Has anyone here taken a university course on privacy or privacy law? Or even basic computer ethics?
I’m taking a graduate course right now and suffice to say, it is incredibly basic and focuses more on potential market consequences. Even then, it’s a advanced course that supposedly higher-level students take.
With the huge number of computer science and IT graduates being pumped out lately, are these classes sufficient? I do know that some undergraduate programs in the U.S. do require similar courses but it depends on the state.
I didn’t take such a course but I do know such courses are offered and I can speak from personal experience cause I was in the same area you’re in for college. And there are so many schools there.
And yes, those courses are always basic enough and don’t really go into specifics for anything. I guess it is for completely non tech savvy users to understand what’s what at a much higher level but in my view, it doesn’t do much - and that’s why I never took such a class even for my electives.
One of the reasons why I would not take an IT course (despite being an IT Technician) is that the courses may not be up to date. When I was looking into CCNA, the training courses were expen$$$$$ive. But even if I had the money, it would be better to buy some learning material and pay for the exams. So when you say the course is “basic”, that seems about right to me.
And like basenote said, the courses has to be basic because that’s how you get all the students to study on the same level. I work at a college and part of the IT course is teaching students how to build a PC. Half of the students can’t even insert the RAM correctly. Yes, that’s even more basic, but if I were a teacher, I wouldn’t be able to teach students how to troubleshoot (which would be advanced) if they can’t even do the basics.
I don’t know how long you’ve been studying. If it’s only been a couple of months, maybe the advanced topics will be taught later? In terms of privacy law, GDPR does get covered where I’m from, but it’s also basic. I’m assuming students are generally going to be more interested in learning about IT innovations rather than IT regulations.
That seems to be the case for me. I almost wished I spent the extra time self-learning all this information
Funny enough, it’s not an IT program but a cybersecurity policy program. My main issue is…why aren’t we discussing actual cybersecurity policy or tools? I did not realize that a lot of these programs were geared towards beginners than anything.
I don’t know much about cybersecurity, but I suppose it depends on the meaning of “advanced”.
So for example, when I did a Level 2 course, I learnt to build and troubleshoot a PC. This was basic for me as I’ve built my own PC, but most of the students were older and not tech savvy. When I moved to Level 3, I learnt about Active Directory and Group Policy. This was “advanced” for me as I did not know anything about it conceptually. But after some hands-on experience, looking back, the course seems basic. And to clarify, I would not pay to take a course. All courses I have done were funded by JP Morgan at the time.
So I suppose with cybersecurity, Level 2 would be something like identifying threats such as malware, and Level 3 might be using OSINT tools and penetration tests. I think the difference between “basic” and “advanced” comes down to your knowledge of the subject you’re studying rather than the difference in qualification levels. So if you find the course to be basic, maybe you can ask other students if they find it basic or advanced for them. And if there’s any topics that you want to learn, maybe you can ask the tutor if it’s covered in the course. Or if they even know about it because even if it’s not covered in the course, you can still benefit from looking into these topics yourself.
Or you can ask the students because from my experience working at my current place, sometimes the students are smarter than the tutors themselves.
I have not taken in college/uni course that is dedicated to privacy and ethics but I have taken Computer Engineering and Networking and the last semester, one of them actually contained about security and internet which our instructor did actually go a little about digital privacy but not all that much and second semester having Linux so honestly, that was something. But other than that that’s all the experience I have.
Your question on if it’s sufficient I say depends on you personally.
