Why? The stated purpose of a degree is to educate a person in field of study, the culmination of which is a piece of paper that is suppose to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
Work experience can convey that same level of knowledge, thus the purpose of an experience based degree would be to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.
A software engineering degree is an academic degree, not a vocational certificate.
Look at this syllabus for a 4-year degree in software engineering. [0] It's broadly similar to what we'd expect of a computer science degree. Topics include:
• Computer architecture
• Compilers
• Computer graphics
• Cryptography
• Deep learning
• Software verification
The average self-taught web developer has a working knowledge of none of these fields.
First I never said anything about web development...
That said then there is a clear disconnect between employment, and degree's
Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
That is the the point of my comment, often time people feel required to spend 10's or 100's of thousands on a degree for the sole purpose of attaining employment as a software developer.
If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
You said software development. Self-taught software developers are very often web developers.
> Employers often are requiring these "software engineering" degree's for basic level software development, and /or web development
Suppose you're right that employers place undue emphasis on academic achievement compared to on-the-job software development experience. This would not be addressed by handing out honorary degrees wholesale.
> If they are being educated in a way that does not prepare them for that job then the degree is less than worthless, and it an out right scam
If it lets them start a software development career, it's not a waste.
Also, again, a degree in computer science is not a vocational course like a coding boot camp, it's an academic qualification. The goal is to impart a basic knowledge of a scientific field.
In my experience software engineering degrees tend to be essentially computer science degrees but with a slightly different emphasis. Of course, both are more applicable to software development than, say, a degree in biology.
Some degrees have limited non-academic application, such as philosophy, and some have non-academic application but with only very few jobs available, such as forensics. If I recall correctly, computer science and software engineering are among the top degree topics measured by average financial payoff.
Well there needs to be some kind of sea change, and my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements.
most people are entering university for vocational reasons, not academic achievement. The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
The push by universities to extract as much (often tax payer funded) money pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education seems to if not the core, pretty close to the core of the problem we face with on this topic.
The idea of experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
> my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements
Again, it's no solution. Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees.
> The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.
Plenty of people study philosophy, despite having little direct applicability outside academia. That's not to say they're wasting their time and money.
> pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education
Do you mean to say there's a shortage of institutions that offer vocational training?
I'm confident you're right that they get less government funding.
> experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement
Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Vocational degrees exist, awarded by institutions which are not universities, but if I understand correctly they generally have little traction. This might not be true of every country though.
>>Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees
I disgree, it is purely a checkbox for many organizations, a way to filter out people. Provided the degree is accredited it would resolve the primary issue I have with the current state of employment requirements
>>Plenty of people study philosophy
that was not my comment or statement, I am sure there are "plenty" but for more than 20 years now High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities themselves has been telling students that path to vocational success is via the university system, and a 4 year degree program. Are you attempting to deny this reality?
>>Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.
Then High Schools, parents, employers, the government, and the universities need to stop selling the idea of vocational achievement via 4 year Academic study.
At some point perception becomes reality, and decades of selling Academia as de facto vocational study to the masses, has cut out and reduced actual vocational programs almost entirely from the educational landscape to the point that most K-12 schools do not even have vocational programs, it is General Education or College Prep, those are the 2 tracks, with Extreme pressure on students to go for the College Prep track.
Certainly not in any standardized way. The variance between what someone does in one software development job vs another is just too high to be a good signal of any particular knowledge.
Work experience can be difficult to evaluate, especially since most companies have no incentive to cooperate with the degree granting institution. In addition to the process consuming company resources, there may be sensitive business knowledge they don't want revealed. There's also the issue of turnover making knowledge of an employee's experience with the company very limited. Same for human memory decay or simply others in the company not knowing what the person was doing, even if it was valuable.
While I can agree with that, I fail to see how this does not also apply to collegiate based education.
Having interviewed several recent graduates the level of knowledge shown is not on par with what I would expect, it seems from my personal experience that college is more of an attendance standard than educational standards, what years ago we would call diploma mills, pay the fee, attend the class, get the degree, seems to the wider state of the "higher" education system today
This to me simply means we're failing with educational standards. Which, well, we probably are. At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
There's merit to the idea of awarding a college degree if you can pass all the assessment, without necessarily taking the classes, but that's a different thing again. Ideally, college should be about introducing theory and reasoning which gives a solid understanding of the field in a highly focused manner that an employer almost certainly won't provide. I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Another comment in this thread seems to have hit on one of the problems, Universities are focused not on vocational education, which is the reason most people attend university , and what most employers expect when they demand a degree from their employee's. Instead universities are focused on "academic qualification" which may have limited to no real world vocational value .
>At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.
I 100% agree with this, I know a few "experienced" people that are not really experienced, which is why I did not simply state that one should automatically attain this experienced based degree simply on chronological paid experience but rather experience + something else
Someone bought up WGU's method of crediting some life experience, that is a good start but I don't think WGU's program goes far enough but it is on the right path, and I which more institutions would start doing more things like them.
>I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).
Again I agree here, some fields may lend themselves to an actual degree program, Doctors for example. I think my ideal society would be less than 30% of jobs requiring a post secondary education degree, the vast majority of employment should be encompassed by regular primary / secondary (k-12) education, and maybe direct vocational training (paid by employers)
Instead we pushed the narrative the most jobs need post secondary education or to be successful one must get a degree.
Allowing for experienced based degree's , IMO would start to open other avenues and maybe start a shift in human resources to start looking at other things that just a check mark for "has degree" true or false
Of course the extreme cost of education, and the debt crisis is also doing that slowly
Work experience can convey that same level of knowledge, thus the purpose of an experience based degree would be to signify to society that you have attained a set level of knowledge in a field of study.