from Hacker News

CS Degrees Are Mostly Just Signaling – An Interview with Economist Bryan Caplan

by charliewrites on 3/19/19, 5:48 PM with 4 comments

• by charliewrites on 3/19/19, 5:50 PM

  “Most of what you study in school you are highly unlikely to ever use in a job—if you even remember it.”

  I wish I had asked Bryan about the value of universal education for society in terms of creating opportunities for specialization: Most kids will never use their high school biology, higher math, history, and physics in their future jobs. But some will. And those doctors and scientists and engineers are really important for society. Given that, is it worth the cost of exposing everyone to these subjects because we don't know in advance which kids will take to them (and later become highly valuable contributors to society)?

• by swolebrain on 3/19/19, 8:29 PM

  "My strong guess is, in general no, because, especially in this society, when a person drops out of school, there's normally something deviant about them."

  Yeah because people are immutable and the decision you made when you were 19 years old reflects on your permanent human condition.

• by k__ on 3/19/19, 8:09 PM

  Isn't that also what people say about code camps?

  So basically the whole idustry builds on "learn signaling, get a job with it, then learn what actually to do"?

• by soganess on 3/19/19, 11:50 PM

  TL;DR: Economist conflates computer science with software engineering and random website attempts to capitalize with clickbait title...