MIT Missing Semester 2026

There's definitely a tension at top STEM schools (probably especially in CS) between assuming students have some baseline knowledge of whatever field and just tossing them into the deep end of the pool and figuring out the practicalities on their own.

I did take one of the MIT intro CS MOOCs at one point for kicks. Very good. But it was more or less learn Python on your own if you don't already know it (or how to program more broadly). That doesn't really happen in a lot of other disciplines other than some areas of the arts.

At one university I went to, the head of the CS department was quoted as saying "[We don't need to care about the job market,] Our job is to create researchers."

I thought that was pretty strange at the time because like 5% of the students end up going into research. So that was basically like him saying I'm totally cool with our educational program being misaligned for 95% percent of our customers...

Maybe it makes sense for the big picture though. If all the breakthroughs come from those 5%, it might benefit everyone to optimize for them. (I don't expect they would have called the program particularly optimized either though ;)

Well you can say there is a difference between "computer science" and "software engineering", plus many "universities" are particularly research focused.

A chemistry, physics, or even MechE BS is coming out only at the very beginning of their training, and will require lots of specific on-the-job training if they go into industry. School is about the principles of the field and how to think critically / experimentally. E.g. software debugging requires an understanding of hypothesis testing and isolation before the details of specific tech ever come into play. This is easy to take for granted because many people have that skill naturally, others need to be trained and still never quite get it.

Edit: of course if only 5% of grads are going on to research then maybe the department is confused. A lot of prestigious schools market themselves as research institutions and advertise the undergrad research opportunities etc. If you choose to go there then you know what you're getting into.