SOTU: Community Colleges, Employers To Train Workers For High-Paying Coding Jobs 200
theodp writes: Coding got a couple of shout-outs from the White House in Tuesday's State of the Union Address. "Thanks to Vice President Biden's great work to update our job training system," said President Obama (YouTube), "we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding, and nursing, and robotics." And among the so-called "boats" in the new "River of Content" that the White House social media folks came up with to enhance the State of the Union is a card intended to be shared on Twitter & Facebook which reads, "Let's teach more Americans to code. (Even the President is learning!)."
President Obama briefly addressed human spaceflight, saying, "I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics, so that a veteran who gave his arms for his country can play catch with his kid; pushing out into the Solar System not just to visit, but to stay." He also called once more for action on climate change. Politifact has an annotated version of the transcript for more background information on Obama's statements, and FiveThirtyEight has a similar cheat sheet.
Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
"we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding
Re:Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
Community colleges are not equipped to train people for high-paying coding jobs. They can teach you the basics, sure, but any kind of advanced programming skill comes from interning, mentorship and/or *gasp* actually sitting home and coding, coding, coding. All night, non-stop, my-brain-is-a-compiler-now coding. Most people aren't fit for that, and it's not a crime to point that out.
The real experts are well aware that a few non-elite college classes aren't going to fill the advanced skill level, high-paying, rock-star-coding-ninja slots, and the President is doing a vast disservice in painting a rosy picture that communicates to people that all you need is a couple of entry-level courses and you too can be a professional coder, when the real problem here is access to the jobs that will get you the experience and the status.
And where are those slots advertised? Hint: not in the community college placement offices.
(Apologies if I sound glib to the parent poster; I mean only to be glib towards the original quote.)
Re:Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paradox (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I don't believe it's an actual plan.
I just feel like I have to actually say something like this from time to time so that the words are out in the universe.
If I transmit, maybe someone will receive.
Re:False Paradox (Score:2)
Actually, you are mistaken for assuming than any educational effort that is national in scope doesn't start with speechmaking and "propaganda". Bright ideas that occur in a vacuum twinkle out quickly. Its only when those ideas are amalgamated and become an enterprise or new field of study and disseminated widely do they really make a difference.
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Re:Paradox (Score:4, Funny)
Hope and change lives!
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You're making the mistake of believing this is an actual plan, not just a bunch of feel good speechmaking and propaganda.
Yes, it's a plan to fix education. It hasn't worked in the public schools, which just keep getting worse, so they're basically going to add 2 more years of grade school to your "free" education, and hope that's enough.
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Re:Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
Community college gives a few things:
1) a stepping stone to a college they might not have been able to get in before
2) a way of getting two low-cost years, then move to a better school and only pay for two more expensive years
3) two more years of education
We have an awesome tech school near my house. Nobody thinks that the graduates are going to become astronauts and doctors, but not everyone has to be a doctor or astronaut. We still need plumbers/electricians/carpenters/mechanics/welders in this country and those kinds of jobs should pay well enough to put a family in the middle class.
Re:Paradox (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't disagree that it's a stepping stone. And that's good. I believe in continuous education.
I just don't like the simplistic promise from the President that the OP quotes. "[H]igh-paying jobs like coding" is the part that rankles me especially. It's an overly-simplistic view of the state of high-paying jobs. They're frequently inaccessible to most people for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that a few community college courses are not the key to that door.
It gives the impression that a high-paying job is relatively easy to get, and that's just not true.
Re:Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
He's just parroting the nonsense that tech industry bullshit artists like Mark Zuckerberg have been shoveling for years now--namely, that the tech industry needs more H1B's because we just don't have enough entry-level programmers coming out of U.S. tech schools and colleges. Of course, that's total bullshit. There are plenty of grads coming out of these programs. But they can't get hired because they can't be enslaved as indentured servants like the H1B's.
The only thing that's going to result from more Americans getting tech degrees from community colleges (and colleges in general, for that matter) is more unemployed people with student debt.
