Why continue to study
A student send me an email: “ I graduated with a degree in computer science and found a good job as software developer. I do not understand why you encourage students to study after having degrees and good jobs? Is the reason that professors need students to keep their jobs?"
Answer: Let me ask you a few questions: “How will your job be different five years from now? Do you think you will be doing the same thing? Will your job even exist in the next five years? What will happen to the company that you work for in the next ten years? Please look back to see what had happened five years ago? Was there an iPad five years ago? Was there a Facebook ten years ago? What happened to developers who only code in Cobol or Fortran? We do not know what will happen in the future but we do know for sure is that change is happening in the software industry. This means that what you are doing now will be different in the future. The reason I encourage students to build a lifelong learning attitude is to prepare them for the change. I want them to prepare for their jobs in the future and it has nothing to do with professors need to keep their jobs.
What you should be doing now to make sure that you do not find yourself “unemployed” with no opportunity to do anything else in the future. As the job market changes, your skills may need to adapt to it or else you will no longer have the skills that the market need. Most of the change has to do with new technology as it keep changing all the time. You must keep your technical skills current, even if some new technology do not directly related to your current job. Otherwise, you will get left behind in the future. Please be proactive and continue to learn even your company may not encourage you to. Along with technical skills, it is important to improve your soft-skills to stay competitive in the marketplace. You need to develop leadership, communication, time management, and interpersonal skills as they are the requirements of the jobs of today and tomorrow.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
