Science & Tech Quote by Philip Greenspun

Greenspun’s line is a polite provocation aimed straight at the modern myth that a computer science degree is basically a receipts machine for a six-figure offer. The jab works because it flips the usual sales pitch: the curriculum isn’t the “hard part” on the way to the reward; it’s the point. If your only goal is a high-paying job, he implies, a formal CS program is an oddly masochistic route - like learning to build an engine when you just want to drive.

The specific intent is boundary-setting. He’s defending the university as a place for rigorous theory, disciplined thinking, and intellectual formation rather than a service counter for labor-market credentials. The subtext: students (and parents, and administrators) are increasingly treating higher ed as vocational training with nicer architecture. Greenspun is resisting that customer-service frame, insisting that CS isn’t synonymous with “coding for hire,” and that the deep work - algorithms, systems, proofs, abstraction - is valuable even when it doesn’t map neatly onto immediate employability.

Context matters: computer science has been repeatedly rebranded by industry booms as the most pragmatic major, a hedge against economic anxiety. Greenspun punctures that hype without denying the paycheck. He’s saying the money is a side effect, not the syllabus. There’s also a quiet critique of credential inflation: if the market truly rewards skill, there should be “easier ways” than surviving a formal curriculum. If the degree is the gate, then the gate is doing cultural work, not just educational work.