Is It Better to Go to a University to Learn Basic Coding?

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Sally Kohn: I think there are two related ideas here that maybe we're mingling together. How is the balance changing in terms of going to a university to learn it versus trying to self teach it and get involved in open source projects, et cetera? And the second is, how do we fit ideas from programming data science related fields into sort of broader curricula because now more and more of the world involves programming and data?"Kohn: It's important to have more than one basic kind of skill that you can then take out and say, this is one I'm going to use for my career. Careers are changing. We know people are going to be bouncing

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Why are colleges and universities valuable to societies? Why does formal post-secondary education seem unnecessary for some fields like programming, where a person can learn everything they need from internet resources? Do universities have a monopoly on credentials? If so, is that monopoly warranted and desirable, or does it stifle innovation and reduce competition? Why have tuition costs been skyrocketing over the past few decades? How does the quantity and quality of university research compare to military and private research? Are universities too political? Should the humanities still be taught in universities? How must colleges and universities evolve to keep pace with technological and economic change?

Nicholas Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences, is an internationally renowned historian and anthropologist. He leads the Academy in promoting science-based solutions to world challenges, including pandemics and global warming. His work at the Academy facilitates the dissemination of scientific information, supports broad access to science education, studies counter bias in academia and the laboratory, and supports scientists across all stages of their careers. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has taught at UC Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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