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Comment by mkramlich | Hacker News Reader

Fuck college. It's not the only way to learn, to meet people, or to show your expertise, capabilities and accomplishments anymore. We have this thing called the Internet now. Write a book. Put a PDF online. Record a video of yourself giving an intelligent speech or showing some useful talent. Put it on YouTube. Write software. Put on GitHub. Answer technical questions well on StackExchange (or whatever for your particular industry/field.) Apply your supposed skills and talents on something tangible then put it on the web and be findable. Fuck 4-6 years of your life and $100k in debt. Fuck all that.

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Fuck people who bitch about how expensive college is.

You know how much I paid for college? $0.

You know why I paid that? Because in high school I did a lot less than what you outlined above, but it was enough to get a scholarship to go to college. Six great schools looked at my application and offered me somewhere between a discounted rate and a full ride + stipend on top of that. And I was only 20th in my high school class by GPA rank.

If you think that you can match a college degree based solely on self-guided learning, then you should be smart enough to get a scholarship. It's the same damn process. You need the self discipline to stick with a program of learning and working, and you need the intelligence to learn without support. It's just a question of whether you realize that in high school or later in life.

There's a limited number of scholarships to go around, and for those who can't get one, the cost will matter.

There are tons of undergrad programs that are less than $10k per year. Big state schools which will give you all the social experiences you need and some of the learning.

No HR department can interview people without a degree when there are so many people with degrees. A degree doesn't get you in the door, but is a minimum standard for just about any job.

It is too bad school is too expensive, but it doesn't matter.

"It is too bad school is too expensive, but it doesn't matter."

It does matter. The schools that are worth anything are too expensive (exceptions are there of course) while the cheap ones (read < 10K a year) are probably good for nothing. You are better off trying to get a job instead of attending those cheap schools.

University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, and the Georgia Institute of Technology all have tuition of less than 10k and are ranked by US news as having CS programs better than Harvard. Several others have tuition less than 15k.

Cheap schools are not good for nothing, and price does not equal quality.

I went to a <10K state school where I learned the skills I needed to get my DIY education afterwards. Undergraduate school taught me how to learn. It taught me how to not be a slob and be productive.

The domain learning useful for my career came after.

It does matter. The schools that are worth anything are too expensive (exceptions are there of course) while the cheap ones (read < 10K a year) are probably good for nothing. You are better off trying to get a job instead of attending those cheap schools.

You are saying this: Ivy/Private School > No college > State School

That statement is absolutely ridiculous.

If the value of college is dominated by its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) effect, a degree from the "wrong" school could send such a negative signal (you weren't wise enough to skip the degree even though you couldn't get admitted to the "right" school) that the innate value of the education you received doesn't make up for it. I hope this doesn't hold broadly, because I went to a state university. But I would think less of someone proudly displaying, e.g., a degree from a known http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill, so it's at least possible for a degree to be worse than useless—the question is how mediocre a school would have to be.

I can't reply to prodigal_erik because the thread is too long, but the definition of diploma mill you provided is refering to non accredited universities.

I am talking about accredited universities, big state schools that are very affordable and provide fairly good educations.

I would rather attend one of those than no school at all.

I think it's a bit more these days, but I spent about $60k on my aerospace engineering degree from Georgia Tech. That's a decent amount of money, but if you're a self-starter with some programming chops, there is no reason you can't work during the summers and the year to save up $10-15k or so for school.

"No HR department can interview people without a degree when there are so many people with degrees. A degree doesn't get you in the door, but is a minimum standard for just about any job."

Nonsense. I have never been to college and I am currently responsible for the IT Security of a mid-sized health network. Not only was I hired without a degree but I've been promoted several times.

I also have no technical certifications, at various points in the past I had some but have let them lapse. Having a piece of paper may make things easier, but in the end it comes down to whether or not you can sell yourself to the organization.

And on the other end of the spectrum, I've been an "intern" with a 10,000+ employee nationwide corporation for over a solid, full-time year now and have 2 years part time experience prior to this position in the information security and network infrastructure world. Yet I'm waiting to be hired full time (or even part time) until I finish my degree. I've earned several awards for my work, and for one quarter actually turned the security department into a profit center based on information I provided about a vendor causing a major security breech (and the resulting lawsuit).

It's a great company, but my experience doesn't matter to them. Without a degree, I cannot be hired. Schools in my state don't even offer Security degrees, so it's not a matter of what the degree says, it's a matter of having the degree. I literally cannot do anything more to prove my value to the company. They don't care. It's about the paper.