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Not everyone goes to college to learn how to code. Believe me, I worked at a university for a number of years and nobody there could write code.
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It gives the impression that a high-paying job is relatively easy to get, and that's just not true.
My FIL hired developers out of the local community college for his business. AFAIK they were paid well enough (this was upstate NY) and they were using COBOL, but they did a good job and his business grew. Not every coding position means you'll get $90,000 and options.
But your larger point is still true. Maybe he should have said 'higher paying', but it's all relative.
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But your larger point is still true. Maybe he should have said 'higher paying', but it's all relative.
In 2005, the most recent year with available data, the median employee earned $28,567. So a job that pays more than that could be considered "high paying" by some.
But unemployment is higher at the bottom end of the economic ladder. What we really need are more entry level "low paying" jobs. That is what is lacking. The biggest cause of poverty is not low wages, but the lack of any job at all. Households in the bottom quintile have an average of 0.4 people earning income. For the top quintile the figur
Re: False Paradox (Score:3)
"It gives the impression that a high-paying job is relatively easy to get, and that's just not true."
I didn't get that impression at all and suggest that your thoughts and biases about what the president said gave you that impression. There was nothing in his remarks that implied it in a logical sense, although the president is almost certainly correct. If you can get more people coding, there will be better coders and some will get paid better than if they did not have such skills. Not all code leads to
Re: False Paradox (Score:5)
If you can get more people coding, there will be better coders and some will get paid better than if they did not have such skills.
It helps just to know what coding is. There is a graphic artist working in the office next to mine. She once mentioned that she had 2000 images to resize, and it was going to take her a week to do them all. I gave her a one hour lesson on "what coding is" then I spent five minutes writing a perl script that was able to resize all the images in less than 30 seconds. She still can't code. But now, when she has a tedious and repetitive task, she knows to ask a coder for help.
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High paying coding jobs are also tough to get when India is metaphorically just outside of your internet door. In India the job really IS high paying. In the US, rates that can compete with Indian coders are starvation wages.
Even entrepreneurial coding is ever more likely to be shipped overseas, as it isn't even worth it to invest personal serious coder skills as sweat equity in a new company compared to just having a team in India build out ideas to spec (and maybe then tweaking them). Of the last thre
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Well, one could also understandably confuse "programmer" with building a content page with html. Writing in a markup language -- even in a raw markup language as opposed to using a GUI to build one as many/most "web developers" are prone to do nowadays -- isn't exactly programming. Programming sort of starts when one includes at least some kind of conditionals, with something other than a graphical chooser, and goes up from there.
That is, writing in raw php, java, or maybe even javascript probably counts.
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I agree that high-skill coding is out of reach for someone who only took a few programming courses in community college. However, there is plenty of low-skill coding to be done out in the world as well. Nearly any web page you visit could be written by a community college student with a few HTML, CSS, and Javascript courses.
I'd recommend staying away from those web pages if I were you. It'll be used as a malware distribution center as soon as it shows up on the results of some script kiddie's vulnerability scanner.
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We still need plumbers/electricians/carpenters/mechanics/welders in this country and those kinds of jobs should pay well enough to put a family in the middle class.
They often do. I remember years ago reading about a shortage of tool and die makers and that journeyman (basically just out of tech school) were getting jobs for like $150k a year.
The biggest problem I have seen is that high schools teachers and councilors push the 4 year degree as the only way to get ahead and that no one should get a 2 year degree or learn a trade if they want to succeed. While they are correct in that a high school diploma basically ensures that you will live in poverty working minimu
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The reality is that ALL of the best coders start somewhere. One can't say that someone who is at college age is "too old" to be a good programmer any more than one could say that there are no mathematicians or physicists who made any important contributions after 30. It is often at the "community college level" that many are first introduced to technical subjects that do not lend themselves well to the way our high school curricula are structured.
Anyway, that's not the point, its the final outcome of hav
Re:Paradox (Score:4, Informative)
Can confirm. I have a business degree from a major university.
Two years after I got my degree I took a couple coding and networking courses at a community college.
