Being a developer in a position far removed from academia, I am often confronted with the question of whether my university degree was worth the effort or not. Or to put it more mildly: would I be where I am today without it. I usually arrive at the same conclusion: yes, it was definitely worth it for me. And here is an important thing to keep in mind about higher education: it is what you make it out to be.
Anecdotally, I know both sides of the education opinion spectrum very well. When I was growing up, higher education was the most important thing in the world, and people that did not go through university were frowned upon. I have also often heard the song of how companies hunger for computer science graduates, and how good it is to have a Master’s degree and not “just” a Bachelor’s degree.
On the other hand, I have met many people that told me that education is a waste of time. I also know at least a handful of professional developers that are self-taught and some of them wear that as a badge of honor — sometimes also dismissing education outright and calling it useless.
I reject the mentality of both these extremes, and at least statistics like the 2017 Stack Overflow Survey seem to indicate that the industry as a whole has a more nuanced view of education. According to the survey, 76.5% of all professional developers have a Bachelor’s degree or higher which means that roughly one out of every four professional developers do not have a formal education. At the same time, 32% (almost a third of all developers) respond that education is not very important, but most of the responses are grouped around the middle with education being “somewhat important”.
Education or not, neither is right or wrong, and I think it is important to have a balanced view of this. However, I do not want to dismiss the feelings involved here. I would be lying if I said it did not affect me when I was a mid-twenties graduate without professional experience, and I saw much younger self-taught programmers with better business opportunities than myself. But then I realize that they probably did not build a neural network for image classification by hand, nor did they have the opportunity to discuss computer ethics with like-minded peers. And those things gave me immense joy. Likewise, I can sympathize with feelings of the opposite, although it would be disingenuous of me to presume what those feelings are.
The outcome in both cases is the same: it is easy to feel doubt and resentment. From my point of view, this comes in the shape of “why the hell did I waste time in university”, and “how come they got by without a degree?”. When these feelings emerge, they have to be put to rest quickly, because they are not helpful, and most importantly, they are missing the point.
Because in the end, when it comes to professional development, like many other parts of life, there is no right or wrong path to take. Higher education is not a measure of success, but it should not be dismissed either. University can be a tremendously rewarding experience, and the outcome is what you make of it, if you want it.
… and let’s not forget the parties…
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash.