Was your degree really worth it?

I will never earn a college degree. No regrets.

I returned to college at least 4 times. I tried and tried. I am a high performer when I'm motivated. But I have trouble sustaining momentum.

Entering college for the last time 5 years ago, my goals were: brush up on latest technology, earn CompTIA certifications. Mission accomplished. Pell Grant well-spent.

My parents are the types who don't understand non-traditional education. My father scoffs at anything that isn't accredited. But we're living in the future now. Education has been disrupted by technology and disrupted by culture.

I had straight As in grade school and a bright future. Unfortunately, my childhood wasn't as loving as I had always thought it was. I suffer from C-PTSD. I was homeless, penniless, jobless, all at once. I lost everything I owned. I've bounced back from all that, but I still visit the hospital too often.

I've worked at a steady job in the education industry for 3 years now. That's a new record for my tenure at anything. They don't require a degree. They don't even require the relevant certifications I've owned -- they make no difference in my paycheck, and they won't pay for me to earn or renew them. But we love each other, I've found a great team, I am in my niche. I'm here to stay. No degree necessary.

I obtained my BS from a state university, retired at 38, went to graduate school at a state university at 48, started another business, retired again 3 years later. I've hired ivy league graduates, graduates from MIT, but my best employees came from state schools.

Every Harvard graduate I've ever known has been arrested, committed fraud, or worse, murder (Lookup Luke Sweetser). The first thing that comes out of all of their mouths is they went to Harvard, and pretty much that is the extent of their ability.

The university system is in shambles in the United States. I've been consulting with several, but they're entrenched in this new ideology. Many top level engineering programs are suffering by putting diversity over qualified students. Diversity is a goal we should seek, but not at the expense of the student that is produced. They're setting up many for failure, and loading them up with debt they will never be able to repay.

Spend your money wisely. You will get out of any university what you put into it.

Unsurprising, the degrees that prepare you for a professional career, e.g. STEM, medicine and law are shown to be good investments.

People who choose to pursue majors on the basis of passions and/or quest for knowledge in a specific area without concern for the market, would need to be aware of what they are signing up for. But when you are young and not yet worldly wise, it can be a problem. Perhaps, those degrees should come with a warning label.

Asking this question generally has no value because everyone's experience is different. It's hard to a/b test this because it's impossible to control for everything else.

You'll see lots of personal stories in this thread. Some will say yes, some will say no, some will have no degree.

Some degrees are better than others. Some institutions are better than others.

There simply is no one-size-fits-all answer here.

Of course for someone contemplating a degree, some research and planning is a good idea. Maybe find people with your context, with your planned degree, and quiz them.

I studied electrical engineering because I was told I'd have a leg-up on software engineers, who don't understand how computers work. That knowledge turned out to be irrelevant in the Internet era. Then I doubled down by going to graduate school, where I specialized in the hot research field du jour and discovered it did not exist in industry. It is now dead as a research field too. So my entire higher education, I painfully realized, was worth jack. I did not get my degree either 'coz my advisor was denied tenure, got a breakdown, and I became depressed myself. After much moping and with marital support, I cut my losses and dumped electrical engineering for software engineering, and machine learning in particular. That was a fantastic career move but it took me a long time to get over the waste and suffering. I've always hated school, and I was a great student.

Fortunately I became proficient with computers well before I got "schooled" so I was able to eventually get a job. But employers always held my education against me, especially at startups. Why did you study that? Why did you go to graduate school?

My degree was absolutely worth it, I paid a total of 2700 euros in tuition fee and got a master (French software engineering degree in 5 years @ 540 euros a year). By having a cursus to follow, I got a sense of direction of what to learn and ended up studying things that are useful to this day that I might not have learned otherwise. Even if I skipped a lot of classes, I spent a lot of time reading all the relevant textbooks to those classes and got all the theoretical foundation I wouldn't have otherwise as well as access to teachers who could answer my questions or point me in the right direction.

And finally, having a master degree has been extremely useful in getting visas allowing me to live in a lot of different countries over the years.

On the other hand, I was an exchange student at RIT for 6 months and I don't know if the very high tuition (40k per year nowadays? when I was there, I didn't pay the tuition, just the one in France) there would be worth it given the lower quality of education compared to what I had in France and the extremely high cost.

I probably wouldn't have found programming work without my CS degree, I needed some training. I do know programmers who were good, got jobs and who didn't have a degree, but they were the coding-since-8 types and I wasn't.

But I'm late 40s and now long term unemployed, wondering what I'm supposed to next. So that CS degree didn't go far. They seem to be mostly signalling now anyway, you have to have the right Brand Name attached to them for maximum effect, and I don't. And a lot of my jobs were a notch or two above garbage tier, so lacking that brand name seems kind of bad.