Now I make a good living ($100K+) as a programmer/DBA from my two semesters of community college courses. I haven't done jack with my 4 year degree.
So anyone who wants to be a programmer can get a good boost from community college IF it's a GOOD community college. My profs were all old-time NASA programmers. They knew their stuff.
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Bull, as they say, shit. I got my AA in data processing in '85. In fact, I'd taken about all the programming courses by '80, and got my first job as a programmer in '80.
And I'll put down $5 that my code's better, more readable, more maintinable, and more easily enhanced than anything you've ever written, in any of the languages I've used.
mark
Re:Paradox (Score:4)
Community colleges are not equipped to train people for high-paying coding jobs. They can teach you the basics, sure, but any kind of advanced programming skill comes from interning, mentorship and/or *gasp* actually sitting home and coding, coding, coding. All night, non-stop, my-brain-is-a-compiler-now coding. Most people aren't fit for that, and it's not a crime to point that out.
I have no degrees of any kind. No community college, not even high school. I started by teaching myself programming 30+ years ago. Found that even with the dumb ass mistakes I was making, I provided as much, and often more value to my employers as the CIS grads we hired.
When I started, I had some real life experience with accounting, working with people, making payroll for my own construction business. Stuff not generally part of any programming degree. As the years went by, I looked for training where I could find it like online courses.
I make 150k+ a year as a consultant. Nothing at all with formal education (if it's real and useful) but after 30 years in the industry, watching people come and go, by FAR the most important thing is aptitude and nerdiness. And by nerdiness, I mean exactly what you're talking about. Actually being interested in goofy shit like algorithm optimization, ferreting out OS API secrets, etc., just for their own sake, apart from the business need of the moment.
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Nothing at all with formal education (if it's real and useful)...
I meant to say "Nothing at all wrong with formal education..."
I also don't have a typing/editing degree.
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So, equip them. Provide incentives to bring faculty in at competitive rates. I'd be thrilled to teach at community college. I have extensive experience and an advanced degree, but there's little room for growth right now.
Of course, you are correct in that the industry wants nothing to do with developing talent, so we would have a problem that even people with good fundamentals can't get work.
However, it'd be great if computing was a minor or an AA degree that people used as a starting point for other degree
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My boss went to one of those "community college" type places and even he doesn't like the kind of workers they produce. Obama is basically demeaning all of those occupations. He's making it sound like you can jump into those things with minimal preparation and it's not really true.
Those "thery heavy" Universities acually prepare their students much better. Although it may also be simply a selection bias.
More serious types may not take the easiest path they can find. They might seek out the most interesting
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Although it may also be simply a selection bias.
I'd argue college is 50% or more credentialing inborn capability. The value of a college degree is that 1) you proved yourself capable enough to be accepted by that college and 2) you made it through four years without dropping out.
Evidence for (2) is that there is a huge salary difference between someone who completes 99% of college without getting a degree and someone who gets the degree for completing 100%.
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The sociable types that communicate well are also disruptive and help decrease the produtivity of a team. They do this by helping wasting everyone's time. So those "superior communication skills" are a bit of a double edged sword.
It amazes me that anyone puts up with the idea that there are people that can't be managed. Exploiting all kinds of talent should be considered a trivial matter for a competent manager.
Of course management also closely follows Sturgeons Law.
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Our public school system is so out of whack it isn't funny. Only the better funded schools will have the ability to output students at a education level that will be necessary for anyone to follow the path of a Computer Science degree or Programmer. Getting access to even a basic level of equal education is very tough depending on where you live and how well off ( financially ) your parents are.
Don't try to fine tune a syste
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Maybe the community colleges should start offering mandatory courses on how to fake an Indian accent and get an H1B as an American citizen.
All those horrible coders from the 1990's (Score:2)
In the 1990's tech was big. So we hired any sap who had vague credentials to do the work. 100k a year to work in front page and call yourself a web developer. A bunch of hacks who worked in VB only and called themselves programmers. Creating an infrastructure where Systems Crashes were common and massive security holes.
