TITLE: A Few Thoughts on Graduation Day
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 09, 2015  9:28 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Today is graduation day for the Class of 2015 at my university.  CS
students head out into the world, most with a job in hand or nearly
so, ready to apply their hard-earned knowledge and skills to all
variety of problems.  It's an exciting time for them.

This week also brought two other events that have me thinking about
the world in which my students my will live and the ways in which we
have prepared them.  First, on Thursday, the Technology Association
of Iowa organized
<A HREF="http://techtownhall.tumblr.com/post/118451066936/tech-town-hall-takeaways-cedar-valley">
   a #TechTownHall</A>
on campus, where the discussion centered on creating and retaining
a pool of educated people to participate in, and help grow, the
local tech sector.  I'm a little concerned that the TAI blog says
that "A major topic was curriculum and preparing students to provide
immediate value to technology employers upon graduation."  That's
not what universities do best.  But then, that is often what
employers want and need.

Second, over the last two mornings, I read James Fallows's classic
<A HREF="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1985/12/the-case-against-credentialism/308286/">
   The Case Against Credentialism</A>,
from the archives of <EM>The Atlantic</EM>.
Fallows gives a detailed account of the "professionalization" of many
lines of work in the US and the role that credentials, most prominently
university degrees, have played in the movement.  He concludes that our
current approach is biased heavily toward evaluating the "inputs" to
the system, such as early success in school and other demonstrations of
talent while young, rather than assessing the outputs, namely, how well
people actually perform after earning their credentials.

Two passages toward the end stood out for me.  In one, Fallows wonders
if our professionalized society creates the wrong kind of incentives
for young people:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 An entrepreneurial society is like a game of draw poker; you
 take a lot of chances, because you're rarely dealt a pat hand
 and you never know exactly what you have to beat.  A
 professionalized society is more like blackjack, and getting
 a degree is like being dealt nineteen.  You could try for
 more, but why?
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Keep in mind that this article appeared in 1985.  Entrepreneurship
has taken a much bigger share of the public conversation since then,
especially in the teach world.  Still, most students graduating from
college these days are likely thinking of ways to convert their
nineteens into steady careers, not ways to risk it all on the next
Amazon or &Uuml;ber.

Then this quote from "Steven Ballmer, a twenty-nine-year-old
vice-president of Microsoft", on how the company looked for new
employees:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 We go to colleges not so much because we give a damn about the
 credential but because it's hard to find other places where you
 have large concentrations of smart people and somebody will
 arrange the interviews for you.  But we also have a lot of
 walk-on talent.  We're looking for programming talent, and the
 degree is in no way, shape, or form very important.  We ask
 them to send us a program they've written that they're proud
 of.  One of our superstars here is a guy who literally walked
 in off the street.  We talked him out of going to college and
 he's been here ever since.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Who would have guessed in 1985 the visibility and impact that
Ballmer would have over the next twenty years?  Microsoft has since
evolved from the entrepreneurial upstart to the staid behemoth, and
now is trying to reposition itself as an important player in the
new world of start-ups and mobile technology.

Attentive readers of this blog may recall that I fantasize
occasionally about throwing off the shackles of the modern university,
which grow more restrictive every year as the university takes on more
of the attributes of corporate and government bureaucracy.  In
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2014-03.html#e2014-03-08T10_18_16.htm">
   one of my fantasies</A>,
I organize a new kind of preparatory school for prospective software
developers, one with a more modern view of learning to program but
also an attention to developing the whole person.  That might not
satisfy corporate America's need for credentials, but it may well
prepare students better for a world that needs poker players as much
as it needs blackjack players.  But where would the students come
from?

So, on a cloudy graduation day, I think about Fallows's suggestion
that more focused vocational training is what many grads need, about
the real value of a liberal university education to both students and
society, and about how we can best prepare CS students participate to
in the world.  It is a world that needs not only their technical skills
but also their understanding of what tech can and cannot do.  As a
society, we need them to take a prominent role in civic and political
discourse.

One final note on the Fallows piece.  It is a bit long, dragging a bit
in the middle like a college research paper, but opens and closes
strongly.  With a little skimming through parts of less interest, it
is worth a read.  Thanks to
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/marick">
   Brian Marick</A>
for the recommendation.
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