I regret my degree. It delayed my career, caused me a lot of frustration, then set my career up on the wrong path initially.

We absolutely need to find a better model for STEM fields. Apprenticeships shouldn't just be for blue collar.

Actually I dont for a second regret my degree(s). I got to learn about so many broad things. I was never a good student - I hated exams, loved assignments, spent most of my time in the lab trying to build things based on what I was learning that week/quarter. Even though I did "part time" work in my field it came no where close to what I was learning at college. Naturally my grades suffered - but I did enough to pass. Do I use all that stuff today - not directly but I feel I dont lack in confidence in tackling any problem and knowing where the answer might lie (at the very least I know where to find the specialists and how to learn from them).

Now this doesnt mean that everything you do for passion will set you up for success and I just lucked out in having a passion for CS/Eng that it worked out eventually. Remember back in the 90s (and even 2000s?) in Australia Eng was a field was lower on the totem pole than even Accounting! But this question was whether my degree was worth it (for me) and Id do it all over again. In fact if i could go back Id try to stay a few more years in college and be more proactive about spotting trends.

A more interesting question would be: was the school from which you graduated worth the investment? It's one thing to get an MBA from "college of du (shopping) mall", and another from Northwestern University (in the US, evidently).

In my case (Genomics), yes. I studied it because I was interested in it and everyday I went to school with a sense of awe that I have seldom felt ever since.

Money-wise it's been ups and downs, overall good so I guess it was worth it in that sense as well.

One of the benefits of a public, state funded university system that I see very rarely mentioned is that it's really good at culling nonsensical degrees because the state has no incentive to keep paying for expensive, useless education.

In Germany tertiary education rate is almost half as high as in Britain yet productivity is vastly higher. The academic system should focus on creating researchers, job training is better provided in a vocational setting. Britain and the US where you have governments write basically blank checks to students which then fund vast university bureaucracies just seem like a tax payer hazard.

Mine wasn’t in terms of knowledge because it was all just a big joke: most teachers didn’t really read our essays and graded them using the “throw them on the stairs” technique. The knowledge imparted could be gotten in 1/2 or 1/3 of the time if a student was really interested in it and cared to look it up for themselves.

My year abroad was great on a personal level, but an even bigger joke on academic level: courses were ridiculously easy to pass and I got credits for courses like “American movies retrospective” where we basically watched classic American movies in class, or for taking a few French classes when my home university’s teaching language was French.

I was studying for a bachelor in business administration.

On a bureaucratic level however, it’s been very useful: I was able to get naturalized on the basis of having studied for a degree in that country, and in the country I live in now life is much easier administratively if you have a university degree.

But for the above, any bachelor would do. Of my whole bachelor program, I can maybe think of 4–5 actually useful pieces of information I learnt and remember. The rest was a waste of time, trying to figure out how to get a pass grade despite the terrible instructor.

The money I earned and career I built had nothing to do with my degree from day 1 after graduation. Luckily public university was cheap and I didn’t incur any debt, only opportunity cost.

Why are rising fees not driving students towards cheaper universities rather than just no university? I understand that a US degree has more value than a foreign one in the US, but given the number of foreigners with foreign degrees settling in the US each year, I would think that the gap is not necessarily that big, is it? Isn't a foreign degree better than no degree at all?

The article mentions France as being way cheaper, and digging the source a bit further[0], there are many other European countries that also seem to charge negligible amounts. Granted, that's for nationals, and this is likely higher for non-nationals, but I expect it to still be low enough to be worth it for US and UK citizens who'd have to pay increasingly high fees otherwise.

0: the XLS in https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/annual-average-tuiti...

I would say probably not.

But only because I had a good enough grasp of IT/Computer Science before I went into University through a good high school. The job I have now is more generalist as opposed to specialised (e.g. programming).

Has my degree increased my opportunity to find and land the job I have now? Absolutely, as my job required a degree back then. Are employers in STEM areas now looking to employ people that don't have degrees? yes.

There is however a big challenge that Universities face, which is providing education that matches the skills required in the workforce. It can be seen as a waste to do 4 years in computer science or any other degree, to then land a job that was only relevant to a few of your courses taken.

Universities and higher education are looking to do more apprenticeship style courses when you are learning hands on during your education, like you do in a trade. Rather than doing a 4 year degree that covers a wide range of computer science/cyber/information security domains, you do a shorter course/degree that is highly focused to the jobs you want to apply for.

