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Comment by glangdale | Hacker News Reader

The standard criticism of Christensen's work on disruption is that it applies better to products sold to business than those sold to consumers. The perennial failure of Apple to die as per his predictions is a case in point.

He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late. I haven't heard that much hype about MOOCs lately, presumably because the dire completion rates have cleared out the hype circa 2013.

It wouldn't surprise me if he's right, but not for the right reasons. Half of US colleges could go bankrupt in 10-15 years simply because they don't really provide a good education. They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class.

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> They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class.

A lot of people say this, but a College Education has an excellent ROI when you look at median earnings of college graduates vs median earnings of high school graduates.

Some majors such as accounting and engineering offer even better ROIs. Some entire industries, such as Education, are almost entirely blocked to someone without a college degree. Lifelong earning numbers are correlation and not causation. We've all meet great engineers that did not complete college. Still, as long as college graduates are out earning high school graduates by significant amounts colleges will not have to worry about attracting new students.

You mention correlation and causation here already, but perhaps you should take it further? A typical college graduate has considerably more factors in their favor to the typical high-school-only graduate even before accounting for the effect of an education.

The big question is, given a particular student, will they do better with a college education? I think the answer is probably 'yes' if they are able enough to go to a decent (not necessarily stellar) school. However, there is a vast educational hinterland offering terrible courses to weak students. These are propped up by subsidies and the idea that "any college education is better than none".

> The big question is, given a particular student, will they do better with a college education?

Maybe, it's really hard to measure. I suspect a good not great college is a very good way to improve a particular person's life, but not the absolute optimal use of four years and about $30,000.

While this question is really important for individuals to ask, I don't think this question is going to destroy institutions of higher learning. I think a lot of people will still take the relatively safe path of completing a four year degree.

I absolutely agree with you about "good not great" colleges probably working out pretty well for people. I would imagine that these will survive. It's the bottom half/third/quarter (not sure how far it will hit) that will have problems, in my opinion.

Most bottom performing companies will have problems, especially on industry downsides.

One crucial thing I think colleges often offer that helps, on top of the education of course, is the college connections with the business community... which for the student may gain you access to things like employment internships and post-graduation job opportunities. As people in college are often just starting out in their career path, I feel that these college features often give a person quite the leg up in forming your career experience / business network / etc.

Of course, some colleges don't really have a good placement rate or other connections with the business community. I wouldn't be surprised if you are right, and colleges of this sort, that provide poor quality, eventually do go bankrupt.

One interesting question is how many of those higher earners might have been happy to earn less if they didn't have that debt. Earnings might not be the only important variable, like how GDP is not necessarily a measure of happiness.

That last paragraph was what I was expecting this article to be about. Anecdotal, but I've seen fewer and fewer really intelligent kids going to college right after highschool. The ones that are able to pick up coding early just don't bother. They get hired through their family's network and leverage those jobs to learn what they actually need to know in less time. With the largest corporations ditching degree requirements, I only see that trend continuing. I'd love to see data on Google employee's education levels over time.

> The ones that are able to pick up coding early just don't bother. They get hired through their family's network

Heh. Indeed. Only an idiot would be born into a family without a strong professional network ;-)

Less sardonically, I did have this option after high school (although not through a family network). Fortunately, I took full advantage before finishing school and did a ton of freelancing plus an internship. I noticed, before it was too late, that the sort of software engineering work available without a degree was not going to keep me happy for 30+ years.

This is the advice I give bright young students (as opposed to those who merely have family connections): make certain that you're not going to become unbelievably bored by your late 20s.

If you can get a job doing web dev out of high school, you can land a job doing something super fun like self-driving after college and you can write your own job description with a phd.

Your advice is good for kinda dumb kids from well-networked families, but IMO terrible advice for actually really intelligent kids. They will become super bored with the sort of software development that's available without spending a few years getting a good university-level grounding in mathematics and natural sciences. You can do that without going to college but it's still a four-year full time job...

> I'd love to see data on Google employee's education levels over time.

I think you'd be disappointed; Google hires a ton of Ph.Ds and recruits heavily from tippy-top universities.

