To study or not to study?

2008-11-19

Tobias Schlitt

This is the main question, but that's more or less clear by now.

As some of you might know, I finished my apprenticeship to an IT Specialist (german: Fachinformatiker) at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt (Eschborn) last year and I'm now eployed there as a Software Architect there. I'm currently working for the eBranch project, which migrates our current, decentralized branch infrastructure (about 20,000 employees in about 7,000 branches germany wide) to a new centralized one. The old one was based on OS/2 and we are now building up a Windows2000/2003 Terminal Server farm which will be accessed by the users through thin clients.

Pretty interessting, indeed, but I'm missing the deep knowledge in some parts of computer science in my life and therefor more or less decided to go and study. This decision is not really fixed, yet, but for about 95% now. I prefer to study at TU (technical university) Darmstadt (2nd best in germany for computer science), because my girlfriend is studying there and it's not far away to move from my current location.

The jumping point now is the field to study which I have to choose. Personally I would be more interessted in studying real, pure computer science (Informatik), but most people tell me, that job chances are much better in business computer science (Wirtschaftsinformatik). Business computer science is based on computer science, but has addintional parts of business administration and economics and therefor leaves out some parts of real computer science.

As told before, I'm much more interessted in the pure IT part of the studies, but I guess, that business computer science would raise my job opportunities later. A predicament which I will have to solve until July this year, where I have to choose finally, which way tlo go...

Maybe some of you can give me a hint (from their studies?) on which way to go and what to do. I would be greatful to get some comments on this blog entry.

Comments

Do what you like! Our first year was a mix of both studies, and I definitely hated the Business like parts in there. Why try to find a job in something you don't really like?

Derick at 2004-04-04

I studied "pure computer science". Looking back, I think that was the right decision. I for sure did not learn too much stuff I could directly use in my work (that's why I worked much more than I studied ;-) ), however I did get a good understanding of the foundations of computer science. Also, I am really bad at memorizing things, so I liked that most exams required me to actually _understand_ stuff. Friends who had business/economics parts in their studies always complained about 1000s of pages they had to memorize ;-) Nevertheless, you should (IMO) study what you like, as Derick pointed out. So CS should be a good thing (TM). Feel free to contact me via PM if you are interested in more details!

Christian at 2004-04-09