College degree a useful tool for computer geeks

Do the people who work in the computer industry really need college degrees? That's a question which was aired online in an article in Salon Magazine recently (www.salon.com) and drew down responses in various forums across the Net from others who make a living thinking and writing about technology. But the question also enlivened discussion groups and message boards as well. Many seemed to sense that the question was not a straightforward one, and had hidden levels of implication.

The operative word in the question is that verb, "need". And the way in which you are likely to respond to the question depends on how you define it. If you see it as implying a possible relationship between having been given a certain kind of training and the likelihood that one will be offered a job only if one has that level of training, then your answer will certainly be "no". As always in this industry, a wide range of training programmes can prepare people for computer industry work.

Indeed, the degree programmes from Ireland's two most prominent universities, Trinity College and University College Dublin, don't seem to bestow any particular air of desirability onto its graduates. In the annual technology sector jobs survey produced by Dublin employment agency CSR, employers opted first for graduates of the State's institutes of technology, with UCD and TCD further down the list.

Additionally, the computer industry is full of programmers who are entirely self-taught. Perhaps it's more precise to say that it is practically a badge of distinction in geekdom to be one of those who always found a thrill in circuit boards and manuals and tinkering and writing code, far from academe. Some legendary names in computing history took the self-taught route, from Microsoft's Bill Gates to Apple's Steve Jobs (both of whom also dropped out of the university degree courses they began). But think about that question again. If "need" is defined as an expression of desire for qualities the computing industry should, and increasingly must have, then yes, people need college degrees. Or rather, they need not the degrees themselves, but what they stand for.

Because the question is really a kind of shorthand. In the US, a college degree means that a student has been required to study a broad range of subjects in addition to the subject in which a degree is taken. For example, a computer science student in a four-year university course would spend roughly a third of his or her time taking courses to satisfy so-called "breadth" requirements - in arts, history, and other areas of the sciences. In other words, there is almost no way a computer science student can avoid an encounter with Shakespeare.

That's a good thing. Because computing is no longer about men in white coats in hidden laboratories. Computing, especially since the arrival of the Net is about day-to-day life. How people design computers and the programs that run on them, and how people decide computers can be used to provide services, affects all of us.

People in computing shape not just the world we live in right now but the one we are going to live in tomorrow. And thus, computing people, perhaps increasingly more than those in many other sectors, need to know about and be able to grapple intelligently with that world. That doesn't necessarily require a college degree, of course, but the rigour of an academic environment and the simple fact that most students discover whole new areas of interest because they were initially forced to investigate them through some course or another argues on behalf of the structured, college approach.

Those big names that have excelled without having formal degree training are not exceptions - they just have the ability to pursue and absorb subjects outside their own immediate interests on their own. Take Mr Gates and Mr Jobs - both famously possess formidable minds that take in broad interests outside the realm of computing. So yes, people do need degrees, or the wider intellectual framework that, in the best cases, comes with them, whether classroom- or self-taught. When so much depends on these thinking machines, we need deeply human people to work with them. People who, because they can think broadly and in multiple contexts, can understand the possibilities and the threats and the limitations of the silicon mind.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie