I recently read an article about the US having a relatively weak occupational training.
To contrast, CH and GER are known to have very robust and regulated apprenticeship programs. Meaning you start working at a much earlier age (16) and go to vocational school at the same time for about 4 years. This path is then supported with all kinds of educational stepping stones later down the line.
There are many software developers who went that route in CH for example, starting with an application development apprenticeship, then getting to technical college in their mid 20's and so on.
I think this model has a lot of advantages. University is for kids who like school and the academic approach to learning. Apprenticeships plus further education or an autodidactic path then casts a much broader net, where you learn practical skills much earlier.
There are several advantages and disadvantages of both paths. In summary I think the academic path provides deeper CS knowledge which can be a force multiplier. The apprenticeship path leads to earlier high productivity and pragmatism.
My opinion is that in combination, both being strongly supported paths, creates more opportunities for people and strengthens the economy as a whole.
I know about this system, but I am not convinced it can work in such a dynamic field as software. When tools change all the time, you need strong fundamentals to stay afloat - which is what universities provide.
Vocational training focusing on immediate fit for the market is great for companies that want to extract maximal immediate value from labour for minimal cost, but longer term is not good for engineers themselves.
A formal apprenticeship still includes academic training - either one or two days a week at college, or longer blocks spread throughout the year. I can't speak for software engineers, but the mechanical engineers I know that have finished a German apprenticeship have a very rigorous theoretical background.
I actually think it work fairly well, if it wasn't regulated.
Eg a company like Google (or similar) could probably offer you better on the job vocational training than going to uni would do to teach anyone programming.
do most people know country codes to the degree that they know CH is Switzerland? as feedback, i found this added an unnecessary extra layer of opacity to this comment
I like how the smallest Eurocentrism is greeted with the wagging finger to be inclusive on hackernews, while the expectation is that 50 state acronyms are well understood by any reader from Lazio, Lorraine, or Thuringia ;)
This is an english language forum, so I think quite naturally an acronym in a different language is less interpretable to english speakers globally.
GER isn’t even a valid country code so it compounds the confusion, if we are going to make a fake three-letter country code for Germany derived from English, why not do the same for significantly more obscure Switzerland?
To contrast, CH and GER are known to have very robust and regulated apprenticeship programs. Meaning you start working at a much earlier age (16) and go to vocational school at the same time for about 4 years. This path is then supported with all kinds of educational stepping stones later down the line.
There are many software developers who went that route in CH for example, starting with an application development apprenticeship, then getting to technical college in their mid 20's and so on.
I think this model has a lot of advantages. University is for kids who like school and the academic approach to learning. Apprenticeships plus further education or an autodidactic path then casts a much broader net, where you learn practical skills much earlier.
There are several advantages and disadvantages of both paths. In summary I think the academic path provides deeper CS knowledge which can be a force multiplier. The apprenticeship path leads to earlier high productivity and pragmatism.
My opinion is that in combination, both being strongly supported paths, creates more opportunities for people and strengthens the economy as a whole.