Our most dazzling self-taught students may find college admission difficult | Hacker News Reader

Our most dazzling self-taught students may find college admission difficult

washingtonpost.com

58 pointswoldemariam56 comments

So the two people they described as autodidacts went to college but didn't get a degree. If you are an autodidact, then the entire point of college would be the degree because otherwise you can teach yourself the same information and save a bunch of money, right?

While I don't disagree with the author's point that people should have opportunities to go to college, I don't think this is a particularly applicable example.

> If you are an autodidact, then the entire point of college would be the degree

One of the most annoying parts of getting a degree was doing mandatory classes for stuff I had no interest in whatsoever, but it was core curriculum. Maybe they just couldn’t be bothered to complete the course? Tangentially, this is one of the biggest signals a degree gives to to employers: that you’re the type of person that will do things to completion, even if you don’t enjoy it or find it interesting. That’s a very good character trait in a work environment.

While I’m kind of with you that there are added barriers that don’t seem to make too much sense there’s a very real purpose to making you take something like a literature course while studying physics (for example).

Those added requirements are intended to make you a rounded, thinking human—not just a short circuit to more money and a comfortable life.

In my experience employers are caring less and less about a university degree.

What employers do love is pedigree in workshops. “We’re an ex- Googler, ex- Amazon, ex- Palantir, ex- Goldman Sachs” suddenly means the company is inexplicably inherently more valuable and trustworthy. Is it?

After 4 years of taking classes outside my areas of interest in HS, there was little benefit to doing so for another 4 years in college.

Pedigree is exactly the same type of empty credential as a college degree, though, and employers like it for the same reason. It allows the person who makes the inevitable bad hire to deflect blame when the "why did you hire this person?" question gets asked. Hire someone from Podunk State University, or Another Failed Startup and it will look like you have bad judgment. Hire someone from Harvard / Google, then it just gets chalked up to bad luck.

> One of the most annoying parts of getting a degree was doing mandatory classes for stuff I had no interest in whatsoever, but it was core curriculum.

This is a concept that only applies to certain schools.

... in certain countries.

Exactly this. I am an autodidact that built a long career in tech without college. Now that I am retired from tech, I'd love to get a degree, but US's model of spending four years taking a long list of superfluous classes just as a gate to learn the subjects I want is ridiculous. Why is the US curriculum stuck in an antiquated view of a "well-rounded" education?

> Why is the US curriculum stuck in an antiquated view of a "well-rounded" education?

It's not. See my comment above.

I'd love to know a school in the US where I could get a graduate degree without having to waste 2+ years on mandatory pre-req classes that have nothing to do with the education and degree that I want.

>you’re the type of person that will do things to completion, even if you don’t enjoy it or find it interesting.

More specifically, you're the type of person who'll do things to completion if you are forced to. Not so different from a company employee I guess.

In what environment is having the discipline to do something you dislike for a later reward not a good trait?

It's really not either-or, but «following your heart» and «doing what you love» seems to be a better predictor of success, happiness, and major breakthroughs. You'll still do tons of things on the way that you don't particularly like, but a lot of time you will be too focused on the core purpose to notice.

In the context of these comments, perhaps college teaches some people to do soul-crushing things — as the «reward» is not quite worthy and not really connected to what they're doing.

This is a difficult and complex topic.

I think society may have benefited from Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg completing their ethics requirement.

I would bet everyone has a price for their ethics, no matter the course they took. It is a risk reward calculation, and the bigger factor is probably how one’s tribe reacts to their risk reward calculation.

If your tribe celebrates it for sufficient gain as long as there is no direct physical violence, as I think the environment in many families/socioeconomic circles of the US does, then ethics courses are just a cover your ass solution.

Ethics class can literally teach you how to be ethical though. Like it's not that people want to be unethical, they simply don't know how to accomplish their goals in an ethical fashion.

Most people legitimately want to think of themselves as good people, instructing them on making sure that the rest of society views them this way can be very valuable.

