I failed to prevent my kid from going to college | Hacker News Reader

I failed to prevent my kid from going to college

jamesaltucher.com

41 pointsgalfarragem72 comments

> I’m not sure why this would be the case. I majored in Computer Science. But I didn’t get interested from class.

> I didn’t fall in love with reading until I was about 22. After college. I read and I wrote every day and I haven’t stopped since.

> Maybe it’s just me. But I have never learned about anything I wasn’t interested in.

> My first job: I was a computer programmer at HBO. I was so bad that they had to send me to REMEDIAL school

> My passionate interests have changed 30 times since I graduated college.

> (etc.)

"I" this, "I" that, "I" see, "I" don't see, "I" can, "I" can't, "I" foo, "I" bar, "I" phone, "I" pad, "I" pod... therefore my daughter (and presumably many, many others) clearly shouldn't go to college.

Does reading all this not bother anyone else?

Call me cynical, but one thing college teaches you is to avoid assuming most people are like yourself. Another thing it teaches you is that if you want to argue "everyone is doing it wrong", you should provide hard evidence for it. It's extremely frustrating to see individuals trying so hard to generalize from their own 1 sample of anecdata when civilization has come to the conclusion that higher education is a valuable thing over the past 1,700+ years.

Edit: On the plus side, I have to say, though, props to him for being honest about the "I". For every person that says "I think X is true" there are a dozen other louder people who omit the first half of the sentence.

>Call me cynical, but one thing college teaches you is to avoid assuming most people are like yourself.

That's like the one thing that it doesn't teach you. Everyone is expected to be interested in the same selection of things and learn the same things in the same way or not get good grades.

>> one thing college teaches you is to avoid assuming most people are like yourself.

> That's like the one thing that it doesn't teach you.

Huh? You didn't get to know people who weren't like yourself?

Since the people there chose the same path as me, they were in fact more similar to me (similar demographics, hobbies, ...).

"Same path" as in... "K-12, then college"? By that standard, when you start working, everyone has had the same path as you, too -- "education, then work".

And how can you even say "more similar" without specifying more similar than what?

More similar than the most of other people I met/know. I studied CS. When I started working, there are (compared to my CS studies) people from different colleges, or without higher education at all, artists, HR, managers, ... They are much more diverse than people from my college.

You say "compared to my CS studies" to argue your point, then conclude with "than people from my college"? Was there nobody but CS majors in your college? Or did you just never take the opportunity to go meet them when there were tons of them in your college?

I have met more people who aren't like myself outside college.

> I have met more people who aren't like myself outside college.

And this supposedly implies "That's like the one thing that [college] doesn't teach you"?

That was a hyperbolic response to a hyperbolic claim.

These are both more "I..." comments. When "I" went to college "my" experience was X so therefore...

Assumption: experiences in college are incredibly diverse based on multiple factors

You're assuming a lot of homogeneity in those people, but just seeing innumerable children pass through is a chance to see a load of variability, even if it's not fully representative of the whole world.

There's a ton of variability to see in the population of those who go to college and feel the constraint of grades and majors.

Or did people want visiting one corner of campus to be like visiting the corner of China, and the other corner to be like visiting Australia? Well, sorry, nothing but real money and travel can substitute seeing the world, but yes, college is an eye-opener in terms of people.

You do tend to see yourself in your kids.

Yeah, this is probably the best argument for his position. The only problem is, he would probably not be passionately blogging about it if he didn't intend to generalize it beyond his daughter.

> Another thing it teaches you is that if you want to argue "everyone is doing it wrong", you should provide hard evidence for it.

University professors are among the first to say "do as I say" without any motivation (and no, they do not "want you to challenge them"; they just tend to be very narcissistic). The first thing I had to unlearn from college is repeating prefabricated opinions (which I had to do to get acceptable grades).

> University professors are among the first to say "do as I say" without any motivation (and no, they do not "want you to challenge them"; they just tend to be very narcissistic). The first thing I had to unlearn from college is repeating prefabricated opinions (which I had to do to get acceptable grades).

This is so vague. What kinds of "opinions" are we talking about?

