Re: My Computer Science and Engineering Degree taught zero practical skills
Mine wasn't as "impractical" as that (although the programming that we did do, did perhaps focus a little too much on near-metal-banging (pointers, malloc, etc) in C, which are things I have never needed to worry about since, as they are dealt with lower down the software stack (although I certainly do acknowledge that we do need at least some people with those skills in order to write, and optimise, those lower parts of the stack).
But, unfortuntately, much of the "theoretical stuff" mainly seemed to be indulgence of the academics' pet areas of research, and rarely anything which gets any real-world use (eg, lambda calculus) or was more than a passing fad (at least a couple of unpleasant courses whose content I have now entirely forgotten).
To be perfectly honest, I think I have learned far more from the web (yes, including various Wikimedia sites, with pinches of salt duly applied), forums, well-written official documentation (yes, it does sometimes exist!), and the O'Reilly menagerie, than I ever did from my first university degree.
The university undergrad experience should really be more about a love of learning in general, learning how to transition into an adult, making new friends and networks, undertaking new experiences, and broadening your worldview.
Unfortunately, coming from a deathly-uninspiring smalltown background, after many years of teachers' strikes (where the teachers' "work to rule" neglected the unwritten part of their mission to help their students grow and blossom as well, unfairly hurting those who had no part in their battle), and then to a university that turned out to be rather more homogenous in its student cohort than the prospectus had implied (so that most of us had all had the same stunted childhoods (but of course were unable to realise that at the time)), meant that it wasn't quite the full experience that it should have been.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
