Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!pdn!reggie
From: reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: What is CS? (Was re First languages)
Message-ID: <2793@pdn.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 88 11:59:06 GMT
References: <3684@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <568@abcom.ATT.COM> <612@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <4871@ecsvax.UUCP> <643@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Reply-To: reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach)
Organization: Paradyne Corporation,   Largo FL
Lines: 25

In article <643@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> jefu@pawl17.pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam) writes:

>My experience has been that a great part of the students in american
>higher education have a reasonable depth of specialized knowledge by
>the time they leave college and are almost completely ignorant outside
>their fields.  There are reasons for this and they are good ones given
>the current cultural situation.  One is certainly that universities
>are acting as vocational schools ............


     I completely agree!  Certainly one is not exposed to a wide enough
spectrum of knowledge in high school.  The undergraduate program should
meet this need.  I still remember complaining about my first two years
of undergraduate work in an engineering curriculum, where I only encountered
two CS courses.  What do I need calculus, physics, chemistry, etc... for???
Upon entering college my *only* interest was in computers.  That is not a
healthy attitude when one considers that I was never exposed to many other 
fields  prior to coming to this decision.  Thank God I was required to minor
in another field, albeit an engineering or science field :-)

-- 
George W. Leach					Paradyne Corporation
{gatech,rutgers,attmail}!codas!pdn!reggie	Mail stop LF-207
Phone: (813) 530-2376				P.O. Box 2826
						Largo, FL  34649-2826