Totally agree - but I still think some amount of sacrifice is necessary at the beginning, when you finish your education and start with 0 (if you're lucky, some have student loans).
Unless you have wealthy parents that is.
Unless you have wealthy parents that is.
Many ex-students think that they don't deserve high wages yet - "I have to learn X,Y,Z,... until I can demand X$". Thing is that we never stop learning, and you HAVE to charge money for learning. Projects are by definition a nonrecurring enterprise (else you could fully automate the outcome), so there will always be things to learn to finish it.
If you think that your skills are not worth a lot of money, you will not even try and demand it - that makes it exactly a zero chance of earning a lot. For many people the only thing that separates them from earning much is their self-confidence (or confidence in their skills) - or choice of wrong market/industry (what are my talents?), but that's a different post.
your friends new coworkers ask "wow, this new kernel hacker came out of nowhere!" but you say "well if you had watched them through college, it was just success building on success ..."
I personally don't think that education is a self-sacrifice activity... or if it is, you're studying the wrong things. University is a gigantic opportunity to make vast numbers of valuable connections, learn lots of interesting things, develop as a human being, and even gain some valuable credentials that will make earning money easier.
Of course, it's a bit overpriced in America at the moment, but that doesn't mean that education in general is a bad deal. On the contrary.
I went to UBC (British Columbia, Canada) and the tuition cost as of today is $400+ per course. If a student enrols to 12 courses/year that comes down to $4800/year or $19.2k/4-years. Less than $5k/year is probably not too bad for a mid-tier University (e.g.: not MIT level).
Of course "not to bad" is because I compared it with our 2 weeks Caribbean escapade last year where we spent probably between $4k to $5k in total for 2 people. Or a ticket price, round-trip, flying to Indonesia that cost around $1.5k+/person during "shoulder season".
As a side note: Microsoft offers interns about $5k/month for 3-months (or 4-months, depending on your program). If interns can live frugally in Seattle/Redmond (corporate housing with roommate), they probably can afford to pay 1-2 years worth of education from one internship period.
For a UC in California (public school): ~$31000 on-campus, $28000 off-campus (see http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/paying-for-...).
For a private school in California, ~$55000/year on-campus.
"In 2011-12, public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 in tuition and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at these institutions is $12,526."
If an American is unable to get merit scholarships at top schools, they're likely looking at $100-200k in tuition and expenses for a BS.
Also leave out the miscellaneous and focus on Tuition fee alone. It looks like UCs are charging almost triple of what you can get from UBC.
Hm... get your Canadian permanent residency and start enrolling to UBC or UWaterloo then? :D
UBC CS program is quite good and consistent :) (excuse me for the marketing) http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~simonsyd/acm/history.php