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This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there.

I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was heartbreaking. Anything design related involved drawing classes.

I dropped out mostly because I was too disheartened by what college was and didn't end up going to class. I was instead hacking in my dorm room on HTML, CSS and Photoshop. When I dropped out it led to immense guilt in relation to my family, who very lovingly had done everything they could to set me up to succeed. It was only a year later when I had a surprisingly decent pay check to show my parents that they didn't consider me unmotivated.

College isn't for everyone. It's especially not good if you know what you want to do and have mastered some manner of self-learning. For those of us that figure that stuff early, it's much better to just jump into the work and figure it out. In those ways I somewhat value a good high school as more important to college. It was there that I learned to learn and could explore my interests in a well-rounded curriculum.

I'm conflicted about how I'll deal with the scenario when my own kids grow up. I married a teacher, and speaking for myself I do very much value liberal arts educations. I just think a lot of those introductions need to be provided in High School, with secondary education focused more towards whatever your career is. If you don't know what that career is yet, I think potentially waiting a couple years to go to secondary education (be it college or trade school) till you know is a better bet.

My big takeaway is there isn't some magic formula for this. Everyone is different and we shouldn't pressure certain paths.

Counterpoint, being exposed to other people's ideas within your discipline of choice is important. You learn a lot faster when you're plugged into a network of brains that are all generally oriented in the same direction. College isn't the only place to find a good network of brains to plug into for your field, but it is convenient, and the barrier to entry (rapidly less so) is relatively low.

> , but it is convenient, and the barrier to entry (rapidly less so) is relatively low.

Quite the opposite. The barrier to entry of being required to spend 10s of thousands of dollars per year is extremely high and has only been increasing over the last 2 decades.

Perhaps college would have been the best option for getting a "well rounded education" at it's price point a couple decades ago, when it was 1/4th the cost.

But at current prices? I strongly doubt it is the most cost effective way of acquiring that service.

What do you mean? Collage and University is free. You only have to pay for study material and rent! And the Government provide you with free studygrants and loans at an affordable rate and payback plan.

I am not sure what country you are from (or if you are being sarcastic?), but it is definitely not America.

If you have to go 100K into debt, this is a huge barrier to entry. It means that only rich people, or those who are willing to shackle themselves into debt, can afford to go to college.

It's the norm in Europe. I was taking a jab at you guys implicit understanding that university cost a lot, it doesn't in half of the western world.

I was in a similar situation then went back to college and finished up later after I already had the job in software development I was hoping to get from college in the first place. I probably have a very non-typical experience, though I did try college straight out of high school and dropped. Now of course I'm going for a master's for a career switch, and am much more motivated...but that's unrelated.

I think there's a lot of value in learning to work. And you can have ambition and grow yourself with or without college. For my kids, I'd be perfectly happy if they want to go to a trade school or to do something entirely different (like being a stay at home mom, or serving overseas for the peace corp, or whatever). What matters more to me is that they approach life from a perspective of learning and growing, that they have ambitions, and that they are kind and loving people.

Many people learn to do that from college, and that's great for them. For me, I really wanted to learn, but in the end was for a piece of paper. Like many hyped things in life, it seems overrated. Still good...but if you're the type that is already constantly learning, growing, reading, and self motivated, college doesn't offer a lot that you can't get outside of it.

I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts.

It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding was a recommended book to get you started.

That said, a lot of collages had real issues teaching computers in the 90’s. Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing. So many schools tried to shuffle students into other departments.

> Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing.

And, from my experience being part of that skyrocketing enrollment, quite a lot of them wanted to learn to "make stuff" and were complaining well into their third and fourth years that they weren't learning how to "do anything" in their computer science classes, since it was mostly theory.

The thing is, they were teaching theory because that's the harder stuff to pick up on your own. Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not that hard, and there are online resources and plenty of books. Want to learn how to make some particular thing? harder, but also mostly doable from self study. But what would spur someone to learn theory of computation topics, or how to do algorithm complexity and runtime assessment? That's the sort of stuff that really benefits from a knowledgeable instructor, and only a small percentage of self-taught people will likely stumble into learning. Computer science is a science, and that's what they teach in school. It also makes you a better programmer, but it pays off in small ways over many years through more intricate knowledge, instead of front-loading all the gains into making you passable right now. That the better solution for some people, but not all.

