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A purely theoretical education will leave students unprepared for practical tasks. Korf’s analogy suggests that, just like lifting weights allows one to lift things outside of the gym, a strong theoretical foundation allows students to carry out practical tasks in the workforce. “But what you are doing is trying to train your muscles to do that. It’s not productive to get that weight from the ground up there, because no one needs it up there,” Korf said. “It’s like going to the gym and lifting weights. While a strong theoretical foundation is helpful during their careers, they still have to actually land a job first. They say more practical skills are what’s needed to cut it in the field. His answer: teach students the theoretical foundations of the major.īut students give a different answer. “The question is, what do you teach people to become productive professionals in a field that’s changing very, very fast?” We’re trying to train people for a career that lasts 40 years or more,” Korf said.
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“A lot of our courses are theoretically based. Richard Korf, a professor and undergraduate vice chair of the computer science department, said the disparity between theory and practicality is intentional. But students are the ones who need to claw their way into the competitive private sector, and they’ll need strong application skills to compete with other graduates. In a world where companies hire students based on their ability to do things, it’s crucial that UCLA’s computer science education extends beyond mere theory.
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One of these extracurriculars is ACM, which helps students pick up machine learning, cybersecurity and application design. The department expects students to obtain practical skills from their student-run extracurriculars, rather than teaching them.
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The department stresses teaching students the C programming language – an archaic code scheme developed in 1972. Many of the courses the program offers focus on giving undergraduates a strong sense of the mathematical and conceptual foundations without much focus on the practical applications of the major. UCLA’s computer science department is largely based on 20th-century theoretical foundations of the field. Students raised these concerns with their department Wednesday during a department town hall co-hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery student group, pointing out they needed to learn more applicable skills relevant to the industry. So much for building the next Facebook.Ĭomputer science students have long complained that their curriculum is not practical enough.
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One of UCLA’s greatest ironies is that its computer science curriculum is just a series of textbooks.