2003 the tech bubble burst. Luckily a lot of the dead wood left, but then they went into real estate, where they rode that bubble, until it popped, due to inadequate work, and rushing for
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You are doing it wrong!
This is not about facts or truth or what is going to happen. This statement is supposed to make you feel good about the administration! Of course that effect is ruined if you apply rationality to it...
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there's a python module for that.
import HOneB
Re: False Paradox (Score:2)
"How about instead of focusing on teaching everybody how to 'code' we start teaching people how to apply logic to solve problems? "
What are you trying to do, destroy News Corporation's business model?
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Where's the jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
We'll be training kids with a two year degree to fill in jobs that don't exist. If you thought that another kid with a BA in communications was having a hard time just wait until we have thousands of kids who can do Hello World in Java and VB flooding a market that doesn't really exist... At least we can still count on everyone crying that we need more H1Bs.
2-yr code, no devel edu == hacks, healthcare.gov (Score:5, Insightful)
Coding isn't a high paying job, and isn't what the country needs. A community college course that teaches how to code in a particular language, rather than teaching systems development, pays about the same as flipping burgers and produces systems like TJ Maxx, Target, Home Depot, and healthcare.gov.
Teaching millions of people computer code is like teaching everyone medical codes - it doesn't do them any good, and it doesn't do the country any good.
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A million medical coders and two doctors is no goo (Score:5, Interesting)
Suppose that's true, if you teach a million people medical coding, two will end up being doctors. And the rest end up unemployed because we only need a few thousand medical coding people. How is that good, to have 998,000 people waste their time (and your money)? Everyone would be much better off putting 1/100th the money into medical school scholarships - you end up with more doctors and nobody wasting their time, and you still have your money to spend on something useful.
Similarly, we need people who know systems architecture, comp sci, information security, electrical engineering, materials science - all of these disciplines are needed to build the systems of the future, and all pay well. Scholarships in these areas would be useful to the student and to the country. Teaching everyone a coding language doesn't advance anything they need or we need.
There are plenty of fields where a community college education is useful - welders, for example, earn more than code monkeys, starting with just a few weeks of schooling. In two years, they can get certified to do underwater welding, aerospace, etc - all of which pay much better than coding, because they are more useful than coding without understanding software systems design principles.
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Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million paramedics, some trained to do many of the simple or relatively specialized tasks that doctors already farm out to their nurses and aides already. The result would be no excuse for such high health care costs and wages for doctors, since much of what they currently do could be done for far less by paramedics or even in some cases by robots or medical devices.
Lets end the nonsense that the status quo is t
I work on an EMT course. It's not all codes, or MD (Score:2)
> Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million [more] paramedics
Not really, but let's assume that were true. The US needs a of 239,000 paramedics, and already has 235,000. So of the million you think you'd end up with, 99% would be unemployed. Excellent example of the thinking process of modern liberalism.
Funny you should mention that example. I work on an EMT/paramedic course. It has very little in common with medical school for doctors, and it'
If starving to death is your goal. THINK! (Score:2)
> If only we paid doctors a tenth as much, the world would be able to afford to hire the other 90%.
That sounds like a great sound bite for the Occupy crowd. Let's have a look at that. You propose "a tenth as much". Currently, the median salary for physicians is $188,440. One tenth of that would be $18,844. The median cost of malpractice insurance is $32,000. So a doctor would get paid $19k, then spend $32k on insurance. With no paycheck, in about three to four weeks they starve to death. Yep, anot
Here's a proposal for you, working together (Score:2)
I'll tell you what, here's a proposal for you, liberal AC. You're good at coming up with complaints and dreaming up cool ideas while you're stoned. Not so good at 3rd grade arithmetic though, so your ideas for the great society have people starving to death on the way, because you didn't count the cost. We conservative bean counters are better at arithmetic, but not so keen on taking 'shrooms and dreaming up utopian daydreams. Maybe we can work together to combine our strengths.
