Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksolanki | Hacker News Reader

Free labor in exchange for education, contacts and a resume builder.

The idea sounds noble, in that, if such mentorship program is used in the right spirit, it could have a very positive impact on the youth's education and professional development. This sounds good on paper but I see potentially big downside with abuses. As a slightly related example, you could just look at the plight of illegal or early immigrants who end up working at below-market below-minimum wage jobs. If there are no laws to prevent such abuse of interns, people (read "market") would figure out a way to do just that. Such programs would help only in hands of right mentors.

I also tend to disagree on the notion of 35K a year wasted on college. College is much more education than education about a profession. It teaches kids social interaction, and gives them lifetime friends.

Edit: Corrected grammar.

View on HN

"It teaches kids social interaction, and gives them lifetime friends."

I guess I did it wrong. The only friends I have from college are the same ones I had before college. I have a few facebook acquaintances too, but it would be a stretch to call them friends.

Yes imho you did it very wrong.

I possibly did. I worked 3 jobs while mostly putting myself through school. My parents helped a bit in the first and second year, I took a semester out, and ended up taking out a student loan the last year (and still had some credit card debt as well).

I had friends in classes, and we'd hang out sometimes, but this notion of 'lifelong friends made in college' just doesn't seem to feel very real. It also doesn't seem to be the case for many of the people I know. Yes, they made friends in college, but for the most part those friendships have about the same impact as high school friends - typically, not much after you leave the shared space.

But perhaps I'm just too cynical...

It's not being cynical, it just wasn't the experience you had.

good point.

I had friends in classes, and we'd hang out sometimes, but this notion of 'lifelong friends made in college' just doesn't seem to feel very real

Same boat here. I worked year-round to put myself through state school, and lived at home (20 miles off campus). I had few peers in my CS program, most others had only casual interest. My friends who went to Berkeley made life-long friends by living in dorms and playing sports with fellow nerds.

One of the benefits of going to an elite school in an area you don't directly live in is that you are forced to make friends with the people around you. I'm confident that after I graduate I made some serious friends (and connections) here not only because I had the experience of being forced to socialize with a new group of people, but also that I know everyone else was in the same position.

I'd almost say that the network itself is worth the price I paid for college. Just looking at the people I know, I can probably connect myself to someone in any of the top 20 US schools in one or two degrees of separation. I assume this is how things like banking and executive networks are built, although that's not my field.

I don't buy the "social interaction" stuff one bit. Most of my college friends were also my nerd friends I met from being a large city and going to tons of networking events.

If you want, put your kid up in an apartment, do tons of networking in/out of their field of interest /and mentorship. Then let them figure out what to do after: be it a company, job or college.

College is one way of making great connections, but it's a really expensive way!

I agree that colleges are really expensive and they are getting more expensive by day. This still does not take away the fact that college education and, in larger context, the existence of (high-reputation) Universities, is vital to society. The solution is to make colleges less expensive somehow, not to replace colleges with unregulated mentorships (which as I said earlier, will be effective only in hands of good mentors). There are numerous countries where college education is highly subsidized by the Government (example, India, where I went to college -- paid a total of $120/year as fees, for a top college). Universities also employ many scientists as professors and have a very good research output, that certainly has a bearing on our scientific progress.

We were discussing Uni as useful to make connections (which it really isn't better than networking), so I don't at all want the research function to go away - the NSF/NIH should be subsidized with the money from the government education funding that used to indirectly fund them.

I also would contend, as studies show, that most Uni students come out without an appreciable increase in skills - compared with mentor/protege I think this underperforms society.

I have a couple friends from undergrad who are pretty tight. I really learned a lot in my undergraduate days as an education and in a social arena.

Programming I've taught myself, in general. =)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com