I was born on the west side of Chicago, grew up in Englewood. I got my first job at 14 at the grocery store my mother worked at as a clerk. I worked there for two years before I convinced the owner to let me look at their inventory system. I didn't even get paid extra for that job, he led me to another job where I got to do some web design and got paid right around the minimum wage. And if I hadn't taken that job? No funds for college, no idea that I was actually smart enough to go, etc.

You don't need a "strong professional network" to have your family help you find work, and I take offense to the implication that only affluent people have the means to support each other. There's no one stopping "bright young students" from getting their shoes dirty and finding someone who needs real work done. God knows there are enough kids already pushed away from programming by the elitist attitude you're displaying here. Most people can't afford to worry about what's "boring", they're focused on making sure they can survive. A degree is an expense that can be delayed until it's necessary.

I'm glad you got lucky.

> You don't need a "strong professional network" to have your family help you find work

No, but it certainly helps. Especially software development work.

Regarding the rest, your original comment singles out "really intelligent kids". I was largely replying to that description.

In general, advising people who fit that model to prematurely optimize so early in life is doing them a huge disservice.

A "really intelligent kid" can get college mostly paid for through scholarships and have the world at their feet after graduating.

The urge to take that dev job after high school is strong (been there), but it's generally a huge net loss for someone who is actually "really intelligent".

> Most people can't afford to worry about what's "boring"

I'm very concerned by your attitude that folks from modest means aren't capable of boredom, aren't capable of burnout.

I'm also saddened by the fact that you seem to take offense toward encouraging "really intelligent kids" to actually use that raw intellect just because they happen to come from a modest background.

> Most people can't afford to worry about what's "boring", they're focused on making sure they can survive

Isn't the point that kids (transitioning to adults) who can get the good jobs without college are going to be out of the "just trying to survive" category? They'll make enough money that they have time, and they are bright enough and motivated to learn enough that they are likely to get bored.

A better response would be that autodidacts are more likely to keep learning on their own, and therefore have less need of a college degree to develop the skills for self-driving car work or whatever else.

Yeah, more or less what I was getting at but I bit the throwaway bait. Live and learn. Thanks for clarifying.

I don't think there is a big trend at Google or Facebook or wherever to hire younger and younger people; in fact, if you look at core infrastructure at these companies, it's filled with people with more than an undergraduate degree and lots of experience. Sure, there are the occasional brilliant kids whom you can hire early, but many people benefit from formal, structured schooling.

> It wouldn't surprise me if he's right, but not for the right reasons. Half of US colleges could go bankrupt in 10-15 years simply because they don't really provide a good education.

Another reason (probably several) is that at the moment school education in the US is pretty bad. Private and even average US universities are usually decent at filling those gaps. Even mediocre universities (as long as they are inexpensive), can provide some benefits because they have to compete and convince parents that their money is not going to be completely wasted.

Improve schools so most graduating kids have a decent general education and experience in 2-3 STEM technologies of choice (which I bet we could achieve during 13 years of school) and suddenly the number of people who want to spend another 4 years at Podunk U shrinks a lot more. My 2c.

> He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late.

This consulting firm advertisement is a very useful mental model, and I think MOOCs are probably on their way up and out of the trough of disappointment into the plateau of productivity: https://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/files/2017/08/E...

This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html

> This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html

This is a good dataset. It's important to remember that while the top 100 schools dominate the conversation around college, many many students go to smaller or non-selective schools that have a very different setup.

The only way I see that happening is if Harvard, or a school of similar class/reputation figures out a way to open up their classes to everybody who could get a degree regardless of where they live. Nobody would get a Uof[STATE] degree if for the same price they could get a degree from MIT or Harvard without leaving their home town. Both of these are important - it doesn't matter how much lecture hall space Harvard magically builds this summer (magic - there is not enough physical space on their campus without magic) as going to classes in Massachusetts is not an option for some people. Likewise, cost is sometimes a factor keeping students to a different university.

Online learning has made great strides, but it doesn't seem like it is at that level.

But why Harvard would do that? The whole point of Harvard degree is that not everybody can get it, actual education value is not as important.

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