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Comment by jonny_eh | Hacker News Reader

I have a degree in computer engineering and have founded a struggling startup. My one year doing my failed startup was immensely more valuable to me than my 4 years at university. But that's just one anecdote.

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Did you apply yourself equally at both? Without making any assumptions, many people do sail through college hardly putting enough effort. If people half-assed startups the same way, starting work on the prototype two days before an investor pitch, say, that wouldn't be much of a learning experience either.

In your own startup, it feels like every stroke counts, and you are doing something you find exciting and meaningful. It's likely not that startups offer more teaching experience, it's just that you're bound to get more out of something you really dive into.

Having said that, most (all?) college curricula do not cater for people intending to do startups, but they still have a lot to offer.

Yes, I probably worked harder at my startup than at school. For people that love school, maybe that's a better choice for them, it wasn't necessarily for me.

That's the whole point: you _want_ to apply yourself more at your startup.

Not necessarily. I have seen people apply themselves well at school and also seen people half-assing through startups.

I have degrees from a good university and I've also been working on a startup for a couple of years, I'm not naive enough to view life as anything other than a series of contiguous events that influence each other though...

But both are still valuable, aren't they? Perhaps school and startup experiences are in combination worth more than the sum of the parts.

Jumping in here... I'm a college student and a frequent TA. I've TAed in CompSci (which I started learning as a kid), Chemistry, and Biology. Most kids don't want to be there. They see it as a continuation of high school. I even go to a pretty awesome school. But most entering freshman go because their family and their society tell them its required. If even half of those folks didn't go, it would give college classrooms and communities a more academic, productive, and positive atmosphere that encouraged hard work and learning. Instead our country has a pathological relationship with higher education. Its a place where rich and middle class folks bump their heads against academic subjects in the day time and binge drink in the night.

Certainly not everyone's like that. Certainly college is a really useful tool for many people. Its also an good tool to climb the social ladder. But the assumption that its right for everyone in a certain social class... that's whats fucked up.

I have similar experiences. I feel that degrees are only relevant to employers as a means to thin the pack of applicants and only relevant to students as a way to better network and fill that check box putting them into the thinned herd.

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