Earn While You Learn: The CS Degree That Pays You Back
This is a very interesting idea: https://devdegree.ca/. You get an accredited 4 year CS degree from a legit university while working at a company and getting paid. Students spend 25hr/wk at the company and rest in studies. This arrangement can make possible one cool thing.. 1/n
I have wondered: Why shouldn’t everyone always be enrolled in some studies, accumulating degrees all of their lives? There are so many interesting things to know and learn! I’d like micro/mini-degrees in cooking, gardening, nutrition, astronomy, relativity, music theory, … 2/n
geology, paleontology, botany, organic chemistry, molecular biology, protein synthesis, genetics, quantum computing, industrial mfg, supply chain, macroeconomics, glass blowing, woodworking, pottery science, telescope making, chip design, metallurgy, neuroscience,… 3/n
And this is not even including languages, various sub-fields in CS, ML, robotics, computer vision.
Why shouldn’t we always be learning something new and interesting? All this knowledge and cool stuff accumulated over thousands of years standing right in front of us! 4/n
Making these a formal studies is much better than MOOCs or browsing YouTube videos because it induces structure, interaction with experts, guarantees on what you would learn, adds motivation, collaboration with other students, check on time, tests, measurements, improvement. 5/n
I can imagine the future, perhaps 100 yrs down the line, where our collective bandwidth frees up, may be just 3 day work week. Our actions then would be purely be driven by curiosity to know ourselves and nature as opposed to finding job, make money and satisfy basic needs. 6/n
Many, if not everyone, would then be enrolled in a formal study for most of their lives. Surfing from one micro/mini/full degree to another. Learning shouldn’t be just first ~20 years just so we can find a job but a life long journey towards satisfying our own curiosity. 7/n
One project is Life-long Kindergarten project @medialab. There is a lot needs to be done. Current academic format is towards punishing as opposed to encouraging, competing as opposed to experiencing, be done with fast as opposed explore longer. How would future look like? 8/8