"it doesn't matter"

In what sense? In a social-justice sense it seems like it does matter quite a bit. In a national-productivity sense "the college question" also matters quite a bit. In what sense doesn't $trillions of spending matter?

I think what krschultz is saying is that if you have the skills to be successful without a college degree, you also are likely to have the skills to get a scholarship to a decent school. They are a somewhat similar skillset and going to college allows you to check the checkbox on an application.

I understand that, but they did also say "Fuck people who bitch about how expensive college is."

Do you think Mark Cuban was a scholarly book-learner? Or that the top Latin student from your secondary school had a successful exit?

0 < correl(school chops, business chops) < 1

How many people in the U.S. do you think follow a career path like Mark Cuban's? Don't use an extreme outlier to make a general point.

I was using Cuban as an example because the book cover visible on the article is so jock-ish. In the above Cuban is supposed to represent that business-successful jock archetype.

Fuck people who bitch about people who bitch about how expensive college is

Maybe the monolithic decision of university shouldn't be forced upon us when we're teen-aged and entrenched in dogma.

Maybe the people who think college is a waste of time should try to reach young people with that message. (career day at a nearby school? online forums young people hang out on?)

he's not allowed near schools...

Did the failing mark on your "How to Win Friends and Influence People" book report bring down your GPA? ;-)

I had the same experience as you (college paid for via scholarships), but the scholarships available differ from school to school and community to community. So, not everyone has that as an option.

Hardly, I hand out copies of that book and truly believe it, but tongue-in-cheek doesn't come across well on the internet.

I didn't get a scholarship, I might have been offered one if I took the college aptitude tests, but I didn't feel like going to college at the end of high school - I was sick of high school as it was, nothing but cliques and kids picking on me. I hated it. I didn't want another 4 years of the same stuff. So, I probably wouldn't have gone to college even if I was offered a scholarship. However, now I am considering going to college, (many years later) and I doubt anyone would give me a scholarship now. I've become a successful programmer just from teaching myself.

I also paid $0 for college, but that's because I did my undergrad in Europe, and my US university entirely paid for my grad school costs :3

It's hard to overstate the value of a university education... Why are you so vehement? Never went to college?

I have a 4 year degree and I think it's hard to understate its value. I wish I'd spent that 4 years doing different things... I almost certainly would have learned more (and the things I learned would have been more useful). And it wouldn't have cost $120k.

That experience isn't applicable to everyone. Mine invaluable and cost less than 15k.

College is what you make of it.

The cost of a college education is an overstatement of its value.

How many recent grads outside of engineering do you know? Now how many of them are gainfully employed?

Now how much did they pay for school and how much pay and experience did they miss out on by not working for the time they were in school?

I just went through the post graduate job cycle along with a huge batch of my peers and any of us will be the first to tell you that college is broke. The only reason I am employed is because of projects I put together myself, online, outside of the scope of a university education.

If you are looking to meet girls and learn how to drink to excess by all means college is a great place to do it. Otherwise college education in the liberal arts is a complete waste.

That's not exactly true. On average with the current unemployment I think you are correct, but the value of an ivy league degree is still many multiples its cost because it gets into the good ol' boys club.

Most people do not graduate with an Ive League degree.

In Switzerland, which traditionally has seen a low rate in college degrees, and has relied on its apprenticeship system for a long time, we have seen an explosion in new college titles with the bologna reform.

You want to be a janitor? Congratulations, you can now get a master in "facility management". Teaching special needs children? You better get started on that degree! You want to be a librarian? Well, what about getting a degree in "information management"?

You got a degree in communications and have freelanced for a couple of years as a copy writer? What you gonna do? Ah right, you start to teach "corporate PR" at a university. Demand is that high that I could probably start teaching shit like Java, which I don't even know, in a heart beat. Without having any pedagogic qualities whatsoever.

We live in a day and age where everybody wants a slice of that big fat cake. Everyone is entitled to 10k a month. Everybody wants a designer apartment, a BMW. Every year, a new smartphone, vacations in the Maldives. Living the dream. On top of that, costs are rising across the board, mandatory health insurance is killing everyone. Prices are inflating. So what you gonna do? Ah, right, you get a degree, it doesn't even matter which one. Shit, three years ago my mom got a degree (she was a Kindergarten teacher). She is 53 now.

