Worth going to University?

Along my 3 years in Brazil, I've been confronted to a strange question. Since these last days someone told me he stopped University for a while, I've then been thinking a bit more about this question which seems frequent here in Brazil (at least in computer science field) : Is it worth going to University?

For a european guy like me, this question seems obvious. Indeed, if you are not graduated, you probably won't find any job. Not impossible but almost. It means that you won't even enter in the market place.

Nonetheless, here in Brazil, it is not obvious at all since a lot of people are working while at University. It's not that simple of course and we'll dive in it deeper in the rest of this post but I do think that it is the very first reason why this question might be raised so frequently here in Brazil.

I've read some posts from brazilian guys like Akita, Paulino Michelazzo and Guilherme Chapiewski. The two first speak specifically about Universities while Guilherme opened a bit the conversation including certifications. While I think these posts are each one of interest and worth reading, I would like to contribute a bit and give my opinion as well - with a bit of personal and european spice in it ;).

First, let's see what are we talking about. When we are speaking of diplomas and certifications, we must take into account three main components/agents :

1. Institutions giving you the diplomas/certifications,
2. The one receiving them,
3. Institutions to which it benefits. Indeed, you are going to University for a specific mean, right? (We could extend to "what purpose?" but then it would be too general for this blog post).

I think that separating and analyzing each of these agents will help us to scratch the surface of this interesting question and maybe - to be seen as some kind of hope - helping a bit the individual in doubt in his decision making process.

About the Institutions giving the Diplomas / Certifications

What does that mean having graduate from University?

It means that you've been implied in some defined learning process (generally defined country by country - In Europe, they are trying to harmonize the overall) and you've been evaluated by some other processes (changing from one professor to another).

If you graduated, it means the evaluation has been positive overall. These evaluation processes also give you some idea of how you were good on average (With Honors, High Honors, etc...).

In summary, University diploma is some guarantee - kind of - that one is capable of some sort of reasoning with some abstraction level, has statistically reached some level of knowledge and is able to acquire new knowledge at a rate above the average (global average). This concept of"above the average" is somewhat central for the rest of the post.

IOW, don't make it the wrong way, it is not because you made 4/5 years of University that you're a King.

What about certifications? or Is it really the same logic behind as for Universities diplomas?

From a belgian point of view, I would say : "Of course not, certifications are commercial while Universities not." Universities goals are not commercial, right? :)

Well, in Brazil, as it might also be the case in some other countries, Universities might consider the commercial side of their business as one of their main goal.

Basically, for certifications, you obtain a more limited set of guarantees - nor abstraction level nor acquisition rate of knowledge guarantees - for a much more specific context. While one might think it is a replacement to Universities, to some extent, I think these are more to be seen as a complement. Indeed, since a lot of companies complain that Universities does not prepare for the labour market, some smart companies foresaw certifications as a potential answer to some market needs.

Being that said, certifications are to be seen as a product with - at least - a four-fold benefits for companies selling them :

• income growth,
• client satisfaction,
• client loyalty,
• market loyalty.

I think the three first are obvious. But I would like to explain me a bit further about the 4th item. Market loyalty (probably not the scientific name) is something really powerful for companies selling this kind of certifications. Indeed, if you spread the word for a big chunk of the market, people won't go so easily to another kind of product. (That's the people's comfort zone issue and its implications in terms of human kind ability to accept changes but I'm just digressing.)

All in all, certifications are not only sold to spread some knowledge, they are also used strategically to create some loyalty in regards to another product these companies are selling.

My point is that there is a potential issue : Knowledge acquired during a certification might not be the main concern of the company selling it. To read, quality of these might be seriously crappy :)

No way of having some certainty about Quality?

In order to roughly evaluating diplomas of a University, you could use some top 100 or something. This will give you an idea of what you can expect to be statistically better in comparison to another University. After all, if I'm receiving the resume of someone from Stanford, I can guess at first that he has probably a high level of competences and probably a higher level than the average. In this case, we're not comparing to the global average but yes to the average between graduated people.

