Ask HN: Should I Go Back To School? How Important Is It? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I Go Back To School? How Important Is It?

In my Junior year of college, I dropped out in order to pursue a startup idea. It was innovative and ultimately had a good - not spectacular - exit.

I'm now located in NYC and it's always bothered me that I didn't continue and get my college degree. I've applied to and gotten into some of the "non-traditional" education programs, most notably Columbia's School of General Studies.

I want to know:

a) Is it worth it? I've been out of school for about 4/5 years with significant experience.

b) How is Columbia GS taken? Is it seen as a "joke school" or "joke degree". It's rather expensive, so I'd rather know now what it looks like.

Thanks.

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Are you going to go into management? Do you ever want to work in a large company that you did not build, as anything other than a developer or development related discipline like developer, admin or architect? Do you want to do scientific research? Do you want to teach at the university level?

If the answer to any of those is yes then you may want to consider a degree. If the answer is no, then you should really consider the value proposition of higher education. Keep in mind that many believe that there is an ongoing bubble in education and that the prices and value of education will continue to decline. The influx of regulations and lending has caused significant inflation in the cost of attaining a degree while at the same time reducing the real world value of that degree.

Hi there....

I cannot speak to question b, but I have some very direct experience with question a that I would like to talk about for a moment.

Like you, I dropped out after my third year of an accounting degree to pursue my own business. It was the late 90s, the world of technology seemed to be one of limitless potential, and I got the entrepreneurship bug. So, I dropped out and followed my dream - this particular company (like yours) did fairly well and I got to exit with my head held high.

After I sold my company, I spent the rest of my twenties working some interesting gigs and honing my skillset. But that unfinished degree kept plaguing me - I constantly wondered how much further I could go if I had a piece of paper behind my name.

So, I went back to University and finished a marketing degree. I didn't learn a whole lot during the degree - business degrees are about as useless as you can get. But, I definitely gained value. Being significantly older than anyone else in my classes meant that my peers were other more mature students with work experience, graduate students and professors. That network is worth way more than the cost of tuition and made going back to school incredibly worth it.

As an aside, that network actually helped me start my next business, which I launched a few days after convocation. That business failed miserably, so either the network wasn't worth all that much, or I was a bonehead...:)

-- Don't let your schooling interfere with your education. --

Nevertheless, education is vital. For everyone. The more educated you are, the better. I don't know specifically about _that_ degree you're talking about, but as an American (most presumably you are, that is) think about the option to finish your college degree, let's say in Germany (Berlin has an awesome startup scene coming on, too) or in the Netherlands (Amsterdam is rocking big time, too).

I referred to Germany mainly because their education system is public (the fees for some unis are $500/semester, pretty decent, most of them are free -- depends on the state) and their unis are rocking big time.

I don't know what you were studying before you drop-out but as a technical kiddo, pardon my word usage, consider also studying something different now--let's say philosophy or something.

If I were you, I'd try to study. A guy with a college degree is always more "better" (with a very broad sense) than a guy who hasn't a degree. Well, not always -- especially in the IT field, BUT generally speaking, I consider a BSc a vital thing for to posses.

And remember, it's not always what you will be taught in uni -- you mainly get to understand how to think properly and not for example how to program fluently in Python. They teach you how to think.

And thinking is vital.

If you ever want to work overseas it helps the visa process. Likewise, if you ever want to do something other than programming, having a degree usually helps. For instance, I wanted to teach a programming class at the university extension in my hometown, but they wouldn't let me because I do not have a master's degree. They wouldn't have even bothered telling me that if I didn't have a bachelor's degree.

The fact that you are even asking this question and that you are as far along in the process as you are (i.e. you have applied and been accepted) indicates that it is important to you - and that's as important as anything gets. School is often wasted on the young, it sounds like you are in a position to appreciate it. Good Luck.

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