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Comment by maratd | Hacker News Reader

> Really, it's a cultural problem.

No, it's an economic one.

> I have a liberal arts degree from an "elite private university".

Ok. Let's make the assumption that you're at least moderately intelligent and would be able to get a job for 40K from the bat.

40K * 4 = 160K

College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.

65K * 4 = 260K

160K + 260K = 420K

Yup. Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly.

I would much rather my kid spend his time working in a small business and learning about entrepreneurship hands-on, than pissing away untold fortunes to sleep in a class about poetry. You can slip the kid some Robert Frost after work.

Trust me, if he has an inquisitive mind, he'll explore all the weird and strange subjects on his own time. With the internet, he can even be challenged by greater minds.

The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education. The kids get that. That's why they don't go to class.

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It sounds like we agree - my post was expressly derisive of the kid who sleeps through his poetry class. Regardless, it sounds like writing poetry suggests a romantic lark to you. To me, it was a lesson in how to convey powerfully complex ideas in concise, but meaningful, language.

I didn't make a lot of money right out of school, but 3 years later I was making a boatload. Why? Because I can write the kind of email that will make someone who has a job I'm able to do agree to coffee with me, and pitch myself successfully in that meeting. I'm a "go getter" who goes and finds my success, because I'm the opposite of the kind of kid who goes to sleep in his poetry class.

And by the way, I taught myself programming. That CS 201 class I took was a java programming class where the instructors wrote a framework that we learned. At the end of the semester, all I knew were a bunch of the functions of their framework. Why would I need school to learn programming? Unlike my major, CS had something like 20 required courses. That's at least half of your whole university education, more once you find a particular area to focus in.

However, I took an economics class from a Nobel laureate and a history class from a professor who lit the room with his enthusiasm for storytelling obscure historical anecdotes. It's the difference between reading a textbook about WWII and watching Band of Brothers. You can't get that stuff on your own.

Also to clarify: I partied my face off in college, too. But it was work hard, play hard. I'm a student of life, not of how to optimize my bank balance before I'm 30.

Regarding below comments: other than an internship I got during college from a graduate of my school, I haven't experienced much nepotism from my university. Most people have never heard of Washington University in St. Louis unless you work in Medicine.

Why would I need school to learn programming?

It's funny, because that's my attitude towards the liberal arts. I took almost nothing but math, physics and CS in college, and then went on to get graduate degrees in CS, but I read history, politics and public policy on my own. Also some econ and financial stuff since 2008 because I decided I wanted to understand it.

In contrast, the two history classes I took in college were awful. You could just as easily flip your anecdotes - I learned an amazing amount from my technical courses, things I just wouldn't have learned by reading books on my own.

> It sounds like we agree

We agree in the sense that we both believe there is value in a good education. Especially a liberal arts one.

I learned how to learn in college. By taking disparate subjects, I can absorb new information with ease. That is the most tangible and valuable skill I picked up. I got it by taking random subjects. The very definition of a liberal arts education.

That said, the degree itself is worthless. I never had a resume. I started my first business in college. That was 12 years ago.

For me, it might have been better to simply audit those classes or do something on my own, and put the tuition in my pocket. I have a strange feeling that applies to many people here.

For anyone really interested in liberal arts, you would probably be better off doing it on your own, even if college was a lot cheaper than it is. Use your money more for things that will repay the investment.

There are some really good resources out there for self-study. An easy one to start with is Ron Gross's The Independent Scholar's Handbook, http://www.amazon.com/Independent-Scholars-Handbook-Ronald-G....

But the much older (early seventies) book This Way Out is even more useful. My Amazon review:

This book is in 3 parts, the last 2 Experimental Colleges and Foreign Study are too dated to be useful.

Part one is the best book for college-level self-study I have used. I first read it in the early 1980s and have reread it several times since, it is only 135 pages but packed with useful advice. The biggest weakness for the current user is that it has nothing on computers or the internet, but some of its advice such as "Write lots of short papers. Long papers kill students and tutors alike. Write lots of short papers. It will teach you too write and that, as we will demonstrate later, is essential" could almost have been written for the Web (most books on creating web pages emphasize short, to the point writing). They also mention the absolute essential for self-education - you must love to read, if you don't, then stay in college where they will force you to read.

http://www.amazon.com/This-way-out-alternatives-traditional/...

