunity to look at a bunch of resumes lately. Maybe the self-taught programmer doesn’t need a “piece of paper” to be employable, but given the chance to choose between someone who is self-taught at programming and someone who has undergone an undergraduate curriculum at a good university, I know which one I’ll pick.
The self-taught programmer might be able to (initially) program rings around the kid straight out of school but it’s a very narrow and perishable form of expertise. Has anyone taught this person how to do structured programming? Does he know anything about the architecture of the computer? Does he understand the fundamentals of operating systems? Does he know anything about algorithmic complexity and its influence on data structure design? Can he write documentation and design specifications clearly and correctly? In short, does this person have breadth?
Now to get back to the OP. You say academics are sometimes arrogant bastards. Well, that is simply to say that they are members of the human species. Look at some of the previous posts in the Pit about managers and co-workers. Some people shouldn’t be in positions of power, period.
Now to a certain point, academia does select for arrogance. To get an advanced degree, you have to work your butt off for years, often in conditions of extremely tight finances. The work is often monotonous, definitely not fiscally rewarding, and no one in the "real" world understands what you do. They often belittle you and call you a parasitic freeloader. To get through this, you need to be persistant, it helps to be obsessed with your subject matter, and, to survive in the publish and perish paradigm, ambition and a healthy ego are a must. Some people turn up the last two a few notches too far.
Have I known incredibly arrogant self-obsessed academics. You bet. A certain microbiologist I worked with comes to mind. But in general, the academics I know work harder and longer than anyone in industry and they care deeply about their fields of study. Many of them do care about their students and try to teach the best they can amidst a horde of competing activities.
If you want to cast blame on the state of academics, place it where it belongs, on the current funding and tenure system that rewards publishing, service, and teaching performance in that order (with teaching coming in a distant third). Research is emphasized, but funding is continually cut, so that professors must compete for increasingly rare funding dollars with the accompanying paperwork and overhead that goes with managing research programs.Thank you, Finagle. While I agree with some of what has been said here–and that’s why I posted here before–it’s starting to depress the holy fuck out of me that so many of you folk seem to think that PhDs and academics have so little to offer the world. While I have to work with (and under) some PhDs who suffer from the problems described here, for the most part what I see happening in higher education (research, teaching, etc) is hopeful and heartening. Yeah, I’m biased, because my dad is a fine arts EdD and I’m getting my PhD and I get a paycheck every month from a research university. But I’ve also got a front-row center view of what is good and bad about academe, and I say the whole story isn’t being told in this thread. That’s fine; it’s the pit. But it is depressing to me so I’m going to gripe back.
To address another point, there are those who believe that it is important that the university pursue basic (instead of applied) research. As much as some of you disdain this, some people think that the ivory tower is better off being immune from trends. Somebody has to be willing to look at things that aren’t trendy and aren’t just market-driven. Somebody has to be willing to invest money in ideas that may be useful 10 or 20 or 100 years down the road, even if they don’t help industry make a fatter buck next fiscal quarter. Somebody has to be willing to teach Joe Baccalaurate or Suzy Doctorate basic modes of thinking and approaches to problems that are useful in the long term, even if that means they can’t step into a job without some on-the-job training. Let business teach graduates the practical ways to apply the mind they’ve developed in higher ed. Let higher ed make sure they know how to learn; can write, communicate, think analytically, evaluate evidence, etc.
Goddamn it. grumbles
Others have addressed the issue of why a degree actually will help you as a programmer, but there’s a different reason to go to college, and to the best one you can get into.
You won’t learn the material significantly better at fancy-schmancy universities, but you will be in an environment of really smart people that challenges you. I don’t remember that many details from my classes at MIT, but I sure remember the culture of the place, and how it felt to be around people who understood where I was coming from. Going to a place where people understand the idea of being fascinated by code, or by gene expression, or really by whatever floats your boat is worth a lot. Going to a school where you’re already the big fish in the small pond isn’t worth it in the long run.