How about next time you g
Re:2-yr code, no devel edu == hacks, healthcare.go (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who end up on the far end of the bell curve won't be those who stop at a 2 year degree in "coding" at a local community college. The very best developer I know has a masters degree, 25+ years of experience, and STILL spends more time learning.
My objection to things like this are the false belief it instills that all you need to do to learn to be good at this is go to community college for a while, where you'll be taught by other people who aren't good at coding. If they were good, they'd be doing it, not making peanuts teaching community college. The second false belief is that it's a ticket to a high paying job. High pay comes with scarce skills. If you send everyone to community college and they actually do become good at coding, it won't be a high paying job.
We should send everyone to a 4 year school and teach them basic economics so they'd understand things like this. Doctors don't make a lot of money because their jobs are important or it costs a lot to train one. They make a lot of money because when you need one, you'll pay whatever you have to, and because there are a limited number of them. In the ideal world, we'd call that 4 year degree high school. It's terrible that people entering the real world don't understand this stuff, and it's why the US electorate falls for nonsense like this time and again.
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My objection to things like this are the false belief it instills that all you need to do to learn to be good at this is go to community college for a while, where you'll be taught by other people who aren't good at coding. If they were good, they'd be doing it, not making peanuts teaching community college.
That's not necessarily true. There are many folks who are quite good teaching at the CC level. Many are PhDs and want to make a bit more money while working on their post docs. Others want a bit more in
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Fair enough. My experience of CC teachers was variable. My calculus teacher was atrocious. I had an English lit prof who thought it was reasonable to have students read aloud. I dropped that course in a heartbeat. I had a good biology teacher, and my Anthropology course was excellent. I seriously consider teaching CC myself now and again, mostly because I think I'd like it and, as you say, have some experience I want to share. Sadly, they require a masters in the field you want to teach. I have one,
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Quite likely, but I don't get your point. You illustrate that formal education isn't required to excel. I never said it was. Some amount of learning happens in 2 years of community college (been there, done that). I've never met Carmack, but I suspect what he's learned about software vastly exceeds that. Unless I'm wrong, and he's some sort of idiot savant, you aren't actually disagreeing with me.
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John Carmack likely "STILL spends more time learning".
He is likely a better example of that than ANY of us.
That's the misleading thing about "undereducated" types in programming. They may lack formal education but may have a good deal of practical experience. They may be self taught.
That's different than some schmuck that some day decides they need a career change and ask you how they can get into computing with the least effort possible.
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We don't expect an architect fresh out of college to design a skyscraper, nor a guy with a new medical degree to perform complex procedures on his own, nor a newly graduated MBA to run a division. (Sometimes it does happen, with crap results as a rule). By the same token, some
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we need more science training and research into alternative and renewable energy sources. that's what will help america best -- using tech to save the planet for capitalism
yep only 60 years and $200 billion (Score:2)
Yeah look at how far we've come with only 60 years and $200 billion taxpayer money of intense research in the area. 50 years ago, solar could only power a calculator. Now it can power a mobile phone. Well, it can provide almost 1/10th of 1% of the power for a mobile phone, anyway.
What alternative energy needs isn't MORE of the same fail, but some different thinking, primarily getting rid of the preoccupation with turning light into electricity. Solar works great for heating. The sun is a million degree
Not knocking comm. college, but code, the vocabula (Score:2)
> Don't knock a community college education. It's not always a bad thing. A lot of it depends on the student, too. There are undoubtedly people that took those same courses and got nothing out of it.
I'm not knocking community college at all. In fact, I work on non-university courses for a living.
This is my point: ...
> But most of my useful course load was relational database design, low-level systems courses
So everything but the vocabulary aka code courses. You apparently learned at least little syst
HUH? (Score:2, Funny)
"I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel;"
What next? Flying unicorn cloning?
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What next? Flying unicorn cloning?
Reasonable level of Federal debt. Hah! Yes, flying unicorns are much more likely.
