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Comment by kevintb | Hacker News Reader

I strongly disagree. Elite colleges are all about signaling. But I don't doubt for a second that my CS degree taught me an enormous amount - some skill-building, lots of abstract thinking - that I wouldn't have been able to achieve as quickly as anywhere else.

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Most colleges aren't elite. The vast majority of college graduates do not go to elite colleges. It's myopic to think of elite schools as "all schools" as so many articles do.

Seriously, rankings are so pointless. I personally value someone's skills, not what institution they obtained them from. I guess for our society's elite, it's their version of keeping up with Joneses. Or maybe the upper class feels the need for their kids to get elite credentials to compensate for a lack of any real skill. I don't know how motivated I'd be in life, if I didn't have to work to support myself. So in that sense, I do have some empathy for people in that position.

There are "elite schools". But there are also sub-par, "diploma mill" schools.

The majority of colleges are probably in the middle, doing their best to teach the majority of students. However, the institution does matter.

Okay but how about this: Say you actually dropped out of your degree one day before completing it. Skillwise you are almost the same but your compensation will take a drastic hit on average.

It's not a good inference from the employer's perspective that he is skillwise almost the same. The dropout happened for a reason, i.e. he was not on track to meet the degree requirements, which at least creates doubt about the underlying skill.

What does it say about a person who makes such a catastrophically stupid and easily avoidable decision? Will they decide to treat your big launch day like their degree, and bug out the day before never to be seen again?

Yes, this is signaling, but really useful signaling. School can provide both signaling and skills.

Yeah because how many people that are good enough to complete a degree drop out one day before completing it?

Not if the employer is rational, and instead simply asks to see your transcripts. A list of courses completed (with grades) from a respected school is much more informative about someone's skills than a degree.

Credentialism is a poor surrogate for showing your work.

As someone who completed four years of college but did not receive my degree because of one unfulfilled requirement, this is true.

However, it is a temporary phenomenon. Within 5 years I was earning on par with my colleagues who had their diplomas, and today I manage and out-earn people with degrees.

I am absolutely certain that the skills and knowledge I gained in college were essential to my career. So if the question is whether college is useful minus the credential, count me as an enthusiastic yes.

The first job after college seems huge to young folks but it really does not matter in the long run. I can't think of a single person I know over 40 who is doing the same thing today that they did out of college. In some cases the job or industry did not even exist when they graduated.

College education gives you the opportunity to built a base foundation that will serve your whole life, which is (hopefully) long. Who knows what the world and jobs will look like 30 years from now.

Having gone to 2 of the top 5 US CS programs, I would have likely learned more about CS as an autodidact vs learning from researchers, barely speaking English, dragged kicking and screaming into doing lectures they visibly couldn't care less about. It did give me direct access to FAANG though, which was convenient and I wouldn't have gotten from some random community college. It goes back to credentialing and signaling IMO.

Perhaps for you; not for my experience.

Also, you get as much as you put in. I’ve had plenty of awful professors but found ways to study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers on top of the curriculum I was learning. You can’t expect to passively receive the best possible education by top notch teachers, especially in research institutions.

Lastly, your first sentence neatly proves my point that elite/“top 2” programs are more about signaling and working for a FAANG. Not everyone judges the worth of their career by salary or proximity to a FAANG, and I would consider it extremely wasteful and sad if someone considered the biggest benefit of a top tier CS education to be landing a FAANG job.

> study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers

You mean, the stuff you can do without enrolling? Yeah, that's the point.

I've had plenty of awful professors, too, but some of the best I had were excellent researchers, both mid- or late career or just out of grad school themselves.

Not sure what that means.

I don't have an opinion on the benefits of schools and degrees, since I don't have one, but I am sure you could have gone work for FAANG after 4 years of autodidact learning and work experience, as well.

Came here to post this. I did my undergrad at an obscure state university with relatively low admissions standards. I learned a shitload. Could I have done that on my own? In theory, yes. In practice, I’d already been doing that throughout high school and, while that gave me a good foundation with the basics for college and let me skip past the Programming 101 stuff, it never came anywhere close to the rigor and focus I got in a formal setting.

People seem to forget that the vast majority of college grads didn’t go to an Ivy League school.

It's completely possible to acquire CS skills in much less time elsewhere.

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