A friend of mine went to collect his provisional degree results today. We’re graduating in the same year, same subject.
He got a 2.1 BSc Hons, Computer Science. While I am happy for him I am sad for the value of whatever degree I get in the end. Despite 3 years of programming modules he can’t write a hello world program in any language without guidance. I think that speaks volumes about the classification mechanism in use. His other work did not make up for this deficiency, I have seen or helped with a fair amount of it. To his credit he worked hard, he just couldn’t grasp algorithms and was not patient enough to overcome this. I think a 2.2 would have been more suitable.
Conversely another friend is a web-radio sysadmin running a dedicated server abroad who has written code ranging from deployment scripts in Perl to Linux device drivers in C and toying with Lisp. He doesn’t have the same drive, organisation skills, etc. He’s also academically knowledgeable, having done several years of a Maths degree previously. He will pass the same course, just.
I won’t be collecting provisional results; signs are positive and it’s a journey during working hours to collect it that I can do without at present.
This also clearly shows why, generally speaking (optometrists aside), employers don’t take people on their degree alone.