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Perhaps you are unaware that the US is currently spending nearly 5 billion dollars in discovering new ways to use photosynthesis to produce and deliver new fuel mixes. There are a lot of jobs that are currently supported by that 5 billion. Because only a tiny fraction of available sunlight has been harvested for this purpose, there is far more than 5 billion to be made in the future. This will be a good investment and a good career move for many. Certainly, a lot better than investing in more tax cuts f
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Certainly, a lot better than investing in more tax cuts for billionaires.
Alternatively, billionaires could be using their money left over after tax to invest in new technologies, and actually do it intelligently as they are trying to make money instead of political points.
Train the trainer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow.
Never thought I'd see a day where POTUS would have a technical leg up on every judge presiding over the fate of coders.
When is National Train the Trainer day going to hit the calendar? Might as well, since training is being pushed this hard.
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Wow.
>
Is it just me or does this mean the market for coders has topped out? It's like the "Time magazine cover indicator" for the stock market: When you see a cover that says "Stocks, how high can they go!", sell! When the cover says, "Stocks, no hope in sight...", buy!
With all of the political people talking about coding, it must be sign of some sort of market top in the industry. I also think it's true that coding is for people who like it for it's own sake, not just because someone says "that's where the jobs
Here's why this is a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I teach Computer Information Systems at a community college, which includes some programming courses (C++, Java, JavaScript & PHP w/MySQL, etc.), and some non-programming courses on general computer use. When I teach a programming course, I teach it with the idea that the students I have need to be competent in order to succeed when they move on to a 4 year college. What ends up happening is about 1/3 will stop coming to class after about the first few weeks of school--just long enough to not have their Pell Grants and other financial taken away. Then they go off to party/play video games/whatever. About another 1/2 will struggle, complain that there's too much homework, that the homework is too hard, but they either don't post messages on the course message board, or they do it the evening before the homework's due. They also tend to skip class if they didn't get the homework done. Then about 1/6 excel in the course. They show up every time, do most of the homework, and try to assist other students who are struggling.
I've been teaching for 5 years now and this has been a consistent pattern. The first & last groups are typically composed of traditional students, and the middle one is mostly non-traditional students. I think the reason why NT students struggle so much is because they're shuttled into CS/CIS but have no technical background. They're told "go into computers, that's where all the jobs are", then they take the classes & struggle. I try to accommodate them as best I can, but there's only so much hand-holding you can do.
So basically from my anecdotal experience, you're going to be pissing away money on about 5/6ths of the students you're sending into the field. The number of successes may increase when this program kicks into gear, but that's not really going to be a good indication. "Why's that?" you ask. The answer is simple: There will be more smart students at community colleges who probably would have gone to a better 4-year school if community college wasn't "free".
I want to see everyone have as much success as possible, but the truth is, some students would be better suited for going straight into the job market rather than go to college. Most of the students in the lower 1/3 I mentioned previously either lack the intelligence, (but mostly) the maturity, or both.
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I'm in the same position, work in academic technology but teach as an adjunct - Linux Admin I and II, and a PHP+MySQL class.
I can generally guess at success levels by how curious a student is about how stuff works, whether they want to work ahead, or try to figure out what tool would work to solve a problem they've been thinking about.
And like you I have had student that thought since they spend 10 hours a day online on facebook, playing WoW, etc. that they should be "in computers" for a living. I've also
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So if I understand your argument correctly. We would be better off firing you to save money because you are incapable of stimulating or teaching 5/6th of your class to do better?
No, you don't understand my argument at all. Rather it sounds like you're purposely being obtuse about the whole matter, and your opinions are tainted by class envy rather than concern for the individuals. You aren't doing anyone a favor trying to force them to be something they don't want to be simply because it makes you feel good.
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The college I work for is in the same town as a major state university. The CompSci program at said university has *one* programming class (in Java) as part of the degree track, simply to let students demonstrate the principles they are learning in all of the other classes.
