alt Hacker NewsAt one university I went to, the head of the CS department was quoted as saying "[We don't need to care about the job market,] Our job is to create researchers."
I thought that was pretty strange at the time because like 5% of the students end up going into research. So that was basically like him saying I'm totally cool with our educational program being misaligned for 95% percent of our customers...
Maybe it makes sense for the big picture though. If all the breakthroughs come from those 5%, it might benefit everyone to optimize for them. (I don't expect they would have called the program particularly optimized either though ;)
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> I don't expect [the 5% of students who end up going into research] would have called the program particularly optimized either
This. I went to the University of Iowa in the aughts. My experience was that because they didn't cover a lot of the same material in this MIT Missing Semester 2026 list, a lot of the classes went poorly. They had trouble moving students through the material on the syllabus because most students would trip over these kinds of computing basics that are necessary to experiment with the DS+A theory via actual programming. And the department neither added a prereq that covers these basics or nor incorporated them into other courses's syllabi. Instead, they kept trying what wasn't working: having a huge gap between the nominal material and what the average student actually got (but somehow kept going on to the next course). I don't think it did any service to anyone. They could have taken time to actually help most students understand the basics, they could have actually proceeded at a quicker pace through the theoretical material more for the students who actually did understand the basics, they could have ensured their degree actually was a mark of quality in the job market, etc.
It's nice that someone at MIT is recognizing this and putting together this material. The name and about page suggest though it's not something the department has long recognized and uncontroversially integrated into the program (perhaps as an intro class you can test out of), which is still weird.
Probably one of those thoughts you should self-filter (and the alumni association sure wishes you would).
But it's also the case that (only half-joking) a lot of faculty at research universities regard most undergrads as an inconvenience at best.
In some schools they have a separate degree program in informatics or computer technology, for precisely this reason -- computer science is a different field.
They like to say things like that or some version of "we want to teach the concepts, the specific technology changes too fast". Does it? Just seems lazy to me.
Historically, the point of a university is not to be a jobs training program.
Well you can say there is a difference between "computer science" and "software engineering", plus many "universities" are particularly research focused.
A chemistry, physics, or even MechE BS is coming out only at the very beginning of their training, and will require lots of specific on-the-job training if they go into industry. School is about the principles of the field and how to think critically / experimentally. E.g. software debugging requires an understanding of hypothesis testing and isolation before the details of specific tech ever come into play. This is easy to take for granted because many people have that skill naturally, others need to be trained and still never quite get it.
Edit: of course if only 5% of grads are going on to research then maybe the department is confused. A lot of prestigious schools market themselves as research institutions and advertise the undergrad research opportunities etc. If you choose to go there then you know what you're getting into.