[ale] CS Degree necessary?

[James P. Kinney III]

A degree makes the difference between a "job" and  "career". Without the
degree, you _will_ get passed up on promotions even if you are the best
coder in company.

A degree shows a high level of commitment to a difficult, long term
task. That's the difference, also, between a job and a career.

Bear in mind, the educational system has lowered it standards
drastically over the past 30 years. What passes now for a high school
education would be laughed at 30 years ago. So now the first 1-2 years
of college are spent bringing the freshmen up to the "functional high
school graduate" level. So the 4 year degree in college is watered down
to accomodate the lower entry standards.

If a freshman looks at the school catalog and their major course
selection is not at least half exciting and the rest really interesting
sounding, it's time to go to the couselors office for some apptitude
testing. You don't want to find out you're not interested in the subject
after the junior year. They will be more than happy to help any student
find out what interests them the most and point them toward a scholastic
program that will satisfy those interests best. Otherwise you can wind
up with a few extra years of student loans to pay off while floundering
around deciding a major.

Go to the best school you can get in and afford. No matter what your
field of study is, be sure to excell in the English courses related to
writing skills. Those skills will be used everyday, for resumes,
communications between co-workers and bosses, in speechs and
presentations to colleagues. It is the first glimpse that employes get
of your skills.

On Wed, 2002-01-16 at 19:56, Michael Golden wrote:
> Hi,
> 	I know a similar thread has gone on in this list a while back but for
> one I'm too lazy right now to go back and try to find it and two I don't
> recall well enough if it addressed this exact topic.
> 	Right now I am set up to major in Computer Science but I've only been
> taking general education core classes so far. I was talking to people
> about some of the classes for the major and I took a look through them
> myself and I'm not sure how interested I am in taking half of them. I'd
> like to have a career in computers but I don't know how much I'll enjoy
> this major.
> 	Is a CS degree really necessary in the real world for computer jobs?
> What are the advantages/disadvantages to having it? Anything else to
> add?
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and COO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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