Hacker News Reader

Shopping around for college education only makes sense if your career path doesn't take the name of the institution into account. Careers are so path dependent that landing in a worse first job can make a huge difference in lifetime earnings.

See, a good engineer I know, who studied in University of Missouri Rolla. Their CS degree is not all that different from a big name, as far as curriculum is concerned, but many HR departments won't recognize the place, especially if it's a company from the coasts. If you don't find a way to break through that social class, the best you can hope for is a Midwest Enterprise company, which will not pay as well, and will not teach as well. Then your resume will be thrown away at many hip companies, because working at such companies is seen as a negative, not as a positive: To climb out of a good education with a bad name to a place that pays top dollar can be a huge struggle. If instead you go to the Right University, you can then move on to the Right Company, and you can keep working at said places, or get venture capital to start your own thing, because you were already in the inside track. That's what you are paying for at the coastal university, not a dramatically superior education.

You are right though, in that there are many degrees that are terrible investments in all but the topmost universities. You'd be surprised by the kind of companies that will interview you anyway if you have an irrelevant degree from Harvard.

Heh, I went to that school and I had the same problem: literally everyone would ignore me because I went to a Midwest state school.

I went and did my own thing so my story is fine. But I wonder about how much good talent is ignored just on the basis of where one went to college.

I went to KU. Living in KS and making just as much as those in the coastal rat race, without the crazy housing prices. If you know your shit, you'll do fine.

"your career path doesn't take the name of the institution into account"

So basically, only applicable with Law Degrees

Not just law. (Management) Consulting. Finance. Even tech, to a lesser degree.

For those saying “I got into Google and went $there:” understand that you are an exception and probably worked really hard to get on their radar in the first place. The difference between Princeton and Kean is that Google goes to Princeton. That’s a huge step up.

The problem is a little bit more than people are paying too much for a worthless degree. It's that they are being given a loan that is backed by the US Government to get that worthless degree.

If the government removes the backing and allows the free market to give loans and set interest rates, suddenly you'll see that the lowest rates will be for STEM degrees, and those who want to study music theory, art therapy, English literature, are going to get loans for school.

However, that defeats the entire narrative of "everybody should go to school and everybody should learn whatever they want."

Completely agree

(except maybe on music theory, bit more technical of a degree that most people realize)

Doesn't matter how technical it is, it's still pretty worthless.

I would rather employ someone who has a music degree and learned web dev in their free time than the majority of shitty comp sci programs or an mba

As far as postmodern literature departments, sure they are worthless, and maybe counter productive

I'm a CS Major, but saying a degree is "worthless" is pretty narrow-minded, no? I'd argue (at least anecdotally) that most people getting into these "worthless" degrees know they won't make a ton of money - but for them, money isn't something they particularly care about.

There's more ways to define success than in terms of money.

Several of the best mathematicians I've met had degrees in music theory; there's a surprising practicality to it in modern CS as the concepts translate well to machine learning.

This may very well be true, but I'd rather make an argument against this idea by pointing out that the relative worth of a field of study is not related to whether or not majoring in it will get Facebook to pay you $200k out of college to help them build out their marketing panopticon. It's disturbing how many people on HN don't seem to get that (not necessarily you, but other commenters in this thread are exemplifying this). It's good to have people who study art and music and philosophy and design because those fields enrich the human experience, and because the world would be a worse place without them.

At HN, “worthless” == “Can’t score a $100k salaried job out of college with it”

If you remove the government backing you'll see more of a divide on the socioeconomics of who gets to go to college and who is too risky to lend to.

Anyone can go to college, given they meet the academic admission requirements, and are willing to work (extending it past 4 years).

Probably some, but really how much? A doctor is a doctor and makes a lot of money. A social worker, no matter the skin color, does not.

Right... but what about a potential doctor vs. a potential social worker? A poor student that tries to become a doctor is far riskier than a rich student trying to be a doctor. I believe that's the issue here...

If the govt did that, many many people won’t go to college, which is a terrible problem given the way we are set up.

My kids have two choices, and they both start with a K; KU (me) & KSU (wife). It has also better be engineering, hard sciences, accounting/actuary, or medical.

You’re looking at this too narrowly. If you want to work for McKinsey or an investment bank out of college, you go to an Ivy. That job alone can set you up for life if you play your cards correctly.

Some lucrative career tracks are very hard to get into without that name brand on your diploma.

> The second problem is people are paying way too much for a nearly useless degrees that some colleges offer

I agree with this but for many people I think they hit a wall whereby a degree is a minimum requirement for entry to a position even if everyone "knows" that it's not required.

In the UK this was made worse with a massive push for 50% of children to go to university [1] as a political target. Whilst that might've been a noble idea in principle, it further undermined apprenticeships and trade skills and led to the general public thinking if you don't go to university then there's something wrong with you. [2]

I did my first degree at Imperial "full time" and my second with the Open University 10 years later whilst earning - if I could do it all again I'd have gone straight into work and studied "part time" (I hate that phrase, it's really more like having 2 full time jobs IMO). The second time round I was also "paying as you go" for my courses which made me extremely mindful as to just what exactly it was costing me (FWIW it cost me about 20% of what my first one did and I was earning the entire time).

> Somewhere there should be a list of "Degrees you should not get if you're going to pay more than $x for" to help bright-eyed high school kids make good decisions.

Unfortunately I think even if such a list existed the people that need to actually read and think about it wouldn't be aware or interested in it. Of the 18 - 21 year olds I've talked to recently, aside from the aspiring medics and hopeful academics, a bunch of them view university as a time to work out what they want to do. That was ok 30 years ago but I think they're in for an extremely expensive lesson.

Then again hope for many millennials about the long term future is at an all time low so why even think about it. [3]

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1789500.stm

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/nov/02/parents-app...

[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/wages-have-fallen-43-...

Happy to see another Wildcat around here!