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Comment by sashank_1509 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah in my view, the primary value of undergrad in college, is the social connections you make and the status it grants you. If this was not the primary value of college what else can it be. What should it ought be. It certainly is not knowledge nor can it be knowledge. You learn far more in a single year on the job than in your four year college degree (and I say this as an engineer). In fact I think a STEM degree is mostly superfluous except for the connections you make in college which is very important.

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> Yeah in my view, the primary value of undergrad in college, is the social connections you make and the status it grants you.

For those of us who went to state schools, it was about learning. Going to a 2nd tier state college instantly changed my social class from "family of laborers" to "highly paid white collar".

> You learn far more in a single year on the job than in your four year college degree (and I say this as an engineer).

Maybe. I've met plenty of experienced devs who didn't know fundamentals that colleges teach. College also teaches other skills, such as writing, presentation, and appreciation for the arts. Ideally it also teaches people how to be responsible members of a democratic society.

> In fact I think a STEM degree is mostly superfluous except for the connections you make in college which is very important.

Most people don't have access to a fully stocked chemistry lab, or super computer clusters. College is a place where you are surrounded by other people who also want to learn, so your own learning is greatly accelerated by the conversations you are able to have.

There are countless times I'd be stumped in a math class trying to understand a topic and I wouldn't get it until I sat down and tried to explain it to someone else in my study group.

A 4 year college is primarily about teaching you how to think critically. It’s also about proving to a company that you can be responsible enough to show up every day and get you work done. Finally it’s about ensuring you have a base level of knowledge so that all that learning you claim you’ll do in one year on the job can actually occur.

“I didn’t learn anything in college” is either exaggerated arrogance, or you were doing something very, very wrong in undergrad.

I absolutely have gotten industry jobs through my work network and, doubtless, through where I went to school to some degree. But basically zero of those have been through people I met in school. The school network aspect is almost certainly overstated in most cases. I've never gotten a job offer through a classmate or college professor.

i got my first industry job through interview performance, but in later job transitions my university affiliation ended up playing a major role because certain employers are extremely focused on certain feeder schools, at least for periods of their existence often through founder bias or because it buys a certain kind of harmony based on shared experience and shared world-view.

Atlassian’s founders are two college mates - one from rich background, one who couldn’t afford a computer until 12. One example of a multi billion dollars company offsets the idea.

Sure. College mates start companies together. I'm friends with a bunch of people who started a now defunct gaming company more or less out of school. I know others who basically got their jobs because people they knew from undergrad activities were editors or whatnot.

But there's this mythology that the main reason you go to Harvard (which I didn't attend) is to network with movers and shakers isn't generally true in the main.

People say that university is designed to teach you to 'think critically'. They say that a lot. I wonder, then, why it is that most people leaving university are not substantially better at thinking critically than any random person I meet.

There is real work and learning that happens in universities and there are people who actually care about those things but that work is tertiary to the primary function of the university, which is ensuring the continued existence of itself

the uncomfortable thing that this thread is dancing around is the fact that college is not useful or necessary for the large majority of people who attend. People repeat things like “teaches critical thinking” because that’s what others say

No, people repeat things like “teaches critical thinking” because the statistics would show it’s true.

Which statistics in which study? Given the current system any sampling from college/university would be cherry picking vs general populous (unless you also sample general population with similar constraints to ensure a like for like comparison) so can't really be trusted.

I’m sorry half this country currently believes that foreign countries pay our tariff's. Demographically speaking the vast majority of those people didn’t go to college.

Your anecdotal evidence is not reflected in reality.

I taught a critical thinking course to junior analysts in my organization. I did not observe any correlation between people with college degrees and critical thinking skills. If anything, people with life experience (multiple previous jobs) seemed to come in with higher critical thinking skills.

In which country, and where did they graduate from? Not all colleges are alike.

Critical thinking is not something that can be taught. It's a family of skills that can be learned through years of practice. Academic degrees usually place a heavy emphasis on practicing the subset of critical thinking skills relevant to the field. And you can often see the differences in the graduates. People who studied CS, mathematics, law, and history tend to approach problems in different ways.

Of course, not every graduate meets the standards of the degree they got. Many don't have sufficient internal motivation to work hard and learn. And universities often lack strong sources of external motivation. No matter whether it's the government or the student who pays for the education, there is a heavy pressure to have people graduate in time, even when they have not reached the expected standards.

I would be interested in looking at such a course, all the ones I saw were pretty dull.

I found the most systematic way of teaching critical thinking is to do a lot of maths.

That might have been sampling bias. If they were hired and not fired quickly, they had probably already passed some test for critical thinking. This is like testing whether familial wealth affects SAT scores by comparing the results of rich and poor kids at MIT.

In my case it was that I was doing something very wrong in undergrad. But somehow the fact that I didn't do a damn thing but alcohol and drugs and cram one week before finals didn't stop me from getting good grades and graduating. Somehow the lack of all that knowledge that I was supposed to learn didn't didn't disadvantage me at all. Somehow just holding the stupid credential that was the only thing I got out of it is the only thing anyone cares about.

I interact with lots of engineers, some who got CS or Math degrees, and some who went to bootcamps. The difference in competence is very noticeable.

> You learn far more in a single year on the job than in your four year college degree (and I say this as an engineer)

I do not believe this is true in the slightest. I learned more in a single OS class than i learned in years of industry work. What you learn in industry tends to be distinct from what you learn in college, and if it isn't, then your college curriculum was probably a waste.

When have you heard of someone learning linear algebra, calculus of variations, thermodynamics and real analysis in a single year on the job?

Studying hard is harder work than having a normal job, much harder work. I've never been stressed in a job, but I have been stressed trying to learn too much in school.

I've made far more connections in the workforce than university.

You can certainly find exceptions but while I have friends from what can reasonably be described as elite schools--and am even on a volunteer non-profit board associated with one--I can't really think of a single case where relationships developed in school translated into a single paying job. On the other hand, basically every job I've had after ones right out of school were essentially the direct result of workplace interactions.

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