[Edu-sig] Low Enrollments - programming as anit-intellectualism.

[Arthur]

A business trip had me passing through New Haven.  As a lover of books, and
therefore bookstores, I took the opportunity to stop to look for a bookstore
near the Yale campus - figuring I would find a bookstore with significantly
more depth than those to which I normally have access.

I was right.

I will make this short.  

Without a question (IMO) - the least interesting section of the bookstore
was the Computer area.  Hundreds of how-tos on the commercial technologies
currently hot. The end.

Nothing worth talking about that precedes the current hot technologies - one
would conclude from the book selection. 

Why would anyone spend $40,000 a year to study how-tos of technologies that
will be obsolete by the time they are 30 - if not before.  

Its not even in the running as something worth considering.

I am no more an intellectual than I am a comedian. But give me a good
stand-up, or a facile, learned mind to try to follow and digest.

Programming as an academic subject area is *way*, *way* off track  - to the
extent my little browse of yesterday was indicative of anything - which I do
believe it was.  

Art