Degrees are still useful for work visas! It can also help with start-a-business visas too.

> Most people have never heard of Washington University in St. Louis unless you work in Medicine.

Or are old enough to remember the heyday of ftp.wustl.edu. :)

The framework your professors used was probably meant to teach you fundamentals. Sure, you can teach yourself to glue code together that you found on the Internet and get pretty good at it. The trouble comes when you get to a problem that hasn't been solved already. That's when the fundamentals you learned will kick in and actually help you.

You're working with the edge case in your example where a really smart person can get an amazing job right out of high school. It's more instructive to look at the average case:

- In the current economy, the number of high school grads making $40k/year is vanishingly small. It's more likely he'd be making 25k or less if he has a job at all. - 25k for living expenses and books for a college student is way too high unless she's going to school across the country and flies home a ton. - The average student doesn't pay 40k/year in tuition unless he has rich parents and is a below-average student. The average is less than 20k.

Let's redo the math: Tuition: 20k * 4 = 80k Living Expenses: 15k * 4 = 60k Total Expense: 140k

Let's say that our college student gets a below-average job that pays 32k/year.

In a 35 year career with 3% raises, our high school grad makes a total of $1,511,552. In a 31 year career with 3% raises, our college grad makes a total of $1,600,086.

Considering the time value of that $140,000, it's a wash. Go to college and study poetry if you want. The impact to your long-term bottom line is negligible.

I believe his math was accounting for the 4 years of lost wages during college as an opportunity cost of $32k/yr * 4yr = $128k for a total college expense of $140k + $128k = $268k.

Now, if you could invest that money at 3% compound interest over 30 years, you're talking about $650k -- that's 33% of your final career totals. (When I do that calculation for my 10 years of BS+PhD engineering, its pretty dramatic!)

That's assuming that an 18-year-old outside of the tech field could get a $32k/yr job to begin with. Looking at the unemployment rates for people without college degrees, there's a pretty large chance they wouldn't be able to get any job at all.

There's too many variables for people to be crunching numbers like this... while I went through university I lived at home and worked at jobs that paid $17/hour minimum. My total take home would probably be comparable to that of a person making less but paying for room and board. I say this with the assumption that those who skipped post-secondary education in favor of a job moved out of their homes almost immediately.

So where are those types of values in the calculations?

Now that I've graduated my starting job is ~$60k with a $20k annual raise once I've been in this position for a little over three years. There's not one friend that started work directly out of school that I can say that for.

Not to mention my degree allows me to venture to the upper ends of this company where education is a requirement while they'll plateau in seniority because of that.

Again, way too many variables and gray areas for us to do a number to number comparison because no two situations are identical and the idea of "average" or "typical" probably only makes up a small percentage of personae anyway.

I'm assuming you graduated with a bachelors? At the end of your BS, it's definitely worth thinking about opportunity cost (eg. is graduate school "worth it"). When I was working toward my PhD (engineering, with goals to eventually be entrepreneur)... I had to fend off detractors: "if you want to make money or do a startup, stop at a MS and get out there." I politely disagreed. Getting my PhD was a personal goal and shouldn't detract from future entrepreneurial activities.

Like you, I lived frugally during my entire educational experience, and the tuition was largely paid for through scholarship / fellowship. For talented people (who could prosper after dropping out), college expenses can be fairly minimal.

What do those stats look like normed for some proxy of intelligence, say, IQ, SAT/ACT scores, etc.?

I'm not sold either way on the debate myself. I think there are a lot of people in college who'd be better off outside, and a lot of people outside who'd be better off in. More to the point: I think that society as a whole would be better off with a different distribution of higher education opportunity.

Paraphrasing William Gibson: higher education is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

>College tuition is 40K itself at an "elite private university". Then you add living expenses, books, food, etc. and you have another 25K. That's 65K.
This is a bit disingenuous. Elite universities are almost universally free for those who need the help.
>Yup. Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly.

>I would much rather my kid spend his time working in a small business and learning about entrepreneurship hands-on, than pissing away untold fortunes to sleep in a class about poetry. You can slip the kid some Robert Frost after work.