On the other hand, and this is soooo important. It is not because one graduates in the bottom 100 or without diploma that he is not an able person! We could argue that it is only a statistical thing. But then think to the following situation. I graduated from a belgian University. There a some French Universities better than the one in which I graduated. First, at that time, I did not even thought about going in one of these. But even if I did, I could not afford going there (taking as hypothesis that my potential would have been sufficient to go there which is not obvious ;)). It is not only a statistical thing. Going to a specific University is also a social thing depending on the familial revenues, geographical context, etc...

And the "Brazil case" is going one step further. In Brazil, people are hired by companies before starting/while at University. Of course, the salary and company expectations are lower but that's not the point. It allows people to get experience directly from the ground. What could be better to prepare to the labour market? For the ones complaining the University is not preparing well, it seems to be the perfect world, right?

Of course, it is not because there is a potential issue that all certifications are crappy. One example of a valuable certification is - I think - the CCIE from Cisco, which, BTW, is highly recommended internally at Cisco if you want to grow further in your career. But it does not mean that it is not seen as a strategy to bound a client to the company since it is an excellent example of vendor-driven certification. (BTW, how would you do differently in this router's world?) LPI might probably be seen as a good certification and independent one.

About Institutions to which it benefits

In this category, we have to separate at least two kind of companies for which certificates mean something very different. The issue remain though basically the same.

I'm not someone running after certifications but I have one. Yes, I have to admit it, I have the RHCE. Why? Because, once upon a time, I was working for a consulting company. What these kind of companies are doing? Basically, they are selling knowledge to some clients. How clients will agree upon hiring this company or not for a specific task? They will ask to screen the resumes of the employees of this consulting company. Of course, employees won't pass any interview, then having some titles (iow university grades, certifications) is something "valuable" for the consulting company.

It means that hiring people with a certificate (or helping him to get one) is something which is central to their business.

Would that mean that every consulting companies would like to hire people with a lot of certificates. Probably not. One example I think is ThoughtWorks, they hire smart people - above the average - and they want every others parties to know it. Companies hiring ThoughtWorks will do it because they know TW is hiring world-class people and won't probably bother about asking resumes of their employees.

In the other bag, I would throw every others companies. The ones who are not selling their knowledge but who are building some tangible products. As you're not selling someone knowledge but a product made by these people, certifications are not anymore central to the business.

What could drive a company to consider diplomas / certifications as important?

Hiring process is about decision-making and what a decision! A company is hiring someone committing himself to use his own resources to produce something helpful for the defined purpose of the company and in return, the company will pay him for this labour, which is basically a cost for the company. What you expect, from a company point of view, is to maximize your costs, right?

Then you would like to hire someone in the range of salaries you can afford for some expected productivity. For this purpose, we have to know what an employee could bring to us as benefits and from this, we can determine the salary. But wait a minute, are we doing the right question?

Won't it be better to bet on a potential higher return for someone with higher competences (and with a higher salary)? And here we are! Optimization process, these are everywhere!

The issue probably arises when HR starts to normalize their processes or wants to simplify their tasks because of time, costs, scope which in turn will affect the quality. Do you remember these four parameters? The real issue for HR is that the quality of their work in the hiring process has an impact on the overall quality of the company afterward. It is therefore a critical path for the well being and the future of the company.

One of the duties of the HR is to create some policies about who will fit for a specific job taking into account the values, the vision and the purpose of the company. In order to do so, they might create some filtering rules that will be there to simplify their work. One of them would be something like "We want to see this keyword on the resume" or "We want to hire someone who graduated with 3 years of experience". This is a mandatory step! Whatever it be explicit or not. Most of the time, you will have the first contact with the person through his resume. Then your resume should speak for you.

Filtering means that you have to lead with some issues (think to spam for example), you can have false positive which means that it has triggered some filter but in fact it should not have been triggered. Or the false negative case, which means that the filter has not been triggered and it should have been!

