Elon Musk says college is 'basically for fun and not for learning'

First, Elon Musk has an incredibly skewed version of the world.

Second, for people without educated parents (which most people who go to college can't comprehend because most people going to college had parents who also went to college), I believe a STEM education has way more value and you do in fact learn valuable things in programming, electronics, biology, chemistry, etc. from experienced people very very rapidly. It's hard finding good intro books on your own, and even harder finding people with expertise who can answer questions (if you look at a circuit and wonder what one particular capacitor is doing, it can be a rabbit hole).

Third, software, is (perhaps an unpopular opinion), not that hard to pick up. You can basically Google everything. Using Google you can even solve problems in languages you don't know. A ton of people do this. That's also part of why you see so many people programming who don't have a C.S. degree. I personally don't have a C.S. degree and feel like a lot of the projects I work on I would have been capable of learning back on middle school. You don't need years of scaffolding like you do in in physics, where each year they layer on more math and theory until they finally build up to the ability to grasp the concept you're interested in.

I think if you want to be a chemical engineer and you don't go to college, you're going to have a bad time. Same for physics. Same for electrical engineering.

For the humanities (and I'm lumping in software, because for Christ's sake, we even call them languages), I'm not really certain college provides much education. The real value is getting hired by a tech company that requires a degree (for the actual humanities... not even that I imagine).

At the expense of playing devil's advocate for most responses in this thread, I really disagree with this statement. I went to a reasonably good (top 25) state school. I studied a lot of hard science: physics, astronomy, CS, math. I can wholeheartedly say that without the structure and rigor of college I would not have learned as much as I did. Sure, I might not use all that knowledge in my personal day-to-day, but it is a lot more complete than if I had tried to teach it to myself.

On top of that, colleges really were the place to find information prior to the internet. Maybe Musk's statement is more relevant today, but in previous generations you needed something like a university to do research (try looking for physics journals that are up to date at your local library).

Last, Musk's actions speak louder than his words: most of his companies' jobs currently require degrees, they mostly recruit from tier 1 universities, and Musk himself _completed_ 2 degrees, and started a third. Obviously he values the signalling a degree grants.

All of this to say that despite that, some of the best developers I know have little or no formal education. So the caveat is true: you don't necessarily need a degree to learn and be successful in the modern day for at least some (or maybe many) things, I just personally find a lot of value in a formal education.

(Sorry for any poor grammar, just had LASIK done and its a little hard to see)

Warning: I'm a salty dropout from an incredibly bad Computer Science program at a private Iowa school.

> The main value of college, he said, is to be found in proving discipline by completing “annoying homework assignments” and in hanging around with people of the same age before entering the workforce.

In my anecdotal experience, I find this statement to be incredibly true. Effectively it was party and do the busywork it takes to get by in your classes from professors who have lived the majority of their professional life in academia. They berated me for learning web dev because, "web software just won't be a thing" - this is in 2005-6ish where it absolutely was already.

I worked in-industry at the time as a rookie sysadmin and web developer. It was a huge waste of my time to go to school vs. spending time learning on my own through my career and personal projects. I know this doesn't apply to all trades - I've always been focused on web development, automation, and ecommerce. Those were/are incredibly easy to self-learn if you enjoy it (even in 2005ish when I was in school)!

I resent my schooling because I had a FT job with real responsibilities, living at home helping to support my cancer patient mother (bio dad died years prior), and trying to keep my head above water socially/academically. As someone saddled with responsibility I felt I was in a playground for children riddled with booze, partying, and sex while professors demeaned my career telling me to "not to write software for the internet". It was bad.

College was valuable for me, even though I didn't study CS. And I suspect it is valuable for many, for the same reasons.

It forced me to study and practice many things that I would not have done on my own: mostly writing, tons of writing.

And there are a lot of other subjects that, had I not been forced, I would mostly have never been exposed to.

I agree with Musk's point, but I think he should have been more clear: most people treat college as 'basically for fun and not learning.'

I personally got a hell of a lot out of my degree, but I was working my ass off, and studying with focused interest. I was working in the field I was studying full time as well.

For me, college was a way to be forced to study topics I would not have chosen to study on my own. I think most people are like that, and that's why forced curriculums can be beneficial in some way. Do I think college as it is today is the best way to achieve this? No I do not.

I think so much about university is just a waste, and the cost just keeps skyrocketing. Most people are not serious academics, and that's honestly what it takes to do well in university. Are you a person who is deeply, seriously, curious and will just read book after book after book? Good, go to college. If you are not, then you'll be better off learning some other way (catch, there is no other way right now, but there should be!)

If you extend this to its logical conclusion, then he’s claiming that there is no value in teaching. Put another way: learning by yourself is equally effective and efficient as learning from an expert.

I think anyone with a trade (like plumbing) or an engineering degree would wholeheartedly disagree. At some point, you don’t know what you don’t know, and your own biases will blind you to the full breadth of any topic.

Perhaps with lots of wealth, we’d all have enough time to teach ourselves advanced skills, try them out, and learn from mistakes, but most people don’t have that luxury. College gives that framework to everyone who can attend.

Well, yes for the most part you can self learn anything they teach you in college and even universities and yoir information would be even much more to date. But the problem is not just with the material you have to learn. But the discipline. Not many people posses the discipline needed to self study and college provide the framework for people to at least have a schedule. Albeit an expensive disciplinary measure.

For me the most valuable part of college was discovering how much I liked computer science. If I had picked a career when I was 17 it would not have been software engineer. Once I was in college, it was pretty simple to take a computer science class to see if I liked it, and I really did like it, even more than I had enjoyed teaching myself to program during my k-12 years. When I got bored with my original choice of major, it then seemed like a good idea to switch into computer science, and I’ve been happy with that choice ever since.

It is a shame that college is so expensive, but to me the real problem is people taking out loans to go through degree programs that don’t give you a high expected income. If you take on a lot of loans to get a CS degree from MIT, it’s probably going to be a worthwhile investment. If you take on those same loans to get a philosophy degree from Tulane, it’s a bad idea.

This seems to be far more true now. Thirty or forty years ago, there was no other easy way to get access to a professional-level computer and software that one could write programs with. These days, of course, one can pretty much have it for free, along with a wealth of educational material.

In addition, for people that had motivation problems, a University is a nice framework for forcing yourself into working through a lot of not-always-interesting material.

That said, if I was graduating high school today, I'd probably already have five or ten years of solid learning and programming experience, and just join a startup directly rather than trudging through a BS.

In India it is to fulfill the ego of professors nothing more. Unlike America professors are paid lower than the industry and those who can't get jobs in Industry become professors and treat students like slaves. I did not understood while in college but now i get it, it is a coping mechanism for incompetence. One good thing about Corono is that it forces online education like the recent MIT online classes, hope this will set a chain reaction and take the monopoly on education from traditional colleges.

not so sure. the way of thinking i got from university professors has been invaluable. it is the meta-skills that count

For those that are interested in the intellectual version of this argument, its basically this book:

> Case against Education: Why Our Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

It is basically a deep dive on the point 'you get a stamp on your head' rather then 'you learned these skills'.

I feel that. I've had no trouble learning the skills I've needed to succeed in the workplace, but I wish I'd gone to college for the social environment and the girls and the connections. The stuff I'm NOT good at on my own, basically.

Of course it is. But you go for the checkbox item for interviews. That's why you save as much and penny pinch. Also don't fall into the trap that schools have your best individual interests in mind. They just want your money and nickle and dime you at EVERY corner.