
Hey, Computer Scientists Stop Hating on the Humanities - kiyanwang
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hey-computer-scientists-stop-hating-humanities/
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tchaffee
I wonder what could actually trigger this to happen? If companies are just
going to choose the best software engineers they can afford in order to
compete, why would universities have any market pressure to make an ethics
course mandatory? I do like the idea, I just don't see the path there.

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sn9
Universities have a higher calling than responding to market pressures.
Teaching students to ethically evaluate more aspects of their lives is
certainly an aspect of this calling.

If you want vocational training (and there's nothing wrong with that), go to a
code boot camp. If you want an education, go to a university.

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tchaffee
The front page of HN has an article about Harvard Business School that claims
the opposite of what you are saying. And in my own personal experience in the
business world over the past few decades I've seen no evidence that university
graduates leave with better understanding of ethics. In my own schooling, the
focus was on learning computer science and little else. So while this "higher
calling" might exist in theory I have serious doubts it exists anywhere in
reality.

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sn9
Business schools have always been on the more vocational end of the spectrum.

And that there exist many universities that fall short of some ideal of the
university education isn't really an argument against the ideal. I'd argue
that this is what happens when universities respond to market pressures.

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tchaffee
You do realize most of the people running big corporations came out of elite
business schools? I like the ideal. My entire point was that universities
_are_ responding to market pressures so at least we agree that is happening.