Your opinion on what topics the professor should teach or whether he should assign homework? Yeah, no, just sit down and learn the curriculum the way they've designed it. When you graduate and start teaching, then you can be a rebel and do everything your own way and prove to everyone they're doing it wrong and you're doing it right.

Your opinion on whether you should use method 1 or method 2 on your homework? Well if they're telling you to use method 1, it's because they're teaching it and want to make sure you learn it. Even if it's painful.

Don't forget the reason you're there is for the faculty to challenge you, not the other way around. Their job is still to teach you the way they know best. If you don't care for that and want to teach yourself, then indeed, don't go to college.

And you buy something for that debt. You buy freedom. In those 4 years, you can basically do anything you want- like really do it. Want a laser to print 3D Lightning into mid-air, yeah we have one in the lab, go and grab when its not used. Want to write some software? Congrats, you got 4 years, and will recive a good grade when you present your program as a project.

All this needs a certain personality type though- and there are some for whom college is a lot of closed doors and hostile personalitys. There are some who cant self-organize, and who by staying would force organization from outside upon all other students.

I miss my college years. The many moments, i found some pocket universe of complexity in places least expected.

Yes, that bothered me too. Not everyone is you.

It bothers me more if somebody claims to be all-knowing and owner of universal truths.

> It's extremely frustrating to see individuals trying so hard to generalize from their own 1 sample of anecdata

You seem to be doing that yourself here. Your description of college does not correspond to my personal experience. If you had written "... one thing college teached me ..." it would have been less of an overgeneralization based on your 1 sample of anecdata.

I did not need college to learn that most people aren't like myself. Even in kindergarten, it was quite obvious that most kids weren't like myself. Later, I went to a high school for "mathematically gifted students", and they were quite similar to me in some ways, but different in others. When I went to college and met people who weren't like me (or, for that matter, like each other), it wasn't unexpected.

But that's just my 1 sample of anecdata. Maybe other people grow up in a world where most everyone is the same, and only when they attend college, they finally realize that this isn't true of all people. Then they will probably associate this major life lesson with college. But it doesn't mean that this will be true of all, or even most, college students.

> You seem to be doing that yourself here. Your description of college does not correspond to my personal experience.

First, the crucial difference is that, unlike him, nowhere was I drawing any conclusion based on that statement.

Second, your argument is unsound, and a strawman. Obviously some fraction of people will come away failing to learn {any given topic}. My statement was a general ("general" != 100.00%) truth I'd observed based on what I've seen others take away from college, not just myself. So if you're really going to argue this point, you need to claim that most people you've seen, at least, have left college believing that most other people are, in fact, like themselves. Would you actually claim that though?

> Second, your argument is unsound, and a strawman.

Can you point me to the logic errors in my post, and where I set up a weak counter-point just to refute it? I would like to avoid these mistakes in the future.

> you need to claim that most people you've seen (at least) have left college believing that most people are, in fact, like themselves. Would you actually claim that though?

I do not need to claim such a thing, I am claiming the opposite: most people should already have realized that most other people aren't like themselves, even before they go to college. If they haven't, I don't think that college will make them realize it faster than the average other path they could take.

> Can you point me to the logic errors in my post

I literally did in the sentences that followed.

In the sentences that follow, you address a point I didn't intend to make, so at best you show that I didn't express myself clearly. Even if I had made that point, you are not exactly pointing out where I made a logic error to arrive at it. So that doesn't help me find it, and I still don't know where the strawman is.

Well, I don't assume everyone is like me. The opposite.

And I think I do provide hard evidence in article when I mention tuition vs debt vs income. And although I recognize my personal story is anecdotal, it seems similar to what I have heard over the years. Plus, I studied a hard science at a good school.

People may use I/my simply for a personal taste, such as a blog post of a mother about her daughter, instead of a formal article. Some use it to emphasize that they are expressing a personal opinion. Sometimes it shows they are more self-centered, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Or it could just be habit. Anyway, I wouldn't psychoanalyze it too much.

> Why spend it doing homework and learning nothing and getting in debt?

Wait...really? You think that everyone that goes to a four year higher education institution learns nothing? I think I can see why you have a problem with college...