I have been able to stumble into it by tracing down jargon and reading textbooks.

> Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not that hard, and there are online resources and plenty of books.

This is why I always find myself skeptical of boot camp type programs. So many of them seem focused on specific tools: node plus react! rails plus angular! etc. On the other hand getting a top down view of things is also useful. But I think this is what I enjoyed about my college program; there was time for both. Bottom up theory can seem pointless and unmotivated, and top down practicum can be hard to extend and generalize. The combination is powerful.

How am I supposed to know that the classes will get better? Why should I spend my very valuable time in classes that don't challenge me in the way I want?

Be proactive.

You can look up the required courses for your major/minor to get a listing, then look up corse descriptions in a course catalog, and even look up the books associated with each class.

If that’s to hard talk to seniors with the major you’re considering to get an idea what’s ahead. I even sat through an upper level class in high school to see if I wanted to get an engendering or CS degree.

Parent evidently came from a college preparatory school. Since most high schools don’t actually prepare students for college, freshman and sometimes sophomore year are remedial education for those unfortunates. Anyone who attended a prep school is going to be bored out of their skull by that crap. As far as I can tell the solution is to allow opting out of the remedial classes, but they are a profit center so good luck. APs help a bit, but not nearly enough.

That’s what AP classes are for in the US. Well prepared students end up skipping most of their first year classes. Though some schools are very picky https://oue.fas.harvard.edu/apexams

Can high schoolers still test out of college intro courses with high AP test scores? I came into college with a semester’s worth of credits via AP tests and started in some 102 classes.

My college also offered two flavors of popular intro courses... like there was Intro to Biology for people who wanted a taste of it, and a different Intro to Biology for people who intended to major in biology.

I'd argue that expansive view should be coming way, way earlier than high school.

How about before you beat the curiosity and sense of wonder out of 5-8 year olds with times tables, memorizing the dates presidents were born, and repeating the word "prepositional phrase" a thousand times - that would be a good time to start.

Public education is fundamentally broken in this regard (except for the times tables, IMO much more time should be spent on math in-school vs homework).

History in the elementary school level seems near useless, aside from building reading comprehension skills.

I'd much rather see kids doing things in class that benefit from the use of multiplication, along with exposure to how to do it and arguments for using it, than to just lecture them on repeatedly writing 2x2=4 2x3=6 2x4=8 over and over for weeks.

I'm pretty sure in my own first grade experience that was the point where half the class started drifting towards the "I hate math" camp of now-adults.

Isn't this roughly the idea behind Montessori method?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

Also, math education in general has a huge problem around teaching solutions without teaching the problem. (Hence the pervasive question of what will I ever need this for...) I will always know what a limit does, because my precalculus teacher taught it by finding the area under a curve using rectangles. We started with large rectangles, were shown the error. Cut the rectangles in half, hey error goes down. Make them really really small, error goes down even more! What happens if we make them zero? Oops, equation explodes because zero-width rectangles also have zero area... The function is discontinuous at zero. So let's learn limits to work around discontinuous points of a function!

Should parents have no responsibility in this regard?

It isn’t the elementary school’s child.

They should but assuming it will "just work" is foolish.

If society wants universal capability instead of depending on parent ability and inclination (rather scattershot) the answer is yes they do have a responsibility.

Sure. But on a school day my kid spends around 7 hours at school. And only 3 awake hours with me. And in those 3 hours we also have to fit in breakfast, dinner, chores, and getting them ready for school. So maybe 1 hour of actual time where we can do something.

There are also weekends of course. But ultimately kids spend about as much time in school as they do with a (working) parent.

1. Kids also learn through play and downtime and simply going with the adult to do things.

2. Too much schooling is detrimental to learning.

3. Most parents aren't trained in teaching. If we expect a parent to teach a child formal stuff, perhaps we should train the parents on how to do these things.

Should we expect anything from parents, really?

An absurd percentage of people can't properly learn the simple task of driving even after taking classes and passing a state exam. How do you imagine these people to perform in the task of raising a human being, from an objective perspective? The answer is they suck. Terribly.

There is no accountability for a failure to raise a child well, so no, parents have no responsibility.

It is of course a conversation one could have on if parents should be held responsible.

Schools are the only force in childhood held even remotely accountable for the success of those children entering adulthood. Which is kind of where the desolation of inner city schools come from - the schools are punished for bad parenting, but have no real capacity (especially once punished via funding cuts) to do anything about it.

