Quote:Original post by staticVoid2
is it? how important is a degree in the games industry, to be honest I think I would learn more studying from home, and now that I have started uni (between that and work) I don't get one day off a week. how many people here have gone or are going to a university? is it a waste of time?

Well, out of the ~20 programmers at my company, every single one of the has a degree. Realize that getting a degree means a lot more than "learning how to make games". It shows that you have the fortitude to stick with something for four years, it offers you the chance to make connections, and it makes it a lot easier to learn a breadth of subjects that you'd probably overlook with personal studies.

You have to be a pretty hot shit programmer for someone to look at you if you don't have a degree. Oh, and don't expect your degree to actually make it past any HR departments, so you're going to be limited to only working with the little guys. Working with the little guys isn't necessarily a bad thing (I do), but you certainly won't find yourself working for pretty well any AAA companies. Not until you have at least a few years of professional experience, anyways.

Quote:Original post by janta
University isn't only about studying, it's an absolute must-have life experience, don't miss it if you ca, seriously. I've been out from it since 3 years now and I really miss the good old days, sometimes ;) It's the best time to have parties, meet people, etc. University should be the best time of your life, rather than a waste!

No, this is a major problem with our education system right now, the fact that *everyone* should go to university, and that most people view university as a "life experience" rather than a means to education.

There are quite a few "professional" jobs that, at this time, require university degrees as conditions for hiring. However, the actual job duties often don't require specialized knowledge that couldn't be learned on the job or deduced by a reasonably intelligent person. The degree has become a "white collar union card". So, we have an entire generation of workers who have saddled themselves with needless debt.

The "life experience" aspect is not only flawed, it's pushing people who don't even have a specific purpose for going to university into university. What experiences in university do you have that you can't have outside of university? But because people think going to university is something they have to do as rite of passage, they go without a clearly defined purpose and only declare a major at the last minute.

Because so little emphasis is put on the actual education a person is supposed to receive at a university, a large number of people aren't using it as part of their selection criteria for a university. They're going deeply into debt to be able to attend expensive, private institutions for their prestige to study low salary potential subjects like social services.

Students suffocate under tens of thousands in loans.

Quote:
Tom Dillon, 19, a pre-pharmacy major at the University of Connecticut, is carrying $52,000 in student loans. And he's just getting started. When he gets his pharmacy doctorate in four years, he expects his debt to exceed $150,000. Dillon's been drawn to pharmacy since age 5, when he found out he had epilepsy.
"The first person who helped me was my pharmacist," he says. Dillon, who no longer has epilepsy, would like to go into pharmaceutical research. But he knows he'd earn more money as a pharmacist for one of the big drugstore chains.
...
And the cost of that debt is about to rise. On July 1 [2006], the rate on new federally guaranteed student loans will hit a fixed 6.8%, the highest rate since 2001. It comes as the average graduate owes $19,000. Many undergrads, though, have debt exceeding $40,000.

Granted, being a pharmacist pays a little better than being a welder, but when you have $150,000 in debt that you expect to pay off over the next 30 years, that's going to end up being a monthly payment of over $1,000. What does your projected earning potential have to be making loan payments as if you had bought a house, on top of the house you actually bought?

Quote:Original post by _dagarach

Quote:Original post by staticVoid2
is it? how important is a degree in the games industry, to be honest I think I would learn more studying from home, and now that I have started uni (between that and work) I don't get one day off a week. how many people here have gone or are going to a university? is it a waste of time?

Right now, you are probably right that you would learn more studying alone, but that's because no one learns anything in the first week of the first term of the first year. If the classes aren't "This is what we will be learning this term..." they are a gentle warm up to get everyone up to the same base level.

Maybe not next week, maybe not even this term, but soon, your eyes will be opened to the power of university education.

There is nothing that one does in university from an education standpoint that one cannot do on their own time. However, most people need their hand held through the process. They are incapable of setting their own goals and seeing them through. Most people live on autopilot, and therefore need a university in order to get on the right conveyor belt towards a more comfortable life.

Lifes a waste of time. Its just a matter of how you waste it :P