Comment by snide | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snide | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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

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.

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.

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