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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

> Maybe that's a European thing, because the mindset in the US is that college is a step towards a good career,

Really? In the USA, every single time I get into a discussion of the pros and cons of college with friends (or this week family) it starts out "they need to in order to get a good job!" and end with "well... how are they going to become a more well rounded person if they don't go?"

It's like clockwork, the unavoidable striking of midnight when they toss the ROI premise for the broaden the mind premise.

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>it starts out "they need to in order to get a good job!" and end with "well... how are they going to become a more well rounded person if they don't go?"

I've honestly never heard anyone say that outside of movies and tv. Maybe I don't come from a posh enough of a background that "becoming well rounded" is an option of equal consideration alongside earning a sustainable income. Sure, they're not always mutually exclusive, but let's be real; most people are going to college nowadays for a better career, not to be a renaissance man/woman. I would consider myself to be well positioned now after going to college for engineering and having almost a decade of work experience under my belt, but even the thought of going back to college for a subject I'm passionate about is just a pipe dream. It's expensive, time consuming and I'll probably have no pragmatic use for what I learn without a career change. I barely had enough time while in undergrad to focus on the core material, let alone add on an extra 25% workload to become "well rounded". Sure, I had to take some "intro to _______" courses, but I hardly consider that any sort of in depth knowledge. Is that what people consider a well rounded college experience? If so, I disagree.

> I've honestly never heard anyone say that outside of movies and tv.

I think that's part of the problem: Most of the people I'm talking to aren't doing a serious pro/con or staking out their future earnings based on their majors[1], or doing a serious evaluation of whether or not they come from a background that can afford such a posh take. Yet they are still repeating things they've essentially heard on movies and TV, probably to their detriment.

> most people are going to college nowadays for a better career, not to be a renaissance man/woman

I think you may be too optimistic or personally realistic when others are not so. It is much worse: Most people are going because movies/TV/peer pressure tell them they should go. They might say they're doing it for a better career, but they haven't thought that far ahead, not really. If they had, total US student debt would look very different.

[1] Lots of psych and communications. The people I talked to who are doing serious "is this worth it" calculations are doing nursing, or when I was in an engineering school, obviously that.

>Most people are going because movies/TV/peer pressure tell them they should go. They might say they're doing it for a better career, but they haven't thought that far ahead, not really

I agree, but that's even further away from going college to broaden the mind than for a lucrative career.

This article literally says that while going to university does not make you a more well-rounded person (if we use "well-rounded" as a proxy for "broadened mind"), working makes you a less well-rounded person.

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