> Wait...really? You think that everyone that goes to a four year higher education institution learns nothing? I think I can see why you have a problem with college...

I have a BS in Mathematics. I don't remember any of my abstract algebra, barely remember some real analysis, don't have a clue about complex analysis or pde (actually I am not sure if pde is partial derivative equations or not without actually googling it first which I am avoiding to make a point). I couldn't write a SN1, E1, SN2, E2 from organic one if my life depended on it.

Things I do remember? LDL the first L stands for Loser so it is the bad kind. That means HDL is the good kind (don't know the context but I think it is about fat in nutrition). Oh and that we tend to remember strange things like a hippo walking through the campus quad because it gets stored in the hippocampus (which is below the cerebral cortex?) of our brain.

I did pretty well in college. Besides my sophomore slump, I was on the Dean's List six out of eight semesters. I was a department tutor who helped others with their studies/background work to prepare for class. I tried to do everything right. And yet, I don't think we retain most of the facts we study in college.

I will concede though that it is not easy to learn anything in my "spare time" when you work full-time though. I mean it might be possible if you can leave your work at work but if you're a programmer, you really can't do that. It still gnaws you in the back of your head. (Again, I hope I am in the minority and that most people are able to leave work at work).

I've been in industry 40 years and can think of 2 times I directly used what I learned as part of my job.

1. Calculating the temperature distribution across a fiber being heated by air (spoiler: it's uniform). 2. Calculating the annual rate of return from an investment from an Sybase SQL server without resorting to a procedural process, i.e. using only the ln, exp, and sum functions available.

The second really goes back to high school math so doesn't count as a reason to go to college.

In my experience only maybe half of people actually use much of what they learned in college in their job. Many people don't end up in what their degree was and also many jobs are learned primarily through job experience. If you think about it most people learn more practical skills in the first year of having a job than in 4 years of college. I think that when people spend such a large chunk of their time and money on something they expect a little more results and he is exaggerating because he is frustrated with it.

...only maybe half of people actually use much of what they learned in college in their job...

And that's part of the problem with the current anti-college movement (for lack of a better descriptor). Adherents tend to think college is an expensive 4-year job training program. But, it's not about job training. It's about broadening your horizons, learning things you might not otherwise learn, challenging your core beliefs about life and society.

If you enter college with the sole goal of exiting with a high-paying job, I would argue you are doing it wrong. Instead, take some time to study things you find interesting. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

I mean, to their point, by your own definition college would be a RIDICULOUSLY expensive 4 year horizon broadening, belief challenging system.

Also your idea of college would sound twee and naive to anyone 50 years ago.

College wasn't as expensive just a few decades ago. That is definitely a problem. Forgoing an education isn't the solution.

As for sounding twee, I don't disagree. College has been viewed as a path to a career for quite some time now. Which is fine, other than that shouldn't be the sole reason for an education. Or the sole focus of a person's early adulthood.

I'm just saying go join the Peace Corps and drop $10,000 on time tested pedagogically rewarding audiobooks (and maybe another grand on Excel or videography courses) and you'll be perfectly horizon broadened and entry level ready without 6 figure debt.

It's hard to say it's about broadening horizons when it's a prerequisite to most jobs. Also I've broadened my horizons significantly after college so it's hard to justify paying 30k a year for that.

Edit: I think part of it is that college is a requirement for many things in modern life whether it's good for you or not. I personally found it constricting but leaving would've closed a lot of doors so I just ended up staying but really resenting it

That an employer requires a degree does not imply that the purpose of a university education is solely to facilitate employment. Many people disagree with me, and I think that's part of the problem.

And the $30k/year is a problem. No argument from me on that. By most measures, tuition has outpaced most other commonly measured consumer costs.

When I attended school, a good state college wasn't cheap, but my middle-class family was still able to pay for it without borrowing money. I would be hard-pressed to pay for a 4-year degree today without incurring significant debt or dramatically changing my lifestyle.

> In my experience only maybe half of people actually use much of what they learned in college in their job.

How on earth is that the _college's_ fault? If a college graduate went on to become a barista, they would be using almost none of what they learned. Would the college somehow be to blame for that too? I think not.

