XPost: uk.politics.misc 
 From: anw@cuboid.co.uk 
  
 On 20/10/2019 09:54, tim... wrote: 
 >> In the same way that, apparently, you see explaining nursing 
 >> as relatively trivial, 
 > I made no such claim 
 >> or at least not suitable for a degree? 
 > Nor did I claim that 
  
  From "": 
  
    " But I don't believe that Nurses should have a university "education" 
    " anyway, training on the job is so much better for everyone " 
  
 Was that a different "tim..."?  Or do you believe that degrees can be 
 obtained without a university education? 
  
 > Stop putting words into my mouth. 
 > I said that it is sufficient (and IMHO better) for training to be 
 > based around on the job learning, not 100% in the classroom 
  
  That's not what you said, see above.  I also pointed out in 
 an earlier article that nursing [and many other] degrees include a 
 component of on-the-job training.  You would be hard put these days 
 to find any degree course in STEM subjects that is "100% in the 
 classroom". 
  
 [...] 
 > A one year course just wouldn't be respected by employers, even 
 > though it is more than adequate. 
  
  A one-year [full-time] course leads to a Certificate, and a 
 two-year course to a Diploma, in both cases on successful completion. 
 Note that these are included in Mr Blair's notorious 50% target, and 
 account for a substantial part of the increased uptake of HE over the 
 past 20 years or so.  If employers want degrees rather than diplomas 
 or certificates, that's their privilege;  my experience is that very 
 few want or expect particular knowledge from their new employees, 
 rather they want generic knowledge and skills in things like using 
 a library, writing reports, team-work, and so on.  We repeatedly 
 pressed employers on this;  and the uniform response was that they 
 were perfectly happy with whatever we chose to teach as long as we 
 gave them intelligent and flexible graduates.  Of course, there was 
 an inbuilt assumption that what we chose to teach was sensible;  but 
 they trusted us on that. 
  
 >> [...]  You have 
 >> to decide whether it's more useful for a student intending to go 
 >> into commercial computing to learn about the innards of operating 
 >> systems, compilers, electronics, Turing machines, ... or about 
 >> business, accounting, law .... 
 > It is important to leant about the inside of the machine to get the 
 > best programming solutions in may environments. 
  
  Sometimes it is;  mostly it isn't;  and whatever you learn 
 about the inside of the machine is likely to be obsolete within less 
 than a decade.  So, again, it's a balance.  There isn't time in a 
 three- or four-year degree course to cover everything, so you have 
 to decide what is most important.  My own view is that for a large 
 majority of students, a joint-honours degree in CS + some other 
 relevant discipline is more use than a course solely in CS. 
  
 -- 
 Andy Walker, 
 Nottingham. 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)