“LOOKING FOR (IT PEOPLE) IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES”

I wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal at the end of August in response to a technology entrepreneur who decided that computer science education at the college level is a failure because the people he hired, or tried to hire, in those fields from Harvard and the like didn’t work out.  He decided that he would look for people without degrees for such work.  While I can sympathize with people’s frustration at the quality of graduates some of our colleges are producing, I suggested a less radical path than eschewing college grads altogether.   You can probably guess where I directed him.

The letter was published a few days ago (Wednesday, 9/9/15).  In case you missed it, I have reproduced it below:

 

8/29/15

Dan Gelernter says the he is not looking to hire computer science majors because CS “education is a failure” and “Computer science departments prepare their students for academic or research careers and spurn jobs that actually pay money.”  (Opinion, 8/29-8/30/15)  To fortify his argument, he cites the failings of computer science programs at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, of all places.

While I agree, to some extent, with Mr. Gelernter’s lament, perhaps he is looking in the wrong places.  If he would expand his search for CS candidates beyond the Ivy League cocoon from which he emerged (Yale, 2010) and look to places like Illinois, Purdue, Iowa, and Iowa State, he would find candidates who have been prepared, and are eager, for jobs “that pay actual money.”

There is a world out there beyond the Ivy League…thank God!

Mark Quinn
Naperville, IL