Flat out, you can't leave it to parents. For example, drivers have total responsibility for their vehicles, yet cars still have all sorts of safety measures that wouldn't be necessary if drivers simply drove perfectly and never crashed. It's an acknowledgement of human failure.

Parenting is the same. Not everyone is good at it, and it's in the best interests of society to raise kids to be as productive as possible even if (and especially when) their parents don't do a good job.

Public education has been a huge net positive for society over the last few hundred years. It used to be that most people couldn't even read; such people in the modern information economy would just be total drags on public resources. Better to have the state educate everyone as much as possible to ensure a talented, capable, intelligent workforce and society.

My kindergartener's at one of the best public elementary schools in our city. Great middle and high school in her future, too, assuming their quality holds out. Brand new building, too, first year in use.

They give them (the kindergarteners) twenty minutes of recess. Indoor recess, if the weather's bad, is often (part of) a movie. This is all day kindergarten, mind you, none of that half-day stuff.

Since school's largely in the Winter when the sun's up late and down early, and they're getting outside only about 20min a day, best guess is these kids are gonna have a lot of "ADHD" misdiagnoses and they're all gonna be badly nearsighted due to insufficient exposure to sunlight. The low-recess crap is incredibly unhealthy, in ways that will permanently harm many of these kids. Plus, you know, the whole obesity epidemic thing.

The school food's terrible, too. I think they've just done the same thing a lot of parents do and gone for whatever hyper-palatable crap they know the kids will eat (hungry or not) to reduce complaints (from parents—"my Sally just won't eat vegetables! She's going to starve!").

[EDIT] point being yes, schools' priorities—even the "good" ones—are totally messed up starting the very first year they have the kids.

The person you replied to also doesn't mention that just because you attend a trade school doesn't mean you can't acquire an expansive world view on your own, again more stigma that is indicated in the article.

Why wouldn't a linesman, electrician or carpenter be able to self educate? We live in the day and age of the internet, the largest store of human knowledge ever to exist is a few clicks and an inquisitive mind away.

I understand that college exposes you to things you might not have otherwise been exposed to, and provides teachers and mentors to facilitate the learning of that material. But if you attend college with the end goal of getting a degree to cash in for a paycheck like so many college age people do and you're not motivated to actually learn the material you're exposed to in any meaningful way and that information isn't retained then what's the point? Certainly that's not all college kids but I'd argue the vast majority are only there because they believe it to be a ticket to the middle class.

I'm a self-taught software engineer who never finished college, so the trade school stigma hits home. I certainly strive to be as educated and productive as possible in my life and career - and so far that path hasn't held me back at all. I'm employed, highly paid and fairly happy, I just chose not to receive that education in the confines of the classroom

College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college.

Not because college is wonderful, but more because you cant get unsecured loans to sit at home and read.

(Also, pet peeve: these conversations often compare highly motivated and indepenhdent people who take the no college route to slackers who attend college.

I never see anyone pointing out the fact that highly motivated and independent people who do opt for college often do much better than they could've without the degree. Often in tippy top status/comp finance, medicine, and tech poaitions.

College doesn't make sense for everyone, but IMO it paradoxically makes the most sense for people who don't need it to enter technical fields like SWE. Because those are the ones who will end up on fast tracks after graduating that would be difficult to get on without the degree)

I guess that the approach may matter a lot...I worked and paid cash for college (and still am with my graduate degree), so my time has never really been flexible while I'm taking classes.

If I had time now to learn and do whatever I wanted, it'd probably be a huge time of growth with or without college. I guess that combination of taking courses of what you're interested in, and then also being able to study as a hobby, could be really useful.

> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning

This is only true for situations where you live on campus, and your parents give you an allowance for anything not included in tuition. Many, many students have to work while going to school.

Classes + part-time work can easily add up to the same amount of time one spends on a full time job.

Even in that case you're still spending 20 hours a week on classes. I dont know about you, but I couldn't sustain 40 working hours + 20 working hours for 4 ywars.

Also, there's a qualitative difference between a job and a part time gig. my part time jobs in early college were trivial and required no mental, no emotional effort, and no outside of work skills development. My part time jobs in late college were mostly tutoring, which was doubly good becayse I reviewed material and also I could do less of it because it paid well.

In any case, at the very least the combo of part time and no mental/emotional/professional devlopment effort makes a huge difference. At least IME.

> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college.

Sure. But don't you think that there could hypothetically be better ways of doing this, without spending 10s of thousands of dollars per year?

Maybe there is a better "not a college" - college type experience that is more effective at achieving these started goals, for less money.

Not really anything that scales, although that may just be a lack of imagination. College could be cheaper, though. It is in most countries. Not just at point of purchase but also in the absolute number of dollars spent sense as well

College only provides TIME if you're part of a privileged class of people who:

- Had parents who instilled strong academic achievement at an early age.

- are between the ages of 18 and 22 with no family to take care of, no serious medical conditions, and really no major financial obligations.

- are interested enough and have the mental aptitude to study a major that can justify sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

- are sound enough to make it through a sometimes very rough and volatile period of young adulthood and stay focused enough to actually learn the material.

College is a privilege, historically that's what college was, only recently did college become a ticket to the middle class in the minds of most people. I really think that attitude needs to change. In all honesty, I make more than enough money now to go back and finish my degree and I'd probably get a lot more out of college a second time around - because I'd be there to learn, not to try to get the biggest paycheck. The incentives for college these days are all wrong. We need more young people spending their earlier years learning how to actually provide concrete value for the market, once they earn the money, then they can go and get that foundational and expansive education - most of which will certainly better you as a person but you'll never actually use in any concrete way in your day to day life.

What I most keenly miss from college, and think self-education lacks, is the peer group.

In college I could sit with a group of 5, 10, or more people who have the background and interest to discuss a wide variety of topics at a high level, from world history to Shakespeare to calculus.

Online isn’t the same, and finding such a peer group outside school is much harder.

* We've lowered expectations and extended adolescence so much that we no longer expect 18 year olds to be mature and capable adults, which shouldn't be the case.*

I'm not even sure this is the case. We (Americans) don't allow an 18 year old to have any sort of alcohol without potentially ruining their adult lives. We didn't let folks vote until 21, but there was an issue with drafts and things. My mother remembers being excited that she was going to vote at 18 instead of 21 - my mother is almost 60. It wasn't that long ago that we didn't allow women to get loans without a spouse, brother, or father signing for it. Women were never really proper adults.

American parents can still be pretty decisive on a college student's ability to go to college simply by refusing to release tax returns to the student. I'm not even sure folks can go to school without them. They certainly won't get loans.

A young person's life is just barely their own at 18, and they don't have full rights of adulthood.

Neotony has been an absolutely integral aspect of homo sapiens’ evolution. We’re fine.

> general studies courses that make up that "expansive view" of college really are repeats of high school with slightly more work

My humanities courses in college were bona fide mind-expanding. The problem is many colleges run their programs more like trade schools, with zero emphasis on balance between the arts and sciences.

I wish mine were more so. It probably does depend a lot on the school.

I took Junior and senior level history classes to satisfy my social science elective requirements. I found them very interesting and enlightening.

I tutored a few people who took the sophomore level "world history" classes that most kids took to satisfy the requirements. Those sounded like little more than brutal rote memorization exercises.

For example, the journeyman was historically required to travel and broaden their skills to advance to master. Even today, breadth of experience remains an expectation for journeymen.

College has the time to add a lot more nuance. People graduate high school with relatively basic understanding of communication, history and economics - and those basic understandings aren’t enough to expose you to the nuances of the world. I’ve always felt like high school gives you just enough to have a very simple worldview, and college starts you on a path to realize that everything is more complicated than you thought.

It probably depends a lot on your high school and teachers. I had a unique high school experience in that I went to public school for two years and private school for two. The private school did a much better job of teaching those nuances, and challenged me 10x more than public school ever did. That probably says as much about the public school as the private school though, which just helps to support my point that we could be doing better.

I went to a way different private school where most of the sciences were a conspiracy against god and the church. Not all are equal (and most of the “school choice” debate is around govt money to pay for the science is the devil schools)

You can’t learn in high school what you can learn in college for two simple reasons: 1) there’s not enough time to learn it all, and 2) even if there was, the human brain does not work the same at 14 years old that it does at 18 years old.

And you don’t get an expansive view of human knowledge in “general studies courses,” you get it by taking a broad array of specialized courses. Again: takes time.

Trade schools are great for learning a trade but there is a lot more to life than a trade. There’s more to a society than who has a higher salary.