Personally I think college was a waste of time as well and my time would have been better spent working at some company. I would probably have learned more and wouldn't have had 21.000 EUR debt. I would also have earned more money. And I also believe I would have been a better developer as well.

On the other hand, I also believe it's much more easy to get an software engineering job without a degree compared to many other jobs. For most jobs, I do think college or university is pretty much mandatory.

I thought college was a waste of time the first time around, and dropped out after a year. The second time around, after having spent a few years working, I not only saw much more value in the things I was learning, but understood the relative values of the different courses on offer.

So in hindsight I'm really glad both that I didn't persevere and push through the first time around and even more glad that I decided to eventually go back.

In fact, if I where king, I might require at least 12 month work experience before allowing people to apply for university.

This is precisely the path I took as well. When I went back to college I'd lost the hubris and was well aware of what I didn't know. It was a much better experience and I learned a lot.

I did a BA and an MA in the arts. I don't work in the arts now, 10 years later, but on a daily basis I see how that experience gave me tools and skills I didn't have at the end of high school that help me succeed. Just in terms of professionalism, communication skills, and being exposed to new ideas and challenged about how I see the world. As well as, occasionally, a specific piece of knowledge being useful (eg I'll do musical transcriptions from time to time). I was a disaster coming out of high school, and college was the ideal environment for me to become more independent and less of a jerk. I almost studied commuter science, but ended up picking music and English, which has led me such different and interesting places.

One caveat: I come from a country where you don't have to go into debt to attend college. This frames the experience very differently, I think.

It's weird how a lot of people think they didn't learn anything in college. I thought so too, just after finishing. Now I can think of a lot of things that I maybe didn't learn very well, but I heard of in college.

- Some guy writes about Bayesian networks. Lo and behold, I remember doing it in college.

- Someone floated the "20 most important equations" meme and I've seen them all at college or at work. I can't say much about each of them, but I definitely saw them and know roughly what they are about.

- Coding. We did some of that in uni, though not in depth the way I do now.

- Pretty much every economics topic you see in a newspaper.

It wasn't that much of a waste of time. Kinda like a buffet where you try a few things so you know they exist, which perhaps is what college is supposed to be.

Having to prep for exams killed the joy though.

tl;dr the rantings of some dude that did poorly in his own time at college and thinks all it consists of is liberal arts degrees

Note: I'm a university student in the UK, studying a serious technical degree. I'm not sure if this level is equivalent to "college" in the US, I assume so.

I used to think the same as you when I still was a student. “How can these people critize the wonders of college? I’m learning so much!”. Then I realized I learnt nothing.

Disclaimer: it wasn’t a fancy college, but still.

I just think education needs some sort of revolution

Yes, it's equivalent. Thanks for saving me the time to read the piece. Good luck with your studies.

I'm not sure if this level is equivalent to "college" in the US, I assume so.

In a broad sense, yes. But, there's more to it.

In the US, there are several tiers of colleges...

- Community Colleges: offer 2-year (associates) degrees. Frequently serve as a launching point for entry into a 4-year program (if direct entry wasn't an option due to lackluster performance in high school). Also frequently offer vocational degrees (network and system admin, skilled trades, etc).

- College: Offer 4-year (Bachelors) degrees. Typically do NOT offer post-graduate degrees.

- University: Offer 4-year AND post-graduate (or professional) degrees.

It's not a hard and fast rule - The College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA) is one of the best universities in the nation and it's name is basically a historical anomaly.

The majority of colleges in the US are probably equivalent to the UK's polytechnics and other newer universities (vs the UK's ancient universities, which are closer to our Ivy League + a few other select research universities).

Edit - As it relates to this guy's blog, if he attended a top-tier university and found it was a waste of time, he was likely not mature enough to take advantage of its offerings.

James Altucher studied computer science, not liberal arts.

It ends very sweetly but the first 3/4 gave me the distinct impression that his child is a lot smarter than he is when it comes to weighing the costs and benefits of college.

tl;dr: The author didn't enjoy his college experience, so he believes no one else will or can or should even try.