My bachelors degree was worth every penny. My Masters not so much. Going back to school with an eye towards cost and paying attention to what they actually taught me made me extremely cynical about the education system.

In particular, I was very turned off by the fact that so much of my education was done by adjunct faculty. Underpaid workers with the prospect of tenure being dangled in front of their faces for a decade. Many were very bright people, but then again, so were many of the people I worked with in industry prior to my education.

Potential students should also be aware that all of the information taught at university is available for free online. Online content also has the added benefit of being guaranteed unlike university courses, which have limited capacity. In short, don’t expect to be able to take any courses advertised in online catalogues (courses may be full or simply not taught anymore).

4 years of some of your most productive years of life (both physical and mental) is very very costly.

But in life, you compete with your peers. So you try and make as best a decision as possible to pick a career or trade for your life and in many cases, a degree helps you compete with your peers.

It’s not only about what you learn.

My B.S. C.S. was a fabulous deal. It's funding my retirement. I will be forever grateful to the State of California for the inexpensive solid education available to me.

I did not go to a fancy school but it was enough to get me into a fascinating and successful career. Could not be happier.

I have a Masters in Computer Science and Engineering. Most jobs in my country requires either a Bachelors or a PhD so it is more of a stepping stone for a PhD which I have no interest in pursuing. My current job is the only one that requires my highest degree. My previous jobs all require a lower qualification. In fact, most of the things I learned in my 2 years of acquiring the degree are not that useful in all the jobs I've had so far. Was it worth it? Well, I got the degree from a prestigious institute and that seems to matter more to interviewers than the degree itself. Maybe the real degree is the friends we find along the way \s

In my case? Yes and no.

Professionally? No. Almost everything I use in my jobs I learned myself. In fact I unlearned some bad habits, especially when organizing code, I developed at University, as they were negatively impacting my performance.

Personally? Yes, absolutely. But not because of the lessons in CS, but those in natural sciences. Understanding how some systems in physics and biology work, changed the way I look at world in general, and made many things more fascinating than they would otherwise be.

However, you don't need a University for that. Everyone willing to learn can grab an introductory book on cell biology and start reading.

My degree was in Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering

Was it worth it?

Hell yes. And I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 years getting it. The payoff was big for me, well beyond financial returns.

I'm very happy I did my degree and think back on my time in university with fond memories. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I was there, every lesson, essay and project, it is because of this I came out with a very high grade.

My lifelong career as a software developer has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of my degree, but it set me up in ways that I would have never learned on my own.

I don't think I've ever looked back and wished I spent more time working and less time learning. That said, since I was in school tuitions have increased as well as (exploitative) adjunct professor hiring, so students spending more and teachers are paid less. Makes sense people are upset with the system.

I make lots of money but I feel 10 years of CS and programming turned me into an emotionless robot so idk if it was.

Got pushed by family for more and more education. Had to win a lawsuit to pay off my debt, 478k for a useless and utterly worthless mfa in "critical studies", taught myself to code however now having reached 50 I'm kicked out of the economy, homeless and penniless.

A well educated person is a benefit to our society, no matter what one does with an education. The problem is that some countries don't offer education for free which forces some to make such tough decisions.

I for myself have benefited tremendously from my university degree.

Degrees were never about a financial return. Their original purpose was to indicate a license to teach. It's not supposed to get you a good job. Some jobs require a degree, but that doesn't mean the degree is for getting a job.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, and left college freshman year. I couldn't justify going into debt when I couldn't didn't even know what I was going into debt for.

Absolutely worth it, no regrets. I've still done well for myself.

I happened to be born in country where CS degree was free, I even was paid by govt to study. After a time I was happy to discover that FAANG didn’t really care how large were my student debts as long as I can code well

Absolutely! I spent 20+ happy years in academia. I loved research, I loved working with grad students. Were it not for the funding changes and the retirement of my faculty, I hope I would still be there now.

No degree and earning more than my colleagues with Masters/Doctorates due to having far more experience than them and having had a head start due to not spending years on a degree.

Was a degree worth it? Yes. Was it worth it to go to the school I went to and pay that much money when there were perfectly acceptable substitutes? Nope.

The first degree is free of charge for the student in every civilized society, so this feels to me like a bit of a 3rd world question.

It was free so I'd say so :) If I lived in a capitalist dystopia it probably wouldn't be worth it.

We tend to clump all degrees together as if they are all equal. Trust me, a computer science degree from my backwater country of Moldova (which I don't have) is significantly more useless than a degree from MIT (which I also don't have).

On top of that even useless degrees may occasionally help (e.g. when deciding to get certain types of job visas in the US that look at the applicant's education levels)