On 10/13/20 11:56 AM, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote: As evidenced in many areas. For example, a DMA degree does not guarantee one a performing gig. It may not even guarantee a teaching gig. I know of a few engineers who went back to school after getting a DMA in order to find a regular paying job. Indeed, when I was a young man, almost nobody in my department had a degree in Computer Science. It lent a great deal of variety to the work environment. --Chuck

On 10/13/20 12:25 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote: An apology--I forgot to elaborate: DMA = Doctor of Musical Arts. One can get such a degree from a university without having much real talent...but the same can be said of many fields of study. I once worked with an EE who was a secret Juilliard grad in piano. I didn't know he could play--and neither did any of his friends--or his wife. He didn't eve own a piano. We didn't find out until there was a party at one of my co-workers. One of those affairs where booze flows freely and musical instruments are scattered about for anyone who would like to perform or accompany someone. These were all computer people. Said fellow observed me noodling around on the ivories mangling some ragtime piece. He was pretty soused and sat down next to me and asked if there was anything that I'd like to hear him play. I suggested the Bach Goldberg variations in jest. He tore right off on them, from the aria to the quodlibet, not even pausing to recall. His wife was beside herself and nearly in shock. He never discussed it again. --Chuck

On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 at 21:17, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: I see comments like in this thread a lot, and I have also looked over some modern uni papers and they look straight forward to me. I only have a BSc and I have PhD envy, and occasionally idly considered "dropping out" from work and doing a Master's and a PhD over here in Czechia. Then I unexpectedly had a daughter, at 52, and it's no longer an option. But the thing is -- over here in the former communist bloc, people are even keener on education and degrees than back in the West. (I had to bring my degree certificate to prove I had one!) Study is free or very cheap and not time-limited; I know of people who have been at uni for over a decade. *But* saying that, I taught English for a year or so over here, and 2 of my students were also full-time uni students. One was studying English, because she wanted to be a TEFL teacher. It was her 3rd attempt at a degree. Another did physics, dropped out, then did maths, dropped out, then did computer science, and dropped out. The real core point of a degree, I feel, is that it shows that you can pick a subject, knuckle down, study it for several years, subject yourself to the stress of exams and theses and so on, and _keep doing it until you have one_. This is _not_ an idle threat. I personally know smart, motivated people who just did not have that degree of self-control and self-discipline. I also have a friend with quite severe ADHD who has a good history degree. He has _very little_ self-control and a butterfly mind, but the point is, he knew he needed it so he got his head down and did it. So, yes, they _do_ seem easier now than when I did mine in the late 1980s, but they are still hard and still take a long time and they _do_ select people -- or *deselect* people. And as for the "soft" studies, the oft-mocked arts and so on... well, I had friends at Uni who did maths or comp-sci, and some were _startlingly_ ignorant of the world around them, because _all_ they knew was maths. I had a close friend -- who still is, nearly 40y later -- who did English. He had a laughable lecture load of an hour or 90min a week, and moved to a house 30 miles and a couple of hours' travel away. But the amount of reading he was expected to do was extremely intimidating. I'm a speed-reader; I did most of the optional reading for all my courses, including my Eng Lit "high school" course. ('A'-level, for the English.) My friend did about 10x more than that or more. Consistently several long dense books a week for 3 years, holidays/vacation included. Not trivial at all! And long after, I befriended 2 young chaps via a wonderful organization I was extremely peripherally involved in founding and running -- Skeptics in the Pub. These guys were friends of each other regarded as a bit of a joke. I learned something from them. I was wrong. They're both very smart, and their knowledge and erudition was astonishing. Far far more than my English-degree olding friend, who even now in his 50s is an unworldly ingenue. Alex and Jonathan had a good solid grasp of world communications and affairs going back 50 years -- they could, for instance, pick up subsconscious references or quotations or paraphrases from minor TV series that I watched decades before they were born, and not only that, tell me who acted in, wrote and directed it. They knew science communications, good and bad, and how it should be done, and the problems, and the core stuff that it needed. They knew print fiction and poetry and song and theatre and classic and modern painting and sculpture and so on. The point I took away from this is that *if* you're genuinely interested and *if* you genuinely work on this kind of study, it _is_ very much real, valid and important, and the resultant knowledge and understanding are profound and valid and useful. In our current world of "fake news" and biased reporting and politicians cuddled up with media conglomerates, of foreign nations using paid posters on social networks to influence social opinions, of people inserting falsehoods into online references, inventing scare stories and spreading them online, all this sort of thing -- people who _know_ and truly understand and can dissect and if needed manipulate "The Media" are essential. So, yes, I no longer mock the "soft sciences" and the liberal arts and humanities as much as I did. I've come to see it's not an easy or lightweight option, it's hard and it's arguably important and certainly worthwhile. Yes, true, smart students can coast through. But that's OK -- one, they're smart anyway; two, being smart isn't enough, you need some of what my mother would call "stick-to-it-iveness" and that's not a universal quality. We need a balanced selection of subjects and studies. There's nothing I'd particularly cut, although perhaps some things are more important to fund well than others. But I really would like to see more mandatory cross-disciplinary studies. I did biology (meaning a rather intense mixture of botany, zoology, ecology, biochemistry, and both plant and animal anatomy and physiology) but I also took computer programming and management studies. I studied 23 hours per week (3x5h days, 1x8h day) and consistently had a weekday off. I really could have handled more, and I think I should have been pushed to do that. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 at 00:19, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Fair! Both. This may be tricky in a country where I do not usefully speak the language -- but if we get through the newest pandemic outbreak and out the other side next year some time, when Ada is a little older, it's worth investigating. Thanks for the encouragement. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

I like learning. Partly it's the good influence of my late father, and I said so in my eulogy. I keep learning new programming languages, for one thing. :-) And I like learning strange stuff. Some years ago I bought a text book about writing systems and read it with great pleasure. Some years earlier a textbook about (human) languages and their relationship ("The world's major languages", Bernard Comrie, Ed. -- VERY good). There are lots of ways to keep your mind exercised. That's true. Studying the language is one example of "learning" you could undertake. I remember a teleconference with an Indian colleague some years ago. He had to drop off early because he was going off to Hebrew class -- he had recently joined our team in Tel Aviv. paul

Fun stuff and memories. When I was at UMBC in 1986 I was kicked off the Vax 8600's for writing funny scripts that would run in the batch queues and resubmit between the systems when they completed. Net result was seriously elevated rights, baffled sysadmins, and a hilarious crash when they were killed improperly. Things happen. Off to Essex Community College and their IBM mainframe for me!!! Left college completely a year or so later because I kind of needed to eat, but fortunately I was also worked on the Vax 785 which was connected to this ArpaNet thing. The 8600's were on Bitnet. That knowledge got me 25 or so years of amazing work, friends, family, kids, and community. Finally I figured I would go back and finish an AS at Essex Community College (since I could claim that tuition tax credit too). They still had my old credits and 2 years of part time got me a degree in CS. Then I found you could transfer into U of M. And they had totally forgotten about the Vax thing (a funny story that I'll tell in person). So I spent 2 years doing that and finished my degree at 48. Not because I needed it, but because why not.... I guess you could say I gave up trying for it a long time ago, but I never quite gave up hope. It can be done. CZ