A kinda big software dev place recently moved to town, thinking they'd grab all of these CompSci grads and have a built in supply of capable coders. After a few months of interviews, they came to our college president, worked with our
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You are comparing students who clearly are there just to get the credit for whatever reason and not pursuing CompSci as a degree to students who are majoring in it. Presumably people who want to learn to code are not just there to show up and retain their Pell grants. I am reading this as a false equivalence logical fallacy. It's also a very negative perspective on the untapped potential of today's youth.
Nobody takes my Java course who *isn't* a Computer Science or Computer Information System major. I don't have business or English lit majors taking my courses. I know this because I have them fill out a survey on the first day, so no, it's not a false equivalence fallacy. But if I were you, I'd have a look at a different fallacy [wikipedia.org] before constructing my arguments.
Hilarious (Score:2)
Most kids don't understand the odds of their becoming a pro ball player. All they see is the dump trucks of cash we give them and the lifestyle they get to live because of it. Couple that with t
Oh, great... (Score:2)
coding considered "trade school" in 1970s (Score:2)
So do we go full circle again? Coding is now a trade for CCs? It may be important to distinguish coding, software engineering and computer science. I know some great academics
Protecting the one planet we've got (Score:2)
Read this for what it is... (Score:2)
The end game comes shortly.
Either the US figures out that wealth and income need to be spread more widely so that more demand is created and business grows because of that, rather than via ever more convoluted and harsh predatory financial and business behavior targeted upon their customers and the rest of the world, or it is toast.
That is all.
Well... (Score:2)
According to Wikipedia, he's hanging around the Episcopal Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley, AZ. You might be able to dig him up there!
Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week! Tip your servers. Try the veal!
Yay! More coders! (Score:2)
Better to teach people to "program"? (Score:2)
Let's teach more Americans to code.
Everybody and his dog who happens to be an Excel whiz or a Word macro expert is arguably a coder. As are a lot of people who call themselves programmers. Do we want more of that skillset? Or do we want more people who can take a longer, more structured, project-oriented view and who write maintainable, extensible programs? I'm asking the question in all seriousness.
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( BSN average salary is in the ~$70,000 range I believe )
The pay is decent enough, but a fraction of what a MD makes.
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It looks like US BSN are higher paid than their UK counterparts.
US doctors and nurses are paid about 50% higher than OECD equivalents even after adjusting for cost of living.
When governments are more involved in the medical field, they have the power to reduce salaries.
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Much higher (my ex-wife has a BSN, and pulled in $75k/yr in 2005 while working at a VA Medical Center in Utah... she made so much more than I did at the time, I could have qualified for alimony payments if I were female...)
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In the UK its a common myth that doctors have it better than nurses.
It might be that way once you get to the upper echelon of doctors, such as surgeons, consultants etc, but for the bulk nurses have it much better.
Nurses have protected breaks, doctors are required to respond to calls regardless of what they are doing - which means you have 2 minutes to eat a meal in.
Nurses have protected working time limits, doctors do not and can work up to 75 hours a week (the EU Working Time Directive was supposed to cur
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with over time and some specialties like anesthesia a nurse can make in the $120,000 range which is like top 10% of all income earners. but generic nurses aren't that well paid anymore because so many people went into the field in the last decade
Re:Is nursing high-paying? (Score:5, Informative)
I would expect anyone who wielded a Masters Degree in any meaningful field of study to have similar wages.
Most places are looking for BSN's these days at a minimum. You can still find jobs for LVN's and RN's, but most are transitioning to the BSN. ( Bachelor Degrees ) So if you want a career in Nursing, ( not that I expect many here on Slashdot will ) figure on doing the BSN program.
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You have to be VERY smart. I watched my other half go through Nursing school and the material / coursework is no joke. Your Science-Fu better be way up there. Especially Biology, Anatomy, Micro-Biology and Chemistry.
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No. Not in my experience. The nurse will just happily go along with what they are told to do because many of them simply aren't that bright or talented. Some aren't even particularly diligent.
If you are someone that is likely to be harmed by more trivial examples of medical malpractice, then you have to fend for yourself.
Beyond that, what will likely protect you from the medical profession is mind numbing levels of procedure control and oversight.
