Announcement: Technical Support Officer Required. Responsibilities: answering customer calls, assistance in loading and unloading. Requirement: higher education, work experience of 5 years in a similar position.

Exaggerate a little. But what does higher education mean when applied to IT? Of course, a graduate of MIT or Berkley with a specialization in Computer Science is really cool.

... but we're talking about Russia, right? Sales manager with a diploma in marine navigation, financial director with a thesis in organic chemistry, linguist-system administrator ...

However, no, not a linguist. Applied Mathematics and Physics. Department of fluid dynamics. The Navier-Stokes equation, cutting force diagrams ... This is very important information when we start discussing the features of the guest system core in a paravirtualized environment. Well, or, at least, poking around in the Python code, having fun with pieces of functional programming.

Why does an IT specialist need a higher education? Why does an IT specialist need some kind of higher education (that is, why does the tick “there is at least some high school”)?

I heard several arguments, and none of them suited me.

So, the arguments from the devil's lawyer:

1. Higher education is a mandatory requirement for employment, resumes without high education are not considered in large companies
2. Higher education shows that a person can achieve his goals, he has the ability to learn complex and useless things, there is perseverance
3. Higher education broadens the mind, provides the foundation
4. Higher education teaches a person to learn

Note, not a single argument that comes down to "they will teach you what you need in your work." I could not reject this argument - and he would convince me. But I remember the institute single, timid subjects, somehow related to computers. I remember the old lecturer on the subject of "computer software." I remember how insanely boring he was in his lectures, and how long he mumbled about “four is empty” in the code on Fortran. In the first year, I already knew all this. And nobody told me what I did not know (yes, this abyss) - and I had to read it myself.

So, consider the argument. To be convincing, I will parse the arguments in reverse order.

Higher education teaches a person to learn

It is assumed that a person who is able to study philosophy, the history of Russia, pass the test in physical education, tear through matanalysis and learn how to derive the formula for the boundary layer of ideal fluid will easily learn new things. But a person who, instead of studying the types of torque loads and profiles of load-bearing beams, tinkering in the Linux kernel in his spare time, is absolutely not capable of this. I find it difficult to refute the first part of the thesis, but I strongly disagree with the second. A person can study what is interesting to him. What is really needed is what concerns him. And do not cram the calculation of the convergence of the Runge-Kutta method of the 6th order. Learning is in no way connected with the learning process at the institute. Moreover, existing training programs are strictly contrary to how you have to learn something in IT.

There are several learning methods in IT:

1. RTFM
2. dig into sources / scratches
3. do it yourself

If the first method is like reading textbooks, then the second two are not at all. Reading the finished documentation (which someone has already written!) Is the simplest of the methods (consumption of the finished in a convenient form for consumption). It often turns out that you need to research the phenomenon yourself, to collect information from disparate sources. This is not taught at the institute. Thus, I can not say that studying at the institute teaches to study. Rather, it teaches to cram and believe what is written. Which is sometimes fatal.

Higher education broadens the mind

Of course, chapters on general relativity will give us a huge broadening of our horizons ... in the field of general relativity. Do you often use GR in IT? Vision - the design is so ephemeral that to talk about it as an important factor in the work, and to say that it directly depends on the institute ... The main thing is 5 years. 5 years to expand horizons. Maybe it’s better to sit and watch TV on TV for 5 years? And that also expands. And also in non-adjacent areas of IT.

Higher education shows learnability and perseverance

I can not object. Of course, the "nerd", having learned the textbook on anatomy by heart, has a high ability to memorize by heart. And the one who for 5 years went to Saturday lectures on philosophy at 8:30 without delay, of course, will punctually come to work.

Excellent characteristics for the clerk, for the secretary, for ... well, I don’t know for whom, but not for the IT specialist. The world of computers is either interesting or not. If not, cramming is useless. It needs to breathe, it needs to live, it must be absorbed into the blood, like a native language. Then there will be understanding. If a computer is an alien environment in which a dictionary is understood (by rote learning by heart), then no skills and any persistence will produce results.

In other words, I do not accept this argument, as applied to IT.

And finally, the last argument.

Higher education is the way to work in a Serious Company

... in a Serious Company that only hires people with Higher Education.

I’ll ask you a question: do you really want to work in a company that appreciates your tapeworm diploma, and not your knowledge of database replication? Do you really think that in such a company you will have an IT-career (not to be confused with the IT-director) career? What will you have the freedom to choose a solution, the freedom to study and implement? If she is there, then why is your future boss (department head) choosing people for himself at the direction of HR, and not according to real skills?

Total

What is read at institutes in computer science is pulled to the maximum level of vocational schools in computer science. Otherwise, a piece of paper from the institute is only a relic of the Soviet era and a waste of time in the present. Yes, like a piece of paper, it has power for people who bow before this piece of paper. But this is a ritual, tradition and regulation. There is no evidence of professional skills in it, and getting this paper does not give anything to your professional skills.

And all the arguments for are reduced to one thing - how much the rituals and their observance mean in our lives.

Probably, somewhere there are separate cafers and institutes that really teach computer science (uh ... since we translate it into Russian?), Who do not try to reduce everything to communication theory, electrical engineering, nonlinear circuits, computational and discrete mathematics ( related subjects, very useful and respectable, but not at all as comprehensive as we would like from a specialized education).

But so far I see that there is no higher education in our area, in the field of computers. And his palliatives in the form of “at least some high school for a tick in the CV” are fiction, profanity and wasted in empty time.