I was taking 12 credits of advanced (not really) programming classes during my last semester of college (online). I had to quit my job to be able to do the work, and I was still pulling all-nighters nearly every day. I told my C++ professor that taking 12 credits, the minimum required to be full-time, shouldn’t require me to lose so much sleep, especially when I am not working. He said that I shouldn’t be taking 4 advanced courses in a semester and should have went part-time or taken a couple of lower level classes (yeah, so I can waste more time and lose more money, and I had no choice but to take these classes because the way I had to do my schedule for each semester to be able to satisfy prerequisites), even though it was a community college and the courses were Advanced C++, Java, Python, and Data Structures (which in retrospect those courses would be pretty basic compared to university level courses). So much content was repeated, and I had relearn git 4 times even though it was treated as an afterthought and should have been its own course. The issue was that there was an overabundance of work in each class that could have been reduced while still providing the same quality of learning (which was dogshit). So many assignments had contradictory instructions. Most of the online courses were very poorly thrown together in Blackboard, which is a very clunky interface that is not easy to navigate. I wish colleges used an online tool with a better interface, something similar to Coursera. I hated one professor so much because she was the laziest one I ever had, and unfortunately she was the only one doing Data Structures, which means I had to deal with her twice (the first class was C#, and she made me just hate the language because of her shitty course). She gave an assignment with no lesson, and I had to go figure out what the lesson was about without any help. After an assignment was done, she refused to give feedback on where I made mistakes because she considered it cheating. What’s the point of doing college if I just have to teach myself anyways? For the last and more difficult data structures we had to learn, we were given very little instruction, and I was lucky to get away with just refactoring examples I found online and in books to make it look like I wasn’t cheating. I mentioned this to a student during graduation, and apparently that’s what she expected students to do when he went to her office for help. Someday, I am going to need to go back and relearn these data structures because I barely learned them and wasn’t given enough time and help to study them during the course.

The professors were often working in another job and doing online courses part-time, and various others were retired or were just really shit in the industry, so often we were taught bad practices in programming. My C++ instructor even suggested that it was a good idea to write down in a text document of a project of all the changes people did…in a git repository…which is the entire point of the VCS, ffs. One student ended up ranting in the discussion forum about it, and the professor didn’t say anything. Sadly, this was one of my better professors.

Often professors would take feedback from students, and the only way they would try to resolve issues is by creating more assignments and more help groups that no student has time to attend. I believe most courses could have been reworked to be less language specific (like data structures) and focus on teaching important courses in a language agnostic manner. Then for language specific features, those courses could still reduce their workload greatly by improving the examples for assignments and still reducing the amount of work required. I spent most of the time trying to research the lessons on my own, decipher the confusing instructions provided by the professors (sometimes needing to accept that a solution was not possible or just something really stupid or really stretching the actual meaning of the instructions and receive a lower grade for the assignment), arguing with professors, and just doing a bunch of fluff work for overly massive assignments for a simple topic. Any feedback students give for specific issues almost never gets applied, so the students in the following semester get to deal with the same issues.

I mean, I guess in the end it wouldn’t matter, since the degree you get is only going to get you a job below what you studied for, if you’re lucky. Having a two-year degree in (essentially) Computer Science just gives me a shitty IT contract job, and that was difficult to acquire alone. All the all-nighters I pulled, all the car accidents I nearly missed due to lack of sleep, and all the years of my life lost amounted to this, ugh.

And the sad thing is, I see this pattern with every college, even ASU, which declares itself as a prestigious school, meanwhile they can’t even get the time right for my enrollment coach appointment. The level of incompetence in every college is utterly astounding. I have read many ASU online class horror stories and complaints on reddit, and the same can be said for other colleges. At least I am more prepared for the online college bullshit.

If you want to go the self-education route, bursts in laughter and cries, good luck. If you’re lucky to get a job through self-education, you’re still treated like a third class citizen when you try to work for other companies like AMD, which flat out does not accept anyone without a degree regardless of experience. You want to move to another country? Good luck doing so without a degree, let alone without a doctorate’s degree or a shitton of money. As much as I rather self-educate myself in Electrical Engineering using better materials I can find online or through highly recommended books and various other materials, it’s safer for me to still do college (as long as I get enough scholarships and hopefully my mom’s settlement will be able to cover the rest, which is sad that such funds have to pay for basic but exorbitant human necessities (school, housing, etc.)).