While I agree that determined idiots always got through, with more barriers idiots were more likely to run out of the time, money and persistence to get through. And if they did, you could look at their choice of major to get a clue as to whether they were capable.
The problem today is that people with technical looking degrees like Computer Science cannot be expected to possess technical abilities or skills. | [reply] |
It might also be worth noting that Computer Science is not the same as programming or software development.
Some CompSci majors do manage to learn to develop software. But, that does not appear to be the goal of many Computer Science programs.
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I'm fully aware that computer science is not the same as programming or software development. But if you have a computer science degree and cannot tell me the big-O performance of a double loop to intersect two lists, we have a problem. If you cannot come up with ideas to perform the same operation more efficiently, we have a bigger problem.
Every computer science curriculum that I've seen has a Data Structures and Algorithms course in the core curriculum. I honestly cannot think of an easier algorithm efficiency question I could ask. If you can't handle that question, you shouldn't pass that course. But I'd say that at least half of the computer science graduates that I interview can't come up with a reasonable answer to that question.
(Open ended questions are even worse. "What is a class?" Guaranteed disaster.)
Sure, they may have been learning lots of other things in their classes. But to my eyes giving people with holes like this CS degrees is equivalent to graduating math majors who are unable to solve a basic related rates question.
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