Ethics comes from parents and family, at least mine did. I took an ethics class in college and the only thing I remember was a trite discussion about wether taking a work pen/pencil home to do work at home was stealing.

If you are being introduced to ethics in college, it's too late.

Do you believe that the gen ed requirements really do create a lasting impression on the average student?

The research shows that ethics courses have no effect and may even make people less ethical

Gates did some sketchy things as a businessman, but now he is basically eliminating malaria. On the balance i think he has positive utility to the world.

ethics is rarely a matter of knowledge.

Can character be taught?

If it were only limited to that. Why does being well-rounded require years of other stuff?

Unpopular opinion time. To succeed in any high leadership position that requires exercise of power, a somewhat sociopathic attitude is required. This is actually a necessary component of a modern society, as the traditional emotionally driven rules of human organization scale very poorly above groups of a few hundred people.

>If you are an autodidact, then the entire point of college would be the degree because otherwise you can teach yourself the same information and save a bunch of money, right?

Hah. Good point.

I can't say that I took a single course that I couldn't have picked up simply by reading a book or two and applying a bit of self-discipline.

Professional credentials aside, I think that the modern university is relatively valueless aside from the few cases that require expensive facilities.

Isn't the author's point that they met there? So they got something other than a degree out of it, and their collaboration ended up being fabulous.

Universities mostly no longer teach anything worth the tuition. Jobs pay less than what would be required to make university a positive ROI!

Maybe STEM but only engineering and comp sci but no more than 10% of the general population has the constitution and thinking for being those. Most should no more be in STEM than I should be an English major! A degree in astrophysics is about as valuable - most have to figure out how to program or do some type of engineering-oriented job.

(Science is discovery of how the universe works for the purpose of pure knowledge - zero direct economic value; engineering is application of science to human utility and value - MAJOR direct economic value.

Right now the winning strategy is the trades - the massive shortage in tradesmen (it's 99% men because women do not want these jobs) is the only economically bright option: no debt, make money while in apprenticeship, make good money with just some commitment. It's a no brainer. Electrical wiring, plumbing, Construction, etc. is NOT going away but people qualified to do these are disappearing simply because they are retiring and/or dying.

Not true. The college wage premium even for the liberal arts is wide enough to make college worthwhile even after accounting for student loan debt. The trades req. certification and training which can be expensive and time consuming. A degree does not require as much maintence as certification.

It is possible that was true over previous decades, and has changed recently, but is not yet reflected in the data.

There is little reason or evidence to suggest it has changed.

If someone is self-taught, i think its more likely than average they care about knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

Like any expensive purchase, its important to know what you're buying before you buy, but that doesnt make it worthless

Yep, universities are cash cows funded with taxes, no incentives to compete, and artificially filled with bogus classes to up tuition costs. Sadly if you don't live in a major tech city, you either join the uni cult or get treated as an outsider.

Cancel student loans.

> Cancel student loans.

Cancel all government subsidies via taxpayer guaranteed loans. All they do is distort the market and enrich the vendors.

The problem is jobs reqiring degrees even if the work does not require it. Maybe this means higher quality of employees but at the same time leads to more demand for college and more debt.

That is a symptom of the problem of excess supply of labor in relation to demand. The solution would require adjusting the supply of labor and/or demand for that type of labor.

They won't if people can't get them. Make unis go bankrupt and close, replace with education that works and matters.

Teachers: grades don’t matter! Every admissions gate keepers everywhere: show us your grades.

When I was an undergrad asking professors to get involved with undergraduate research the first question they asked was always what my gpa was. Needless to say many doors are firmly closed to autodidacts in academia and other certifications focused careers. Say what you will about tech, it can be much more egalitarian in that regard though not always.

Desirable places usually get far too many good applications, and nobody wants to spend time and effort reading poor applications. If you want your application to be taken seriously, you must first pass some minimal quality filters. A degree with good grades is one option, and if you don't have it, you have to find another way of making a good first impression.

