As an IT professional undertaking postgrad studies, I’ve always found university academics to be frustrating , ignorant and grossly misinformed. I can’t speak for other disciplines, but I think it’s a fundamental problem with tertiary education in IT: undergrad students spend a fortune to be taught by people that are so completely removed from reality and current practice, that they have spend the first two years of professional employment unlearning the garbage that
they’ve been taught and trying to build an understanding what IT is *really* about.
The case in point:
I recently sat an end of semester exam for a subject called Database Management. One of the questions in the exam read (and I don’t quote this so as avoid breaking the examination rules)…
Fill in the blanks:
A database is a collection of ____________ ___________ data.
I can think of five completely valid ways of completing this sentence without even trying…
* A database is a collection of organised searchable data.
* A database is a collection of stored accessible data.
* A database is a collection of related factual data.
* A database is a collelction of schemas containing data.
* A database is a collection of persistant quantifiable data.
I could probably come up with 30 more answers given a few minutes to think. I’ve got no idea whether the answer I gave is going to be correct, largely because I suspect the lecturer is looking for a copy-paste reponse from the subject text - and that sucks arse. As an IT professional, I’ve been working with databases for close to 10 years. I’ve probably spent more time using databases than person teaching the subject. Yet, because I couldn’t recall a verbatum definition from a second-rate text book, I’m probably going to miss marks on this question. And that really shits me off.
Thinking about this further, I’ve formed two hypotheses as what is happening here:
(1) The lecturer setting the exam is so completely lazy that he/she simply copy-pasted a definition of “database” from the subject text and a expects reguritatated copy-pasted answer.
(2) The lecturer is so caught up in their own fucking semantic drivel the he/she genuinely thinks being able to quote a definition of “a database” from a book written by some equally inept moron, is going to be useful to me.
I’m yet to decide which so these I think is more true, but the clincher in all this being, that in subject called ‘Database Management’, I haven’t had been required to do anything with database - not even write a single line of SQL! I’m astounded trying to comprehend how anyone can truely define a database without ever using one. Though, ignorance being bliss and all, the lecturer doesn’t lose any sleep thinking about the poor quality graduates they’re unleashing on the industry every year.
In either case, it’s a poor reflection on the quality of the education I receiving - on which I’m spending some serious cash - thank fuck I can define “database” without a text book.