Wow. I thought this thread would just fall off and I would have to dig to see if any responses.
Myrra21 - Contrary to what many students think, the tuition payed is usually less than 25% of the cost. Therefore, taxpayers are paying over 3/4 the cost. If you’re faculty, then your salary is taxpayer money.
Number6 - I wouldn’t consider you ‘academic’ in this context.
Finangle - you bring up good points. There is value in getting a degree. The width of knowledge obtained from having a degree helps someone with little experience have higher potential over someone self-taught or experience from the trenches.
A problem with the Ph.D. level, though, is that there is much work to be done out there and it isn’t rocket science. There are many positions out there that pay well for these ‘trench’ positions but much fewer for the highly educated, inexperienced Ph.D’s. Furthermore, the positions that are available are usually filled by people with experience in that industry that really know the nooks and crannies. I sometimes feel I could train a bright high school graduate to do my job since it really feels pretty bonehead to me much of the time. The truth comes home to me, though, when I train someone new or have to explain to someone what we have done to accomplish a particular task. I then realize that it really is complicated and takes education. However, it seems that over 80-90% of the tasks are ‘trivial’. Of course, I hear the same statement from many friends and believe that almost all jobs are like this to someone highly trained/educated.
The problem with Ph.D’s is that they seem unable to handle this routine. They also have trouble working quickly, not understanding the tradeoff between being academic (cross t’s and dot i’s) and the need to get the task done on time and within budget. They seem to have difficulty understanding that the stats are not the goal, but the STORY the stats are telling is what is important. An interesting result that cannot be seen when looking at the data another way is probably noise and spending gobs of time doing stats ‘academically’ is wasted if it isn’t relevant to the ‘story’. It really takes time/experience to develop a nose to smell out the important stuff. I’ve had a Ph.D. go spastic at some of the stuff I did, but it was just exploring and when you hit something that has potential, then you do things by the book. They also seem to put too much weight on subtle results. If it’s subtle, it’s probably junk no matter ‘how good’ statistically it looks. Important results don’t hide, they beg to be discovered. People with B.A. and Master’s degrees, after a period of time, start developing but Ph.D’s seem to get hung up.
Also, there does seem to be other problems with Ph.D’s though that other groups don’t have. I am a manager with hire/fire authority and have done many interviews. Invariably, I would get Ph.D applicants and would interview them. People without Ph.D’s seemed interested in the position, respectful, eager to learn. People with Ph.D’s seem to feel they should be higher up and do not put as much enthusaism into learning.
An interview example: I was interviewing a Ph.D and she seemd fine and I was about to recommend further interviews. I finally asked, half jokingly, how she would feel working in an environment where she would report to non-Ph.D’s. She responded with something about how it would be strange since she should be the one being reported to. My jaw dropped. She didn’t say it that direct but it was there pretty strong. I couldn’t understand how someone would be so dumb as to mess up a good interview at the end except that she really believed strongly that that was the way it really was. When she called to ask why she didn’t get the job, I told her she was ‘overqualified’ (this is what I say to irritate people). She pressed since she really wanted the job (the pay was nice) and I finally told her that I didn’t feel she would be comfortable since it appeared the position was beneath her. She was upset since it really was a perfect position to start her career.
This post is way to long. Sorry.
Blink
No, I suppose it doesn’t. I extend my apologies to any I offended with my attempt at humor.
Touché! 
**
Well, then again, that average person would be wrong (speaking as a PhD computer scientist who’s one of the main architects and programmers of my company’s products).
I’m also responsible for hiring programmers to do some of the development I do, so I’ve had the opportunity to look at a bunch of resumes lately. Maybe the self-taught programmer doesn’t need a “piece of paper” to be employable, but given the chance to choose between someone who is self-taught at programming and someone who has undergone an undergraduate curriculum at a good university, I know which one I’ll pick.