There are plenty of people with unusual backgrounds in the academia. The one thing most of them have in common is an insider who recognized their potential. If you have someone fighting for you from the inside, there are ways around most bureaucratic obstacles.

The entire "expectation culture" we've created around finding what you're suppose to do with your entire life in 4 years of college (or even less if you don't go) is insane.

I felt betrayed after I left college after all the bullshit peddled during high school that somehow you'll "find" yourself and ultimately, your professional purpose in 4 years.

Truth is, if you want/plan to join any elite/prestigious part of the workforce, there's almost zero room for soul seeking in college. One of the few caveats being that you went to some extremely prestigious school to begin with (Ivies, OxBridge, and similar), and didn't completely fuck up your grades.

Companies are a bit more lenient toward those, and don't really care whether you studied art history, or mathematics. If you're alumni from those types of schools, you (or your parents) probably planned your future from pretty early on anyway.

But for the rest - those that study at run of the mill schools - you really need to work hard, and having done research on what will yield the highest ROI.

Every year you see senior students that suddenly discover elite companies and sectors like tech, finance, consulting, etc. and scramble to get a foot inside, only to find out that it's too late.

Yeah, it's too bad that for most, those 4 or 5 years of college will more or less decide your professional future. At least, it will close a lot of doors.

Says the teacher who counts the days to their summer vacation.

I hear you, but there has to be some objective measurement that can be applied, or else how does one fairly do things like qualify students for admission into a school. There are aptitude tests for this purpose, but they too are imperfect. Overall, when considering the scale of people to be considered, some formula that considers both grades and scores on aptitude tests makes (imperfect) sense.

But, do universities ever reveal any of their algorithms for deciding qualification? I'm guessing no -- and besides, they've added a lot of racial and other sociological factors in, so it's very hard to tell why one person gets admitted over another. I feel for new students, as it really does seem like a horrible system to confront.

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

When the population you are trying to sort becomes larger than the ability to discover value, you rely on values that are given to you. Your argument is valid. Once the population grows to that level you can only do that. You need objective criteria. But we all know that objective criteria is bad. We know that the teachers are teaching to the test. We know the students are cramming and forgetting. We know that tutors bring up the results of students by one standard deviation. Perhaps we should rethink this.

Maybe instead of greedily taking the largest population we can go through, we should stick to what we can evaluate and simply take the best from that pile?

Nah forget it, we just found a new metric that the students aren't gaming yet! We're just going to use that, that will work forever.

Objective criteria like grades or sat is better than subjective holistic factors which can be easily gamed by rich parents.

i've been into computers since my dad brought home an old commodore 64 from a firm he used to work at, they were getting rid of it and liked my dad, so he brought it home and had me punch in codes to play a game, my second computer was a 386sx that my dad built from one of those computer study at home courses.

i found two games hidden dos, one called snake and the other gorillas written in basic, i stared to learn basic at i think around 9 or 10 years old, we were homeschooled because my sister was chased into the bathroom by a guy who worked at the school who was a pedophile, so there's that, after a bad car accident that nearly killed my family, my parents decided to move out of philadelphia and into the country, it was great until i had to socialize, i spent most of my teenage years helping my disabled father, i don't regret it.

but i definitely had a hard life and don't have anything to show for it. i am judged as lazy because i didn't go to college right after graduating, i spent of my life as a hobbyist coder, programming in 7 or so languages, but i have nothing to show for it outside talking about it and showing people my pet projects, i did not believe in myself, struggled with depression and later on i finally realized i could go to college.

but, everyone was looking at surface me, a guy who people either think i was privileged growing up or lazy because of my job history being non-tech related. i don't even feel like finishing school, that's how far i feel behind in life, i wish i would have known sooner, but that's how life goes for some people. i am not lazy, i just don't make enough money to keep myself from failing in school, it's very stressful doing this as an adult. so yeah, a supportive figure in my life would have made a world of a difference for me.

anyways, i am building an app in my spare time, maybe i'll get it right and that will improve my situation. it's a ridiculous shot in the dark like most business ventures but i can't make 16 an hour living in seattle and expect to survive on that lol, anyways get your kids into a college or university sooner rather than have them figure it out on their own in their 30s.

encourage them to pursue what they are good at and encourage them to apply for jobs related to that field sooner rather than later because it's very rare for a tech corporation to give a guy with no tech related job "experience" a job on good faith alone these days.

tough opinion: As a blue-collar worker, im glad they cant get into college.