For me, college was an important stepping stone to personal responsibility and a real career. The cliched (if not actually all that typical) four-year away-from-home college degree can serve as a transitional period from complete dependence to independence. That's not how the political sphere talks about higher education, and the author denigrates that idea as "extended childhood", but I think it serves a valuable purpose for those lucky enough to experience it. Yes, it's outrageously expensive, yes student loans are a growing drag on the economy, and yes far too many people are excluded, and yes it's not for everyone. But it's a core part of our society, and it can't just be dismissed as unimportant because you had a bad personal experience.

I definitely agree that college can be a boon for young-adult social development but I think that should be where the focus is and not the pseudo-benefits of an over-valued degree.

The mantra has always been "College isn't for everyone". I think some people have assumed this was pejorative and just directed at bad students or the poor, but there is much more to it. Maybe college isn't for you _right now_. Maybe you don't know what you want to study yet. Maybe you aren't yet mature enough to leave home. Or maybe money is a factor. But "Don't go to college" to me seems as naive as "Everbody should go to college."

Maybe college isn't for you _right now_.

I wish this would get more traction. The number of 17-18 year olds who know what they want to get out of college is probably tiny. Ideally going to college straight after high school should really be the exception rather then the rule.

As someone who went to university and got an advanced degree, I can relate with what he's saying. Nowadays, I no longer directly utilize the skills and knowledge I gained from my 8+ years in school. But at the same time, the way I think couldn't have ended up this way if my journey didn't go through formal education. My parents and those around me weren't educated enough to point me in the right direction such that I would end up with a more educated mindset. And I certainly don't think I was born smart enough to have gotten here myself without the exposure I had while at school.

Having kids as well, I question too the merit of sending them when they reach university age. My perspective, of course, has changed given the fact that I have now arrived, mentally, at a more educated state to know that formal education is only one of many answers. It's hard to say whether my kids could too arrive to a more educated state without the years of formal structure to encourage that growth, despite their parents being educated.

Similar to others who have supported going to university, I think it may not be a bad idea to support it still. I would say, however, that perhaps it's important to go understanding that education there is merely one of many perspectives.

It's hard for me to judge since i don't live in USA. He's got some points, but i have a feeling it's also a lot about father "losing" his daughter to adult world.

I was lucky enough to go to college in Europe, where it's basically free, to study something that can be transposed anywhere (CS, as opposed to for example law). I then moved to the US debt free. I'm in my late 30's and I own (as in "no mortgage") my house, while most of my coworkers (some in their 40s) are still paying off their student loan and have to live with 2 or 3 other roommates.

I'm all for good education, and obviously not the best judge since I didn't go to college in the US, but I don't get how this is a good deal for students. Especially when one knows that the cost of tuition is mostly artificial (I think there were a few good articles about that on the front page of HN recently).

> I was lucky enough to go to college in Europe, where it's basically free

This is not at all the case in England unfortunately - I guess I really should've considered studying elsewhere in the EU where fees are better.

With that said, I still think I've got a better deal than most US students since the fees there just seem to be ridiculous.

> I then moved to the US debt free

This is something I've considered, but I feel like I'd miss being an EU citizen, the NHS and the culture etc. How have you found it since you moved, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm still a EU citizen, I just live in the US :)

Health insurance is definitely the most mind-blowing thing to me as a non-American. Even after more than 10 years I just don't get how people can put up with this crazyness. I've been lucky to never be unemployed, and I always had good coverage so it's never really been a concern.

I miss a few things from Europe, and there are things I have troubles getting use to in America. The omnipresence of consumerism is a little difficult to deal with. But otherwise, a lot of great things. And professionally, I wouldn't have achieved half what I did had I stayed in Europe.

You were supposed to stay in Europe so your taxes could cover the cost of your education, not move to a locale where your take-home pay is higher because you get out of doing that.

Ironically, one can teach active, experiential courses that teach skills.

As a professor at an elite school, I can say from experience that you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get the administration to support such classes, though. The administrative structure is designed to teach factual recall and abstract analysis that don't develop skills useful for life or work.

Professors who publish or perish learn to publish. It being the skill they have, they teach it. Not many professions benefit from publishing as your primary skill. Nor citizenship, adulthood, or happiness.