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Lest we forget what this country was founded upon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
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President Obama's arrogance and lawlessness is unprecedented in that office.
It's cute how wrong you are. :3
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Watch as the GOP and their ilk will generate countless efforts to belittle the President's efforts at job creation here. They must in order to mask the reality that they offer nothing substantive as an alternative other than more tax breaks and benefits for the already wealthy. The modern GOP represents the debt holders, who want to hold the US economy hostage to their dictates and insure that the bulk of other's labors benefit the "job creators", but not the people actually doing the work.
You could see i
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Watch as the GOP and their ilk will generate countless efforts to belittle the President's efforts at job creation here.
Why not - they have already taken credit for the improving economy.
Where the hell is Barry Goldwater when you need him?
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infowars
Let's see... space ships... [illegal] aliens... complaining against the government... OK, I see what you did there.
Well, I did expect you to figure it out. You even caught an angle I hadn't thought of. But we're all here to learn.
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you've obviously never taken any time to research and come up with an original thought, let alone research anything to substantiate the trash you repeat from far right-wing nutbags
It's OK honey. Calm down or you'll blow a gasket. Let's pick one claim and substantiate it, shall we? In my post (on which you heaped such opprobrium), I claimed that Obama previously said he would lack legal authority to change immigration law on his own as president. Here's a source that doesn't fit the category of "right-wing nutbags" that claims the same, with quotes and links:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/dec/05/michael-mccaul/michael-mccaul-says-obama-said-over-20-times-he-la/ [politifact.com]
Re:Bull pucky (Score:5, Informative)
You've gotten the cause and effect reversed.
Tuitions being increased led to the creation of the federal student loan program, not the other way around.
Tuition went up because the majority of colleges are state schools.
And State schools used to have low or almost non existent tuition because they were primarily supported by state taxes, NOT TUITION.
In the same past 20 years (actually goes further, to 30 or 40, around the same time the voodoo economics of trickle down theory started being pushed) as states started being taken over by the GOP, they reduced their budgets and therefore number of things supported by state funds. One of which was state colleges.
That's why tuitions went up.
They had to.
It had nothing to do with "the federal teat". You try to make an anti-government point, the actual reality of the situation was that tuitions were low BECAUSE OF (state) GOVERNMENT, and tax support. Tuitions had to go up in response to that funding being reduced or even cut off.
There are other factors that have come into play since (it's not a static picture, but a dynamic one), but the original reason that
Re:Bull pucky (Score:4, Interesting)
"Time to run screaming in the opposite direction."
Yeah, right into the hands of privatized education and diploma mills that are generating the most student debt.
That's the beauty of the President's plan. It asks for those who already are doing well to give something back so that deserving students can go to community college at virtually no cost.
I would rather see loopholes for "good will", "forward carry", "depletion allowances" and preferential tax credits for owning "rolling stock" eliminated, but since the GOP isn't going to do this, the only viable option is to ask those who make $500,000 per year to pay the same rates they did under Ronald Reagan.
Why should guys like Mitt Romney only get to pay 13% on his annual income in tax, while the rest of us pay 28% or more?
Why do so many advocate more tax breaks for Mitt Romney and less to educate average Americans?
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Why should guys like Mitt Romney only get to pay 13% on his annual income in tax
You should be aware that for tax year 2014, the maximum capital gains tax rate is now 23.8%. Romney was only paying 13% effective tax rate when the capital gains tax maxed out at 15%.
Of course Romeny paid millions in taxes, which is more than you ever will.
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The wealthy pay more then their fair share. As does the middle class. Your mortgage interest that you write off on your taxes is considered a tax break. That interest money is gone out of your pocket one way or another. Either to the Govt (fed, state, local) or to an item that is then calculated as a tax break (charity, mortgage, business expense, etc).
This may be more of an over simplification of the process, but it is what it is. The reality is people are the problem. Stop complaining and trying to fight
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That's the way it started. It's only recently that the Ivory Tower types have gotten pretentious about the situation.
Very few people, even "rich" people, can spend money without considering what they are going to get for that.