Money has such a weak correlation with happiness that the argument needs to be fleshed out a bit more to be convincing. I've known many engineers in my life and I've seen no evidence that they are happier than those who have pursued the arts. Life isn't a video game in which money is a score. Heck even in a video game, it's rarely about the accumulation of money.

Even in terms of building a lasting legacy, there is much to be said for the arts over business. Byron will be remembered long after the Vanderbilts are forgotten.

> The kids get that. That's why they don't go to class.

Baloney. They don't go to class because they are hung over, or because a new movie came out, or because they want to play video games, or because they just don't feel like going. A very few don't go because they are sick or have actual life issues beyond being unmotivated.

They are - as a rule of thumb, say, about 98% of the time - not sipping wine and discussing complex and nuanced issues.

As much as I would like it to be true, discussing complex issues will have very few influence on your future career.

Being good at socializing and networking will. An awful lot. And being hung over with friends does qualify for that.

> I would much rather my kid spend his time working in a small business and learning about entrepreneurship hands-on...

As much as I'd want this for my kids, not all kids have the passion for entrepreneurship, or innovation, necessary to be successful. Liberal Arts degrees can help by allowing young adults find an interesting and for them beneficial and hopefully rewarding career, that they might not otherwise find if their best option is working as a cashier at a dollar store.

The cost though for Arts degrees, and I have sat on the board of governors for a well-known and high reputation university, is ridiculous and largely driven by politics & tradition, more than economic value.

But I don't want to pay for my children to party & socialize for four years at that cost!!

I can't agree with this. Spending a couple hours at a time discussing Heidegger with an engaged teacher is not an experience you can get outside of a college. And it helped me ask questions I am not smart enough to have asked on my own.

The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education.

I don't think that's true in serious liberal arts colleges. They're all about changing the way you think.

Edit: of course the social aspect is important. But it's not the best argument.

Disagree.

Reading books where others smarter than ourselves ask these questions can also unfold new paradigms and impart the same intellectual growth.

I'm sure that having a conversation with about a dozen other students and a teacher was more effective than just reading the book would have been. Especially since the teacher was able to fill in some cultural and translation gaps in the book we were reading, and could make connections to other philosophies that we didn't even know about but Heidegger took for granted.

I could definitely see that. I guess my point is more that I don't think the experience you outlined is unique to college. And I'm sure there is a whole other conversation (I see it everywhere in these comments) about the value for the price.

You're counting living expenses twice. If he hadn't gone to college he'd have had to eat all the same; so it's more 320K than 420, and we're below a third of a mil instead of near half.

Still a lot for learning to write poetry but that's not all he did...

"Trust me, if he has an inquisitive mind, he'll explore all the weird and strange subjects on his own time. With the internet, he can even be challenged by greater minds. The best argument for college is the social environment, which can't be replicated outside of it. Not education. The kids get that. That's why they don't go to class."

No. When it comes to non-technical degrees, it's the classroom environment. It's the academic and intellectual environment. Which the internet isn't close to replicating. Someday it might come close, but certainly not in the near future. If you think the internet is approaching a college education in value, you haven't experienced a proper college education.

Ugh. What a depressing way to think about college. But you're right. My English degree isn't doing jack for me. In my free time during college, I actually studied theology, computer science, and martial arts. They are what should be written on my diploma, and what I'd rather show to potential employers (well, not the theology part so much).

Achieving a baseline of financial success is, in the average case, about acquiring some useful skill and providing value to someone in exchange for money. Going to college and not acquiring a useful skill cannot be anything but entertainment (and very expensive entertainment when we come to it). There's nothing depressing about this, it's just common sense, albeit common sense that very few choose to apply until it is too late.

I agree with you that the cost of education is very high, but you need to look at the marginal cost. A person has to eat and pay rent regardless of whether they are in school. You can't count that 25K as the marginal cost of school.

>>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly.

Except it's payed for by your taxes. Who is silly here?

>Half a mil to learn about Poetry Writing. Sorry, but that's just silly.

Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom.

As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to India.

> As opposed to "Oh you got a CS degree", well programmers get to sit in this cubicle and get paid $50k until we outsource the whole thing to India.

If you're making $50k you're being screwed.

