> I think grads are much more likely to possess these skills for sure, but I would guess that a large percentage of grads don't possess these skills either (at least in my experience).I agree with this assessment. Even some top-tier CS programs seem to routinely graduate students with poor writing skills and sub-par cultural awareness.
I always recommend to interns that they take some writing-intensive courses, and possibly even pick up a minor in a writing-intensive field like English or Philosophy. And then not just take the course, but also use what they learned to write about things free time they way they (should be) writing code outside of their CS courses.
I think a lot of the strong disagreement in HN re: the value of college basically boils down to the huge amount of variety in the college experience.
Surprisingly, this variety has less to do with the quality of the institution and more to do with the quality/preparedness of the student.
A good litmus test for whether someone is wasting college might be to ask the question: what did you read/build/do this semester outside of your courses that used stuff you learned in your curses during the last year or so?
The less impressive the answer to that question, the more likely it is the student should maybe think about leaving college until they're ready to fully engage.
(Obviously, that litmus test only makes sense for full-time undergraduate students... for working students, it might be something more like "how are you using what you're learning in your day job".)