Comment by Nickersf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nickersf | Hacker News Reader

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Every time a college sucks article gets published I think the same things:

Look at the college enrollment rates since the 1960's. Look at the tuition rates since the 1960's Look at the distribution of majors since the 1960's

Then precede to look at the labor market. It all becomes very clear. There's millions of great young people roaming the halls of colleges who are not engaged in higher learning. Great young people who would develop critical thinking skills from work, family and good on the job training.

Many of these young people are told from an early age that college is a must in order to get anywhere. Whether that's true, I can't answer with confidence. I waited to go to college. After high school I decided to work, pay bills and taxes. In my late 20's I went back for a CS degree and am productive and happy now. Had I gone right out of high school I would have wasted a lot of time and money.

Is there even a solution to this issue outside of the family? Is the focus and quality of k-12 in the wrong place? Is it a mixture? Who knows?

I went to college directly out of high school and wasted my parents money. It felt impossible to break this to my family that I was leaving school.

After leaving school, I worked for ~4-5 years before I started taking classes again. After landing my first internship as a developer, I've been working as a developer and completing a CS degree f/t ever since. My parents were sold a lie, but I was a fool to buy into it.

The punchline being that I don't even need the degree to work as a developer. However, the subject matter is enjoyable and it's better to leave some doors open for future options (masters, phd or whatever).

> Had I gone right out of high school I would have wasted a lot of time and money.

Why is that, if I may ask? For me personally, my goal was to graduate with a CS degree as soon as possible right after high school so I could start my much higher paying full time engineering job as quickly as possible. I noticed you also majored in CS, so I wonder what I might have overlooked?

Since I had a similar experience, to add another response to your question, in my case it was a lack of direction and maturity.

I knew the outcome I wanted, but had no real motivation to work for it. And I lacked the coping skills I needed to overcome emotional a psychological challenges presented by college life.

Working a job (and getting fired, and working another job, and so on) prepared me much better for completing college than my K-12 education did.

If I'd waited until my late 20s, I'd have been much better off!

Worse, my father (who somehow got much smarter as I got older), anticipated this and told me so. So of course I did the opposite of what he recommended.

I was a CS major, originally, though not a very good one.

Obviously, each person is different and handles life differently. But for me, a few years not in school would have been a much better solution. I wound up behind my peer group career-wise regardless. Better to do it at lower cost.

I was totally disengaged from school socially and academically. I went and worked in a kitchen so I could buy a van, guitar and amp at 17. I spent my 20's touring around North America and Europe within the underground crust/punk community. I worked at record stores and DIY labels. All of it has been a great learning opportunity and helped me develop on the fly critical thinking and problem solving skills. It helped me appreciate the value of the dollar and what not having a place to live is like. It also taught me how the private sector works, networking and selling products in a limited market. I learned vast alcohol consumption causes problems when trying to do all those things, and not having your shit together is costly. However, the big thing is I learned all of that without being crippled with student loans, in fact I came out of it with savings, and capital.

Wow, that's a great story! College definitely isn't for everyone, and I'm hearing more and more of other people with stories just like yours.

Specially true in India. Here, you will almost never see someone from decent economic background not going to college. I was little reluctant about going to college, but if I decided that I am not going to college, social pressure would have been tremendous.

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