Also, a small percent of people (business students, poetry majors) ever go down the VP track. As a CS major I'm much, much better off in pay, quality of life, career stability than my friends who got business degrees. Never mind liberal arts, liberal arts is a vacation you take before you actually go to (graduate) school.

> If you're making $50k you're being screwed.

I'm being screwed then. I have a CS degree and a business Masters degree. I'm a "senior" developer and make $55k.

The primary employer in my area is the Montana State government. Programmer pay here tops out at about $60k/year. Low-end programmer salaries are about $35-$40k. In the private sector you'd be lucky to get $70k/year.

My wife and I are thinking about moving, but you can't really beat the quality of life here. Remote work is an option, but I don't really have the network/stomach to freelance and remote permanent positions are pretty scarce.

Ok if you lived in a major metropolitan area you'd be getting screwed.

Cost of living is cheaper in rural areas, and there are fewer tech companies. But the vast majority of CS graduates live and work in metropolitan areas, so for the vast majority of CS graduates $50k is getting screwed.

You're right, cost of living matters. I think it's safe to say that 50k in most metros (even ignoring the coasts) is a pretty bad deal, though.

$50K in Missoula is probably $80K in San Francisco and $100K in NYC, and that's without taking discrepancies in federal, state, local, and sales taxes into account.

A senior developer in SF or NYC is still coming out ahead - probably due to the sheer amount of competition for them - but not quite as much as you'd think at first glance.

The biggest difference to my mind, the one that bugs me most, is the opportunity cost. Sure, I have no commute, low mortgage for a big house, no sales tax and easy access to some of the most beautiful unspoiled wilderness in the entire world. The downside is that there are virtually no jobs/startups here that I find interesting.

You either adjust your expectations when you live here, or you go somewhere else.

I am somewhat worried that when I do decide to leave that my wages will be pegged artificially low because of the cost of living difference. But I figure I can always convert my salary to the local equivalent when asked what my current salary is.

What about lying or simply not answering?

Why would an interviewer have a right to know your current salary? That person is tasked with acquiring your intellectual resources at the lowest price possible. And by giving them your current salary, you're clearing up a big unknown in their equation -- your current alternative to a negotiated agreement.

When you go and buy a car, the sales people don't generally offer to tell you the car's invoice price, do they?

> But I figure I can always convert my salary to the local equivalent when asked what my current salary is.

Same. I make in your salary range, and I figure I will simply grab some COLA calculators when I go job hunting and adjust upwards to correct for the local difference

Agreed. My area's companies typically offer $50k for entry level developers. You can swindle more out of companies if they've been looking for someone for long enough or you have a special skillset that interests them.

I have one friend who got $75k off the bat but that was a job in a company that employs 4 programmers for the entire company (national) and is energy industry related.

Move, work in the bay area, get that network and then move back. If you have a house in Montana, and family there, rent it out and get your family to help you manage it. Even if you have to pay $2000/month more in rent, which you won't, you'll still come out ahead. And you'll have better weather and cheaper airfare than Montana.

This is an avenue I'm investigating.

Just trying to find the right place to go. Right now I'm doing a software craftsman apprenticeship to increase the quality of place I can get a job. When that's done (it's a 20-30 hour commitment on top of a full-time+ job) in January, I'm going to get involved in some OSS projects.

The move is probably at least 6-12 months out.

It sounds alot to me like you're having confidence issues. By all means, get involved with OSS, but do it for love, not to beef up your CV. If you have no code to your name, stick your SC exercises on GitHub and start applying. There was a hiring thread here yesterday with at least a hundred jobs across the US. Opportunity is ripe.

Worst case scenario if you do? You won't get anything good.

Worst case scenario if you don't? You'll have spent a year trying more or less random things and then still not getting anything.

This is probably not something I should talk too much about on a venue filled with potential employers or coworkers. But I think self-awareness is important, so I'll say a few things.

You're right on with the confidence (and persistence?) issues. That's one reason for doing the SC thing. It's helping me build up some confidence. I've been programming for quite a number of years. My day jobs for the last several years have destroyed the confidence I used to have. I'm getting it back, and quickly. And that makes me very, very happy.

