[mulcahey]

Few thoughts

1) The subreddit of my alma mater has been full of posts venting anxiety, depression, trouble with financial aid, trouble making friends, frustration with administration, etc for years now, exacerbated by COVID. While that may not be representative of the whole undergrad population, I can't help but be reminded of Thiel's line from Zero to One "Why are we doing this to ourselves?"

2) I'm now seeing not only friends without bachelors degrees get well-paying CS jobs with "engineer" titles & equity comp, but even some in mechanical engineering!

3) When I was in undergrad, half of my upper div classes were so abysmal that I figured the staff who cared enough to keep the enterprise going were fighting a losing battle. A complete rewrite would be better than an in place one. "Death is the best invention of life" and we should try the creative destruction of capitalism/evolution instead of holding the oldest institutions in the highest regard.

I don't have much of a clue what the future will look like by the time I have kids of college age, but I do not think particularly highly of what we've got now.

[moab]

These kind of prognostications /opinions are easily falsifiable by talking to your coworkers that went to other universities. Most of the top-25 schools have upper-div CS classes that are nothing like what you're taking about, with both faculty and TAs putting in enormous effort to make sure that courses are accessible and intellectually stimulating.

[mulcahey]

I went to a top 25 CS school. Half my upper div lectures had ~5% attendance.