Interesting couple of articles on why education system is failing to produce good software engineers. US focused, but based on my experience being involved in local recruiting much of this article is familiar.
Basically present day economics has shifted a Universities primary goal from teaching skills that ready students for employment, to offering courses that attract the maximum number of enrollments (particularly high paying foreign ones), this is achieved by dumbing down the courses and removing the unattractive hard bits (which appeal to employers).
I’m to saying this is true of all universities, but when you don your CSI hat you can see that the a Uni has strong financial motive to attract students and get enrolments up, and significantly less reward to meet the needs of the software development industry (regardless of field).
Here is my 2c, if you are passionate to get into the games industry, given the expense of a degree, I think your time would be better spent teaching yourself the skills from the wealth of online resources and free (or discounted) personal use products, just my personal opinion, but some a lot of the best and most talented games dev’s I have met have been self taught. That said, I know AIE and Quantm have a good hit rate but they are specialists.
So if you are considering investing in Uni as a way to get into games, it would be to asking how many of their grads got real jobs in the industry, and for a kicker ask to talk to one of them.
1. Axon Wed, 23 Jan 2008
Gov't policies (lack of funding and increasing financial focus) and low student numbers (lack of pre-requisite skills & marks together with a general lack of interest) are also hurting unis. Unis in times past was focussed on preparation of the next big thinkers. The training of the doers was once the role of the vocational learning institutions. Now that distinction is blurred as economic rationalism makes its mark.
Unis increasingly have project topics where a motivated student of Games can flex their creative talents and create portfolio material.
Times are changing. Tech now moves too quick to expect academics who aren't practitioners to keep up and always teach what is at the cutting edge. Yet the cutting edge isn't necessarily the stuff best learnt. It's the ability to roll out relevant tech and architect real-time systems which, as I understand it, are key to a SWEng's survival and potency in a GDev context?
From my experience in a Computer Science course uni's aren't on the cutting edge of technology, I'd say about a year or two behind, which can be quite a few years when you complete your course. However if you're lucky you do get a useful foundation to build upon. You're not going to get everything you need from your degree, so it's up to you to do research and practice in your own time. Usually a degree isn't enough to get a job in the games industry anyway, unless it gives you the ability to create a few nice portfolio pieces (which you could do at home anyway). If you were hiring for a position and two people turned up with the same marks from the same course, how would you decide between them? To show stuff you've done outside of uni shows passion, it shows imagination outside the constraints of a uni, it shows you're not just regurgitating the coursework.
Also the cost, if you buy a book for uni you'll generally go through a bit more than half of it, but if you buy it for your own benefit you'll probably go through the whole thing without the cost of a lecturer telling you to read the book. If I had my time again I'd go straight into QA from high school and work on my own projects in my spare time to move into another games position. If I'd thought about it while I was still at high school I would work on projects while still there and hopefully be able to use them to get my desired games job straight from there. Some people might be able to persuade their parents to support them while they work on their portfolio to get in... lucky buggers. But no, knowing what I know now I'd probably give the uni's a miss. Cost/Benefit just isn't high enough... and it seems the cost is getting higher and the benefit is getting lower. Kinda like the way Connex works =0).
Absolutely. I can say from past experience: Avoid QUT like the plague. This isn't to say other places are better though. I just haven't been to them.
The best game coders I know don't have a degree, and some of the worst coders have lots of academic qualifications. I have one but I consider myself an average programmer. Degree != Skill.
James Maguire's article is about CS programs not being rigorous enough. The point is that you *need* much more than what a Uni degree will provide.
When you talk to Unis don't just ask how many graduates entered the industry, also ask where those students are 5 years from graduation. Getting a job in the games industry is great, but university degree equips you to handle not just your first job, but for lifelong learning.
Some of UTS students have been hired at Animal Logic. Some programmers and artists already working in games industry have come back to UTS to get masters degrees. These were all exceptional students, exceptionally motivated and hard-working students. At the end of the day, you have to carve your own path and a Uni degree might help open some doors along the way.
Yusuf
You're right about Uni's opening doors Yusuf. I have made a lot of great contacts through my former uni, and have been asked to come back and speak there several times, which means I get to meet others who've been asked to come back and can expand my network. Which brings me to a very important point: another aspect to getting a job in the games industry, and pretty much any industry, is the people you have in your social and business network. It can be simplified to "It's who you know". Getting to know people in the industry can be a great help if you're trying to break in, and networking events like Dissecta and Game Connect are great examples of places you can meet people in the industry. You're definitely more likely to hire the guy you know, even if it's vaguely, than the guy you don't know, and you're twice as likely to hire the guy you enjoyed a drink with at this event or another. I know for a fact that better people have missed out on a position because someone's friend in the company has applied for the job, this is not always the case, but it happens. It's quite valid to get angry about things like that happening, but it does happen, so it's best to learn from it.