OSS is something I want to be a core part of my job, because I use and appreciate it so much. I've tried getting involved with several projects before. Invariably my confidence falters enough that I give up before I really get going.

I'll go over to the two jobs threads from the other day and apply to some places. There were at least 3 or 4 that I would LOVE to work at.

> This is probably not something I should talk too much about on a venue filled with potential employers or coworkers.

Having concerns about your abilities and taking steps to improve them is a very positive trait.

> OSS is something I want to be a core part of my job, because I use and appreciate it so much.

I'll challenge you to find a single job on those hiring threads where you won't be steeping neck-high in open source software. Whether you'll get to contribute back is a different issue, but if nothing else you'll gain loads of exposure that you can use to contribute on your own time.

> I'll go over to the two jobs threads from the other day and apply to some places. There were at least 3 or 4 that I would LOVE to work at.

Awesome! Good luck!

Have you read the who is hiring thread? More and more companies are okay with remote workers. Anecdotally I hired a guy recently who is remote. I don't want to comment on his salary ... but i wouldn't be typing this if it were less.

Agreed. If you graduated in CS from a top 5 school you can easily make 90k in Seattle straight out of school, likely even more in the Bay Area.

Elitism only works while it has some kind of advantage.

If going to an elite college gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will come from elite colleges.

If getting a CS degree gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will have CS degess.

If getting a CS degree gives you a better chance of reaching the top, then hirers will have CS degess.

Getting a CS degree does not give you a better chance of reaching the top. It gives you a better chance of reaching the upper-middle.

I'd say it gives you a better chance of founding a successful startup, if you're so inclined.

Successful go to elite college, successful only hire from elite college, therefore to be successful you go to elite college.

Of course this system eventually breaksdown. But for Eton school it's worked since 1440, for Oxford since 1096, Cambridge since 1284 - but eventually it will break down.

> But for Eton school it's worked since 1440, for Oxford since > 1096, Cambridge since 1284 - but eventually it will break down.

Universities pretty much had the monopoly for highly specialized knowledge until very recently. The companies, public and students waking up to the fact that knowing your rhetoric & poetry ain't so valuable any more IS the system breaking down. Right now.

You'll rather hire from HN than from Oxford.

Yes it was different in the middle ages, it has changed now. Only 10% of UK government ministers went to Eton and only 70% to Oxford and Cambridge so the power of the old-boys network is disappearing.

> Half a mil so that when you apply for a job at $MEGA-CORP or in government the hirer says "Oh you went to %SCHOOL%, same as me" welcome to our management fast-track program, followed by promotion and VP-dom.

Do companies really work that way? I think trying to max-out your competitiveness and money-making skills by hiring the right guys would make more sense than hiring via secluded grapevine.

It does work that way, although more subtlety. More like "Oh you went to %SCHOOL% and we know some people in common. Welcome to a solid entry level position with decent pay and opportunity for advancement."

Yes and no. You have to remember a lot of jobs in $MEGA-CORP don't need much more than a warm body that can open a spreadsheet and mail it out. I deal with these idiots everyday and they often have titles of Project Manager, although I've recently been dealing with ones that have VP titles. The thing is, even in a giant company there are very few people pushing the boulder forward so to speak. So when hiring for non-boulder pushing position it's easy to hire someone with the right credentials because even if they are not the greatest hire ever they can still do the simple job they are given.

The reason you hire from elite schools has nothing to do with the schools themselves. MIT and Harvard don't have substantially different curricula than anywhere else, and for undergrads it really doesn't matter if you have N Nobel Prize winners. But you want to hire someone who was smart enough to get in to MIT or Harvard.

In terms of hiring people because they went to the same school you went to... I've never seen it, though I wouldn't be surprised if that happens with Ivy Leaguers.

The one time I saw it work ("Oh, you went to Columbia, too!"), the manager who made the "hire" decision fired the employee about six months later.

From one point, a curve, right? :-)

I can't imagine this working out well on the average, though.

competitiveness only matters when you have competitors.

So if you are an engineering company and you work like this you will be destroyed by countries with more meritocratic hiring systems.

If you don't have any competitors because you work for government or in a sector like banking where you are protected from foreign competition and all you competitors hire on the same system - then you will do fine (for now).

Can we spot any English speaking countries which might be an example of this?

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