I really don't know how this could last. Maybe it can last for a small country like Switzerland, but I have a very bad feeling. A lot of the people will one day wake up and realize that just because the studied something, they're not going to earn 200k a year, even not 10 years down the road, yet they already live a lifestyle that assumes this to be true.

edit: My girl friend proof reads master theses for people. You wouldn't believe the shit she has to read and correct. Without outside help, many people would fail miserably. If you pay enough you will get your degree in one form or another. And that is precisely what is going on.

To be fair, library science is a field which many people dedicate a huge chunk of their lives to, often through some pretty rigorous undergraduate work. The professional accreditation is usually required for scholarly posts. 'Information science' is another thing entirely (though if that's your point, then, well... OK).

Similarly, at least in much of the US, teaching special needs teachers requires extra certification on top of a normal teacher's license. Without all kinds of extra classes on the various psychological and physical disorders that they deal with in their classrooms, the extra classes seem pretty justified.

Of course you need extra certification for teaching special needs. That's not the point. My question is, do you need a college degree for it?

I used this example because it relates to my mother, who recently got a master in this field. First of all, I'm proud of how my mother pulled that off at that age, while still working at her old job!

That said, the courses were largely theoretical mixed with a minuscule amount of practical studies. How many of the graduates will be able to pursue an academic career in this field after this degree? Maybe 1% (Note, this number is pure guesswork). The rest will actually end up assisting kindergarten teachers with their "disorderly" children.

In many cases, they should function as a buffer, protecting the child from overzealous kindergarten teachers who want to get rid of the troublemakers asap. This is important because a lot of developmental "deficiencies" are not there forever or can be mitigated. I digress. From my point of view, the actual theoretical work was frankly substandard. I don't think it has to do with me applying the standards of "hard science" to a "soft field". No, simply put, those professors didn't know that much to begin with and neither did many of the students.

The purpose of a University Degree (even a post graduate one) has never been to allow an academic career. It has always been the case that these degrees are necessary but not sufficient for an academic career but in the vast majority of cases Masters and Ph.D's go off and do other things instead - like practice in their field. In terms of educational psychology there is a very active and inquisitive community of research developing a number of strands of theory. I don't know very much about it at all, but some of what I have seen with respect to cognition, learning and development is impressive. Some is less so - but all of the people who I have met who are working on this agreed and wanted to change that, which I view as healthy.

As an aside if you were to (honestly) think about almost all fields of inquiry (maths may get a pass, possibly) then I think that you would have to agree with the statement "those professors didn't know that much to begin with and neither did many of the students". We are pretty ignorant about more or less everything when you look closely.

I think you misunderstand me. I didn't use this phrase in a philosophical way. I'm talking about professors teaching statistics and not knowing the difference between the median and the mean. I'm talking about that level of incompetence.

Imagine a course on compiler design where the professor doesn't know what top-down parsing and lexical analysis is. I'm certain that you would call that class a failure, or not?

Of course that class would be worthless. Not all (and in my experience, almost no) classes, however, are like that when one selects a college which has a quality program for the degree of interest. Furthermore, I would go so far as to lay much of the blame for a poor education on the student who fails to select a good school for their degree.

I recently saw a TV show about employment problems college graduates had. One person interviewed had a master's degree. The show was extolling the virtues of a program to assist these people in finding jobs, and a big part of their help was showing people how to write a resume.

I was astonished that someone with a master's degree would need help putting together a resume. Something is terribly wrong.

There are certainly people who have the self-motivation, drive to learn, and grade themselves accurately using self-teaching tools -- but I think you'll find those people are few and far between.

Also, most of the useful information I obtained in my degree was which resources are the best.

And of course, you can't learn medicine (and others) without actually examining people

Would you trust a doctor that only learned on the internet to operate on you?

College isn't just for web programmers.

Seriously. You'd think no one has to learn to use equipment that costs several tens of thousands of dollars and whose sale is rigorously controlled by the US government.

/nuclear engineer

Correct

And also medicine, biology, most of engineering, etc

Sad, yeah.

Unfortunately, Hacker News mostly is.

I taught myself to program (which I have no degree in). There was no way I could've taught myself aerospace engineering (which my degree is in).

Not everything is like the software industry. Indeed, most things aren't.