I used to think CS was the exception to my college is worthless philosophy. Then I started dealing with recent graduates. The quality of the education coming out of supposedly decent schools is abysmal. I think modern college is proving itself particularly ill suited for the modern job market. They are teaching out of date skills at a glacial pace. In fact, it’s gotten bad enough that I don’t even ask about whether a candidate has a degree, they are simply irrelevant.

I used to think CS was the exception to my college is worthless philosophy.

I think traditional CS is a good example of "college is worthless" if your goal in life is to become a 'normal' developer or developing 'normal' apps.

I think modern college is proving itself particularly ill suited for the modern job market.

In general or only for programmers? I generally find that the recently graduated civil engineers and architects I meet at work seem reasonably well educated to start working on real projects fairly quickly. Certainly much more so than any self educated engineer or architect might be.

This topic tends to show up every now and then here in HN.

If we ignore all the obvious benefits (learn the trade, self-discipline, etc...) that you may or may not obtain from your studies, one of the most relevant arguments i've seen discussed in here is the connections and friendships.

College is a great place to make critical connections that can get you into nice jobs or lifelong friendships that will last as long as you foster them.

Sure, working a job can also open those doors of oportunity, but if you are working as a waitress like the author suggested, i just can't see how that can help you direct your career or give you meaningful CV experience.

I have been very fortunate for having parents which pushed me into college and ensured i finished it (i didn't make it easy, sadly ) but the payout has been worth it. It also deppends on your country (some value the diploma more than others, mine does) but at least it should help you get an interview, which is good enough.

Ultimately, i believe the person should make the choice. And he, as the father, should explain both courses of action to his daughter, instead of pushing her into one direction just because going to college didn't work out for him as great as he wanted to.

If I was his kid, I wouldn't listen to him either. His kid no doubt knows what a blowhard he is.

I dropped out of college at age twenty. I went back later. Neither of my sons felt compelled to go.

It is fine to argue against the idea that young people should feel compelled to go to college and to catalog the fact that people have a lot of erroneous ideas about college. It is not so cool to try to actively campaign against college as an option.

Am I the only one who has gone at the university because it was fun? Onestly it was the richer time I spent of my life

Yeah, created some great friends, have an amazing professional network, was able to do research with professors, and took classes in areas I wouldn't have thought to otherwise and the environment can't be replicated online.

This isn't to say that college is for everyone, but I don't regret my experience one bit.

I can't imagine anything more likely to make a teenager want to go to college than a parent saying that they shouldn't!

My wife's parents didn't want her to go to University and only changed their minds once she became a barrister (advocate here in Scotland).

I know the author is taking in the context of US colleges and I am from India but I do want to put the effect of the college in my life.

In my entire childhood, we have been very poor financially but my brother and I managed to get good grades throughout our school. That allowed us to study in reputed colleges in the country and therefore, enabled us to get high paying jobs. Just because of this advantage, I will always be grateful to colleges and education, in general.

And not to forget the indirect benefits like life long friendships, a good professional network among others.

Very interesting. I don't have a college degree, but I do have a well established and successful career as a senior software developer.

And yet, literally this week I am submitting applications to multiple universities in order to complete my CS degree (I have about a years worth of credit). I am doing this on the recommendation of my management as well as the encouragement of my wife. Is it going to be easy? Nope. Is it going to be worth it? I sure hope so.

I have no doubt that college can be a great learning experience, but is it really worth the cost to the average person? Is getting into debt that most likely won't be payed off until their mid-thirties worth what they're getting in return?

Like any investment, you have to see a return that justifies the cost, and I don't think the higher education system in the US is providing that right now for most career paths.

I think a hybrid environment of the frugalness of community college coupled with an apprenticeship is the way to fix this. I agree with you that it's more of a social stigma that you didn't go to college nowadays.

And I also do not believe in 80% of cases that the success of a bachelor's degree justifies the cost.

College/uni provides a special type of social environment that you can't get anywhere else.

Just stating a fact. Whether that fact is important is up to the individual.

I couldn't find which degree she wants. For some areas a degree is essential. In other areas is a waste of time an money.

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