The sense of *moral injury* that @pluralistic describes here resonates with me as a worker in public higher education. When I began my career, I believed I was empowering students & helping them rise to their highest possible level of achievement. As the public disinvested in education, students were gradually maneuvered into accepting non-dischargeable debt at high interest rates that left them indentured for their careers to enrich oligarchs. And I was the come-on.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/

@stevendbrewer @pluralistic

Agreed with all of this.

I think the moment of destruction came in the late 70's (in the US anyway) when students (as a result of social pressures, etc.) stopped saying they were getting an education to better themselves and the world to "getting a good job to make more money."

Students no longer cared what they learned, only how it looked in their CV. Societal support decreased, "Why should I pay for other kids to get rich?"

Schools started asking only "How does this increase revenue."

The whole enterprise became corporatized.

@MylesRyden @stevendbrewer @pluralistic To be fair to the students, this was also the time (or a big part of it) when our manufacturing job base was gutted. It wasn’t just “I need to make more money.” It was “I don’t want to be destitute.”

@MylesRyden @stevendbrewer @pluralistic I have sons who will be well suited to software engineering careers. I know from my own experience hiring young engineers that college will be a waste for them. They’re already well-rounded. They’re knowledge sponges! And the CS departments are horrifically out of step with the industry.

Both they, and their future employers, would be better served by them entering a software apprenticeship at age 18. But that’s not one of the options we give the young.

@Hotdog @stevendbrewer @pluralistic

I would agree with this and also say, for me the point of colleges is not to make software engineers. That is a secondary purpose. The primary purpose is to help make well rounded people who can deeply think about a number of different issues and topics.

Internships and such are perfect vehicles for learning the exact job skills someone needs for a particular job.

I will also say that around the time I am talking about employers abandoned all pretense of educating workers and potential workers, outsourcing that to colleges and school districts.

@MylesRyden @Hotdog @stevendbrewer @pluralistic I used to direct the Software Engineering program at the University of Waterloo (which does have coop as an integral part). So of course my paycheque depends on it. But I believe that in our classes we teach fundamentals, including the basics of a liberal education, but also discipline knowledge from computer science and software engineering. Not just hacking things together to make them work.

@va2lam @Hotdog @stevendbrewer @pluralistic
I minored in Computer Science as an undergraduate. The most useless class I ever took was Assembler -- too specific to the particular machine the college had. The most useful were the ones that emphasized flowcharting and pseudocoding. Skills I still use. 😃

@MylesRyden @va2lam @Hotdog @pluralistic The most useful class I ever took was Secretarial Typing (they changed it to the less-sexist "Business Typing" the next year). I was the only boy in the class. But being able to touch type 60wpm has served me in good stead for my entire career.

@stevendbrewer @MylesRyden @va2lam @Hotdog @pluralistic Wild, I can touchtype 110+ WPM due to playing computer games when I was a teenager and it’s never come up in a job interview or at work. I can type faster than anyone I know but as far as I can tell this is a useless skill to any employers I’ve ever had.