In theory, I agree. In practice, college is a very useful signal. And it's not just the coursework from the college major. College demonstrates a variety of soft skills: time management, the ability to plan and meet deadlines, the ability to work on what's necessary when it's necessary, a willingness to suck it up and do some unglamorous but necessary drudge work, etc. I've worked with a variety of people that haven't gone to college and with few exceptions they were lacking in these areas.

Obviously all those skills can be learned elsewhere, but as a hiring manager, it's a major time investment to try and suss that out whereas having a college degree with good grades means more likely than not that the candidate possesses those skills.

4 years and $50-100k of debt is in no way an efficient way to surface those signals.

I agree that some things like research can't be done online. But I don't think those will remain at the university either. Graduate/research degrees must represent such a small % of a university's revenue that when the majority goes away they simply won't be able to survive.

Just ask the RIAA if they can survive by selling mp3s when they're used to selling overpriced CDs.

Graduate / research degrees are a university

universities exist solely for the purpose of enabling professors to do further scientific research

to do this they need:

* a supply of intelligent grunts (phd candidates)

* an administration capable of turning grant money into a well stocked lab

and

* a supply of very rich young people who will be taught the basics of science such that when the young rich people run the country they might get something right

unfortunately we have forgotten that one genius well supported can provide value and economic growth for a whole planet (who invented steam engines, fire, wheels, transistors) - and million English graduates wont make up for it.

I would be perfectly supportive of a university system that publically funded scientific (empirical, provable) courses, had industry funding for vocational work (engineering) and left arts to do what they have always done.

But saying let's get rid of the lot? Nonsense.

At research universities most of the budget comes from research, and most of the work in research gets done by grad students. Undergrad programs are an afterthought.

Well undergraduate programs are a thought in that they are needed to produce candidates for the graduate programs that provide value.

And from what I can see most of the budget comes from and is devoted to college football.

I bet if you broke it down you would find that most research dollars are spent at schools with highly visible sports teams that are self funding.

I believe this mostly because the big conferences have fantastic TV deals and huge research schools.

> And from what I can see most of the budget comes from and is devoted to college football.

This couldn't be further from the truth. I'm unaware of any major universities in which sports money comes from or is applied to general budgets. Athletic departments are generally self-contained and there is very little (if any) financial overlap into the academic portions of a university. Payroll, and even scholarships, are paid from athletic income, and any left over is not put into general budget.

Personally, I wish the myth of "the cost to the university/tax payers/etc" would go away.

That's only true for STEM fields, though. Outside of STEM, department's budget is actually correlated with teaching undergrads, so they tend to do a better job of it. Which is why so many undergrads end up switching majors away from STEM in college.

You are both right in some respect.

First of all college teaches knowledge that you would need relevant to your major. Then college is a signal that you can learn stuff that is required (but not necessarily that you would like to learn). For example sometimes you might just not know what you need to know. Like math. I am glad I was forced to take calculus because I find it useful in my programming job, years later. Taking that made it easy to take understand and analyze algorithms. I am also glad I was forced to take English and Critical Thinking. I stuck with it for 4 years. That also tells something about me to a potential employer (maybe the wrong thing, maybe it shows I can be a submissive grunt that will willingly follow orders, or maybe it shows I can get stuff done to a future startup partner...)

So, taking costs aside, I think there is some value in college.

Now bringing the costs back into it, I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k. There is a terrible inefficiency some place if it actually costs that much. There is terrible waste some place. I remember my University was building large stadiums, and huge gyms with lazy rivers and other crap in them, while some colleges couldn't afford paper to print exams on and was using single spaced double-sided, small fonts.

> , I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k.

There are efforts underway to provide the education, filtering, verification and signaling services for $0-10k per person. It can be done. We just have to cut out all the fat.

"4 years and $50-100k of debt is in no way an efficient way to surface those signals."

This seems intuitively true - 4 yrs/50-100k looks like an unjustifiable expense - but efficiency is relative. If we don't have another way of systematically vetting knowledge workers, then talk of efficiency is moot. There's room for improvement/disruption, but the parent's response to the gp's "fuck college" sentiment was well measured and in keeping with the sentiment of the linked article.

I agree that some things like research can't be done online.

I've heard this many times. Why is this? I get some research requires access to physical equipment that is out of reach of the common man, but it seems something like algorithmic research in the field of CS could often be done online.

The median amount of debt is somewhere around 12k. 50-100k of debt is not at all required for an undergraduate degree. Anyone who chose that route had other options.

At research universities, undergraduate tuition represents a very small %-age of the university's revenue.

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