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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

If your only definition of "value" is "monetary value," I think you have larger issues. To quote Oscar Wilde (over a hundred years ago, to boot):

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

To me, college was extremely valuable. College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of. It's the single best way to reduce the number of "unknown unknowns." Was it overpriced? Yes. Were the loans "worth it"? Not sure. But the solution to this societal problem is surely to make attending college more affordable, not to erode the fundamental importance of an educated society.

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"College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of. It's the single best way to reduce the number of "unknown unknowns."

So does getting a job, volunteering, traveling the world, doing a mission trip, serving in the armed forces, etc, etc.

There is a social cost to having people spend 4-6 years in college. And colleges are increasingly becoming government-subsidized vacation from the real world. We should ask whether the core benefits of college that we want to actually subsidize - education, training, etc. - can be done cheaper and faster through other means. Cut the cruft.

Look, I was a humanities major in college and I loved it. But looking back, the four year experience seems like an extremely expensive exercise in upper-class cosplay. It was a luxury that the taxpayers, in effect, paid for.

"humanities major in college" - i think i found your problem

you can learn skills outside of your classes and come out with the benefits of both. college isn't a job training program outside of a few majors

> College forces you to interact with people and ideas that you either disagree with and/or were completely unaware of.

So does a job (or an apprenticeship, or just participating in society at all). And a job is typically a less forgiving environment - there are fewer safe spaces where you can insulate yourself and your views from others.

Looking back on my college experience - it was a way to continue to coast along without having to face the pressures of making a living. The cost of that coasting was deferred to later in life, and was definitely not worth it.

The only thing I honestly regret from my college years is not partying more - not taking advantage of the myriad of socialization opportunities.

Collage gives you a broad overview of your chosen field. There are so many concepts I would not be aware of if I never went to college. Looking back now, learning programming myself without a degree would have been much harder. I have a much better idea of where to look for a solution to some problem than I would if I had not attended college.

There are many, many ways one can accomplish this. And to a great extent, it's becoming more difficult to broaden one's idea exposure on college campuses. For example, I believe I learned more about myself and life in general from the U.S. Army than I did from college.

Ok. I went to college because I wanted a brighter future than my parents (read: I wanted to make more money than them). So from that perspective college has not been very valuable at all.

I don't think I'm in the minority in that way at all.

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