Bill Rowell » Education http://www.billrowell.com Welcome To My World Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:27:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Paying for College http://www.billrowell.com/2007/06/26/paying-for-college/ http://www.billrowell.com/2007/06/26/paying-for-college/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:59:19 +0000 Bill http://www.billrowell.com/2007/06/26/paying-for-college/ I’ve noticed on television lately (the little that I actually do watch) that there are an increasingly number of advertisements for college loans. When I was in college, you got a loan through the school, the government, or Sallie Mae. Now, you can get one from pretty much anywhere. The latest one I saw from Chase. Another I saw the other day from a company I didn’t recognize. What I’m wondering is in this day and age of borrowing until you’re blue in the face, have things gone to far? Do credit companies really need to target people with NO income at all to make a buck? I realize college is getting more and more expensive (for what reason I’m not sure), and with Sallie Mae recently being bought out, are college students going to get a raw deal? Back when I finished school (only 7 years ago), I had classmates who graduated with $50,000 in debt, which I thought was incredible. Now, it looks like students (non-med students that is) will graduate with potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

It seems to me that someone needs to take a hard look at the state of affording a college education. My guess is that less and less kids will go to college (that is if someone educates them that at some point, being $300,000 in debt is insane) because they can’t afford it. And I’m not talking about inner city kids or minorities, I’m talking your regular good to do, got good grades students. At some point we, as a community, need to say enough is enough and we aren’t going to pay for this stuff.

]]> http://www.billrowell.com/2007/06/26/paying-for-college/feed/ 0 What Did You Really Learn In College? http://www.billrowell.com/2007/03/08/what-did-you-really-learn-in-college/ http://www.billrowell.com/2007/03/08/what-did-you-really-learn-in-college/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:40:53 +0000 Bill http://www.billrowell.com/2007/03/08/what-did-you-really-learn-in-college/ Do you ever think back to your college education where you were supposedly learning the basics on how to be a good software developer (or Computer Scientist in my case)? Think of all of those math courses (Differential Equations, yuck), those theoretical courses, etc. etc. Well, now that I’ve been out of college for almost 7 years, I can say that I definitely got a quality education for my $120,000. I can say that degree I have looks really pretty on my wall. And I can also say that college exposed me to my start in writing software applications, mostly UNIX console applications. Last but not least, that degree got me a job that I’m lucky to not have been without since I got that degree.

But what did I really learn that was useful on a daily basis? Basically, I learned how to program and learned a lot of useful things that could be applied to writing effective and efficient software systems. But did I really learn how to be an effective software developer.

I really don’t think I became an effective software developer until I had been out of college for about 3-4 years. There are principals that I wish that I had been exposed to earlier. Being a Computer Science major, I suppose I was learning all the tools it would take to do any job in the computer field from being an IT guy to working with artificial intelligence. What I probably really needed was a degree in Software Engineering.

]]> http://www.billrowell.com/2007/03/08/what-did-you-really-learn-in-college/feed/ 1