College is Overrated
mikekarnj.com
mikekarnj.com
I'll agree that there are a lot of degrees that have a low benefit to cost & time ratio (liberal arts, political science, etc.) where the statement probably applies well, but it is inaccurate for professions like medical doctors, electrical engineers, nuclear physicists, lawyers, and similar specializations.
Could Brin/Page or anyone, for that matter, have come up with a Google without finishing an undergrad degree in CS and some graduate Studies at a school like Stanford? Very unlikely. Google required a bit more than creativity. It required great hacking and also knowledge of the complexity in information retrieval problems which you didn't get back then with online lectures (what lectures?) on dial-up, etc.
Meanwhile, Facebook as great as a company that it is, mostly borrowed ideas and tweaked them a bit with "exclusivity," a clean design, etc. Not saying that isn't admirable, but yes, it doesn't require graduate level work, just creativity and a lot of hard work to get jumpstarted. And I bet Zuckerberg didn't start hiring high school dropouts/grads to help him scale his site, etc. Surely there were a few, but I doubt they accounted for many.
So if you want to build the next Facebook, you better be hard-working, smart, and creative.
If you want to build the next Google, you better be that and learn about the next challenges in machine learning, information retrieval, data parallelism, etc. And that more than likely requires that you learn it from the experts--ie, more than likely not your average college/high school dropout.
That being said, if you have the determination, patience, and drive to extract such education yourself by means of books, practice, and mentors, why should you not be allowed to become a Doctor, a Nuclear Physicist, or an Architect?
Our educational system is broken, a degree doesn't mean scoot, and everyone should be able to take a test (of various tests actually) to prove that he posses the skills and knowledge to do a job. I understand not letting a 20 year old operate on a patient because he passed an exam, but if the kid passed a standardized exam that proves he has the knowledge and capability to become a resident, why shouldn't he be able to? The same applies to all careers that are potentially 'dangerous', the requirements should be simple, pass an exam and get some experience under a mentor (via an internship, paid or unpaid).
By the way, if you guys are really into the topic, then you should check out Skillshare's latest project on Kickstarter, an animated video (one of those kinetic typography types) about the impending Student Loan Crisis: http://kck.st/d0MG8o
I can think of no other social construct or institution that provides as many broad avenues for personal growth as college (2). Children are limited by their lack of sufficient socialization, professionals and laborers are obligated to focus constantly if not narrowly, and those who have committed to marriage or parenthood pour energy into their loved ones.
College is not life's panacea, nor, I hope, is it the best time of your life, but it certainly can be more than just a bad bet.
(1) Let's not forget bottles, bongs, bottoms, and beats.
(2) There are plenty of alternatives for the intrepid.
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>All the data I can find at least suggests that it does.
It can lead to a higher salary or better career. But you can't pretend, as people are wont to do, that all college degrees are made equal. A degree in science or engineering or medicine is probably a pretty solid investment. A degree in grievance studies probably isn't.
There are a whole bunch of majors that used to be feeders for law school, but the hiring market for new lawyers has collapsed.
But non-technical people with no degree are not very easily employable at all, at least outside the service industry. A nontechnical person with a generic B.A. gets qualified for all sorts of office jobs, like most companies' HR departments, many jobs in advertising, etc., that are closed to the same nontechnical person with only a high-school diploma.
That's like saying an MD is easiest to do without if you're looking to be something other than a doctor. Coders are not Computer Scientists. It's like comparing a physicist to an electrician. Being a good coder is a craft much, much more than it is a science. While I'm very tired of college being a requisite for middle class lifestyle in the US, I also feel like these threads wind up being areas where people write off the CS degree as unnecessary without applying enough context.
Career-wise, if you're looking to do research in computing, computational theory, develop novel algorithms, solve deep problems on the frontier of what it means to be "computable", or just effectively reinvent your own wheel and prove that it works..CS is still VERY relevant to this end.
While I don't perceive CS as a program to inherently producing good coders, I also don't perceive the generic good coder as someone I'd turn to to help me create novel algorithm (read no prior documentation, no prior code, very little academic work) to solve a previously unsolved problem. Look at Facebook and Google...Google at its early form and Facebook as it reconciled its data into the form of the social graph while wrangling a huge codebase...do you think they got where they were by hiring armies of people who were "good coders" that decided to forgo the foundations of algorithms and Computer Science? No way. Thus, if this kind of work what you want as a career path, the CS degree is still very relevant as its topics can be very relevant to your career's future.
TLDR: Are good coders very employable? Very yes. Does that mean that CS is readily discarded for all as a good career move? I likely think not.
I agree with the rest of your post.
But I'm not sure that a CS bachelor's is actually as a career move necessary for that. Most people with CS bachelor's degrees do not get researchy jobs, or even vaguely algorithm-creation jobs; and many of the companies doing algorithm-type stuff (you mention Facebook) are the most willing to hire people without degrees. The vast majority of jobs for CS majors are programming jobs, though; that's who hires and is looking for the degree, and where most majors end up. If anything there's pressure on CS programs to move more towards preparing them better for that career path--- more C++, more software engineering, more team projects, less theory.
You're probably right, from a technical standpoint, but it's going to be far easier to get that first professional gig if you have a CS degree.
So college might be suited for some people, and not others. But just because it doesn't suit some people, it doesn't mean that the statement 'College is overrated' is true per se.
Well, it can. Though to me college is mostly my gateway to the careers I think I will enjoy and the knowledge & skills I desire.