The self-taught programmer might be able to (initially) program rings around the kid straight out of school but it’s a very narrow and perishable form of expertise. Has anyone taught this person how to do structured programming? Does he know anything about the architecture of the computer? Does he understand the fundamentals of operating systems? Does he know anything about algorithmic complexity and its influence on data structure design? Can he write documentation and design specifications clearly and correctly? In short, does this person have breadth?
[/QUOTE]
**
In my experience, that type of programmer does have breadth, and they are conversant with the topics you mention, or they don’t last very long. I’m not exactly a self-taught programmer, but my formal education in the discipline is limited to extension courses and company sponsored training programs. I also picked up a programming course or two on the way to earning the degrees I do have, which are pretty much irrelevant to computer science. I’ve known many enviably good programmers who don’t have CS degrees; perhaps the best programmer I ever knew was only a high school graduate. The thing about programming is that experience does count, or should.
This is not to say that I don’t wish I had a formal degree in CS. For various reasons, I didn’t consider it while I was in college or grad school. Now my thoughts have been turning in that direction, which brings me to my little side rant: Where the FUCK are the CS degree programs that a working adult can attend? There are plenty of weekday undergraduate programs. Ditto masters’ programs which focus more on MIS and business management. But I can’t find anything out there that focuses on the technical aspects of the field, and is available during evenings and weekends.
Cite for this? It’s true that tuition (at public universities) is much less than half the cost, it’s a different story at privates. Also, some professors pay part of their own salaries through research funding, which can be private as well as public money.
This might be changing as some disciplines (and programs) embrace combing qualititive techniques with qualitative.
Well, now I see we’re arguing about different things. If you’re saying that the PhD is not a good preparation for work in industry (at least in some fields) then I’d agree with you. But then why should it be? In many disciplines, the PhD is training for work as an academic in that discipline. Of course there might be fit problems if the PhD (for whatever reason) tries to work outside of that framework and doesn’t also try to adjust their mindset. I’d expect similar results if an MSEE tried to get a job as a social worker–or vice versa. Or if an architect tried to get work as an oceanographer. However, I don’t think that qualifies as good evidence that all PhDs are arrogant or unqualified for work. Many of them are not arrogant, and many of them ar superbly well-trained for the academic work they do. You’re just not running into them because they’re not knocking on your door looking for a job.
Incidentally, some programs who find they’ve overenrolled given the academic job market are trying to work with aspiring PhDs to make them more marketable and employable outside academe. It sounds as though (based on your experience) an attitude adjustment is something some of them need to work on.
That was Benjamin Disraeli.
[sub]damn uneducated yahoos[/sub]
First of all: Wow! thanks for the compliment. And, yeah, I probably will never have much money. Fortunately, I am pretty low-maintenance.
Then again, I may get lucky enough to marry a money-making guy in from out in the real world who can help me finance my “hobby.” I’m kidding! (I think)
rivulus
You’re right, that sucks too. Nothing like taking a good idea and twisting the hell out of it. Once again, these appear to be people who are more concerned with their own reputations than the students. (I’m guessing, since I don’t know the situation.)
Learning to teach does require students to practice on – there’s no way around that, unfortunately. Supervision by other teachers/profs who care about the students is important. So is some common sense in balancing the needs of the grad teachers and the undergrad students. But that takes time and effort from the faculty. And if they don’t care…? It’s a problem.
rivulus
Well, it was attributed to Disraeli, however those words were written by Mark Twain in his autobiography if I am not mistaken. As far as I know there is no record of Disraeli ever saying or writing those words. The proper quote is:
“There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.”
Twain also wrote:
“I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.”
The problem is that you automatically dismiss anyone who has no higher education and think you can’t learn from them. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, had no higher education. 
Talking to someone who left the conversation almost 15 years ago will certainly teach him a lesson on who he can learn from!
I’m so arrogant I didn’t bother reading the thread before replying.
All three of your examples had higher education. Gates attended Harvard, Jobs attended Reed College, and Ellison attended University of Illinois and University of Chicago.
None of them graduated, but that’s not same as having no education.