Im sick of seeing talented kids that can solve difficult problems and work hard, submit themselves to a meatgrinder that promises them wealth and success and instead shackles them to endless debt until theyre dead for a peasant wage at the local burger joint.

If the schools tell you to pound sand, come work for us in trade. We need welders, machinists, mechanics, HVAC, plumbers, electricians, and ironworkers. Youll tackle some of the hardest problems and at the end of the day feel like you did something you can be proud of. Our wages wont move you in next to ole Musky, but theyre enough for me to comfortably own a home, a car, and two motorcycles.

talk to your guidance councelor or local trade-tech college and ask about the opportunities outside the walls of a college sports team masquerading as an undergrad education.

Not a tough opinion, just a flawed one.

> I’m glad they can’t get into college.

I saw this sentiments a lot with the older workers I was surrounded by when my father put me to work doing manual labor for construction sites during my high school summers.

In the same way that college isn’t suited for everyone snd set them up for success, the trades aren’t suited for everyone. Stop being happy to see choice taken away from the younger generation.

> We need welders, machinists, mechanics, HVAC, plumbers, electricians, ironworkers. You’ll tackle some of the hardest problems…

You sound like a FAANG recruiter trying to make ad-tech sound sexy. The majority of someone’s time in the trade will be spent following poorly planned blueprints led by site supervisors that only care if you can do three days of work in two.

> Our wages won’t move you in to Ole Musky, but they’re enough for me to comfortably own a home, a car, a motorcycle

The wages also don’t take into account a lifelong career of manual labor that slowly breaks down the human body.

The typical student loan debt is less than a new car and unlike a car pays for itself in the form of higher real wages. It's not as bad as the media hype would suggest. The trades can make good wages but the data suggests college grads make more, even after accounting for student loan debt and have lower rates of unemployment compared to non-grads. The college educated batista trope is not really that accurate.

Well put. Anti-college folks act like the only university option out there is $300k for an oil painting degree.

> In recent years, the average college graduate with a bachelor's degree earned $78,000, compared to $45,000 for those with only a high school diploma. This means a typical college graduate earns a premium of well over $30,000, or nearly 75 percent.

https://www.higheredtoday.org/2019/06/10/study-finds-college...

You can argue that the effect isn’t causal, it’s just that people who are destined to be high-earners also are the type of people who go to college.

This doesn’t seem super unlikely to me, considering in many cases college is literally a socially-accepted 4 year long vacation from all responsibility on daddy’s dime (and subsidized by government loans). If you told me that people who had the means to afford that at 17 made more money in their lifetimes, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

But that’s just a theory and there is something to be said for the “college actually does increase your earning potential” hypothesis, and if it does by even half of that estimate I quoted above, the average in-state tuition would pay itself off in just 5-10 years. It’s not as bad of an investment as some would have you believe

Umm, nothing against trades but i have trouble imagining that people who are self-taught academics would be happy there. Its not that the problems to solve are any less real, just really different.

Those jobs have other arbitrary barriers to entry and if they were more desirable than knowledge work, college grads would be doing them too.

Reminds me of a story of a 8-year old girl who passed state high school exam and got admitted to Moscow State University at the age of 9 earlier this year... (Alisa Teplyakova)

Forget about admission, if they get in, they find the environment in which everyone but they get "A"s rather difficult.

this article is about people that would get A's but can't get in, not people that get in that don't get A's

Maybe the era of mass produced education is nearing an end.

Everyone will make their own path from here.

Paywall

https://archive.ph/twq99

Reply on news.ycombinator.com