IOW, having this set of rules/filtering, you can find yourself in a situation in which you rejected someone who could have totally fit to the job which is the worst case because you did not really evaluate him. The other case is "better" - would like to say less bad - one could trigger the filter positively and he won't fit the job. That's why, most of the companies will not stop at the resume screening and speak to the person and also do some technical evaluation.

Is filtering an issue?

If the company is aware of these limits (side effects) and achieves to hire the "good" people, these policies are not a problem ... for the company.

If the company is complaining they're not finding the competent people, then they're facing an issue of market adequacy and one of the root cause might be due to the fact they're not considering some talents because of their filtering rules.

The important for a company is to correctly define their filtering policies and be aware of their side effects.

Once upon a time, Google had the fame of only hiring Ph.D. Knowing what Google is today, do you really think they made a mistake creating this filtering rule? They, in fact, achieve to hire the people fitting their needs. Perfect, don't you think so?

Of course hiring is not only about creating filtering rules but also evaluating the competences of the people. Then you're facing some others problems on how you will lead with the technical interviews. I think it is out of scope of this post. I would like to give you some pointers on how it can be difficult to do this evaluation either because of the Dunning Kruger Effect (read the paper!), Steve Yegge made a splendid post about it and it is worth taking a look at how Bruce Eckel is leading with technical interviews.

About the one receiving diplomas / certifications

Here we are! The whole point of this post. I think I already answered some of the questions.

I would nevertheless points another detail. I don't think going to University is only about getting a diploma. It is also about getting more mature, getting access to a whole knowledge you would take longer to access otherwise. Will they all be useful for your job? Not all the stuffs I've seen at University have been useful. But they contributed to what I am today. Did I enjoy everything? Certainly not. Plus I've been forced to study some stuffs I would not have taken a look at otherwise and some have been somewhat useful later. It is a personal adventure. Does that mean I was excited going to the courses? Not at all, in fact, I was not even going there. I liked very much studying by myself. What was really exciting is having access to the knowledge of the professors showing us some paths to follow to know more about some subjects. IOW, they show you grossly what one matter is all about and they point you to some good further readings.

Today, you can access this knowledge with the open platforms like the MIT one. These are great but won't give you the keys to access most of the companies requirements/filters. And you won't have any feedbacks from valuable professors nor you would participate to some practical experiments.

Then why are people running about diplomas or certifications? Some are growing their resume because some companies like certifications whatever it be good reasons or not. Whatever your decision will be to go to University or not. You have to ponder well your decision. It might not be necessary for your current job. However it might be if you want to change your job, or to grow inside your current company.

I've been working for a while in a company hiring some technical people without any University diploma. But some time ago, they changed their filtering rules and now, it is mandatory to have one. Is it good? Like I already showed with Google all depends if they're able to find the right people. What I find absurd is that in my team there was a very able guy whose way inside this company has been stopped (fired) because he was yet at the University. This is the kind of stupidity a company can do when they're not aware of the side effects of the policies they create.

I can guarantee that even in Brazil, the tendency will be to have each time more companies requiring some University level to trigger positively some HR filters. That something one should not underestimate when asking himself whether it is worth getting a University diploma.

One can struggle to try to change things (you know the revolutionary thing and blablabla) but the best way to try to change things is to get inside these companies (you see the paradox?) and even once you're inside this is the kind of matters so hard to change. (I'll definitely write a post about change issues)

I got my University diploma and?

Getting the diploma is without any doubt only the start of you way. In the computer world, everything is moving so fast and there is so much to learn that if you stop from continuously developing yourself, you will be outdated in a snap!

One thing is sure, work experience > University /Certifications > personal reading/learning for most of the companies. But one way you can use to show you are competent whatever you've been at University or not is to contribute to some open source projects. We, Software Engineers, are so lucky. We can take our computer, alone at home and show the world, by example, how competent we are.

Now up to you to decide what could be better in your case!