Ask HN: Would you get a CS degree today? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you get a CS degree today?

39 pointsreilly3000124 comments

I’m looking for feedback from the community. My son made a plan to get a 4 year degree from a decent state university in computer science but is having second thoughts. He is looking at ~$130K in costs and 4 years of not working vs trying to find work and build a resume organically. He’s a fine young developer who loves C++ and learned Java, web dev, and EDA in his teen years for fun. His written several languages and toy compilers, ordered PCBs for his own gaming device, and built a social network in the 6th grade. He’s looking forward to higher level coursework but dreading the intro classes. His motivation for getting a degree was to be marketable to employers, but also to gain a better understanding of fundamentals. With AI making entry level programming jobs scarce, does it really make sense to invest the time and money? If not, what sort of pathway into a programming career would be a good alternative? Any and all advice appreciated.

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Paul Graham (remember him?) had an essay about 20 years ago that may be relevant to this: https://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html "What You'll Wish You'd Known"

It says when trying to figure out what to study, think about what might give you most options for the future, a future that you might have almost NO way of predicting now. He calls this "staying upwind." He gives an example:

Suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.

And given a choice between studying two subjects that interest you, but one is easier for you and one is a bit harder (but still within your abilities), opt for the harder one:

The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn't. Hard means worry: if you're not worrying that something you're making will come out badly, or that you won't be able to understand something you're studying, then it isn't hard enough. There has to be suspense.

You don't have to automatically agree with everything in his essays as Great Truths, but it's worth considering his ideas.

While we're wandering down memory lane, here's a good one by Joel Spolsky (remember him?): 'Advice for Computer Science College Students' (2/Jan/2005)

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/02/advice-for-compute...

The moral of the story is that computer science is not the same as software development. If you’re really really lucky, your school might have a decent software development curriculum, although, they might not, because elite schools think that teaching practical skills is better left to the technical-vocational institutes and the prison rehabilitation programs. You can learn mere programming anywhere. We are Yale University, and we Mold Future World Leaders. You think your $160,000 tuition entititles you to learn about while loops? What do you think this is, some fly-by-night Java seminar at the Airport Marriott? Pshaw.

The trouble is, we don’t really have professional schools in software development, so if you want to be a programmer, you probably majored in Computer Science. Which is a fine subject to major in, but it’s a different subject than software development.

I dropped out halfway through because I had a job offer after an internship in Berlin, and working for money and exploring Europe seemed a whole lot more fun than finishing my degree back in Canada. It was the best decision I've ever made, and our tuition was only CAD 5000 per year.

I don't know. Some people will do better if they follow the established path. Others blaze their own trail and don't do well in rigid environments. I know I did not.

Ten years later, the best part of my studies are the ones that felt like a distraction and a waste of time back then: mandatory engineering and liberal arts classes. I would have learned programming on my own either way, but these other things added so much depth to my life!

I think that there are so many ways to live your twenties and grow as a human and as a professional. I strongly doubt that saddling yourself with debt is the best way to do it. Given four years of your full attention, you can achieve so much more, provided that you have the curiosity and discipline to try. I just wonder where the strength to explore the world beyond your main interest would come from.

Why is nobody mentioning that one cannot get an internship without being a university student?

It might amaze you, but most of the people I know in IT never had an internship.

It's a fairly recent phenomenon. (I'm old, so recent may mean different things depending on you frame of reference.)

> It might amaze you, but most of the people I know in IT never had an internship.

Not amazed. I presume it used to be easier to get a job back in the day.

I am in a similar position as OP's son right now, and I am trying to get into a university to do CS because I believe the only way to enter the field right now is through internships.

I believe this because I don't even see any alternatives. Like, if you are not going to go to university, what are you going to do instead? Contribute to some open source project and hope for the best?

Having a solid code repo that people can check out filled with projects is always good.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/

> Having a solid code repo that people can check out filled with projects is always good.

It's nice to have, but ROI on that is terrible. Most of the time people don't even read your resume.

> https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/mentorship-programs/

Huh, didn't know this existed. Looks promising.

Absolutely no one looks at random open source contributions or your personal repo. They barely look at resumes for more than six seconds.

Yes, my open source contributions got me a job the year before last as the second highest contributor to a popular in its niche official “AWS Solution”. But no one cared about my other open source projects that I highlighted that were also well documented, solved a unique need and were on the official “AWS Samples” GitHub repository.

Some of us Actually Do when hiring, yes.

Anecdata: my employer hires C++ programmers, and absolutely looks at a FOSS contributions portfolio.

So you expect your candidates to work everyday and spend time after work contributing to open source?

Shouldn’t that tell me something about the WLB at the company?

No, it means that if you have a public history of both code and team interaction, it’s something that will influence our hiring decision.

It’s not necessary to have one, nor to maintain it. But for a recent graduate, it’s one way to demonstrate competence both technically and socially.

Or, for the OP, a way to maybe get hired without a degree.

And people are acting like it’s still 2010 and not 2025. Today’s market is a lot more competitive with fewer jobs and less need of junior developers period. What company is going to hire a junior developer with no experience and no degree over a slightly more expensive one with experience and a degree?

> Absolutely no one looks at random open source contributions

I’m sure it’s far from the most common modality, but this is obviously false. I’ve personally referred people to apply at my company based on their PRs to F/OSS stuff, and at least a couple off the top of my head have been hired.

And if you are one in one hundred maybe even one in a thousand, would a random developer looking for a job be better off doing open source work and getting hired for one of your few openings or “grinding leetCode”?

And “a couple” is statistically so close to zero, it might as well be zero.

At no point did I suggest that it was a primary means of hiring. It’s certainly not “absolutely no one”, though.

> And “a couple” is statistically so close to zero, it might as well be zero.

No, it’s three that got hired (me and two others I hired), with a self-selected sample of one. Certainly not statistically significant, but it’s also far from nothing.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone grind leetcode. There are plenty of jobs that done’t require it, and IMO those are the ones you likely want anyhow.

Yes unless you want a job from one of the companies that pay top of market.

Who wants $160K+ straight out of school anyway?

Yes and you are old (as am I) so your experience really isn’t relevant for someone trying to get a job in 2025 as a new grad.

That's my experience hiring people, too ;)

You can. A few of my friends did after a career change. Also, given 4 years and $100k, there are many ways to build a resume that will get you hired.

I got my start before university by building websites for people, then eventually web apps. I had a successful little business by my first semester.

Depends on the country I suppose? In NA, all internships have a baseline requirement "pursuing a degree in CS or similar field" and some even go farther to say you must be in third year.

I am Canadian. Call it an internship or an entry-level job. In the end it's the same outcome: you get paid significantly less but you get a patient employer and an opportunity to learn.

Oh, ok. Would you mind sharing some tips how one might find this kind of job opportunity today? I am occasionally on Indeed, exploring job postings, and so far my conclusion has been that internships require a university student status. Or am I just out of luck?

I got my last job in 2018, so treat this as outdated advice.

I git my start making websites for small businesses. Then I got more complex projects, and eventually contracts as a web developer. Then I started university and had to pause all that.

My internship in Germany was a typical one. I found it through a job board. At the end, I dropped out of school and stayed, albeit with a proper salary.

I think that the small business world is massively underserved. You have the skills to solve a lot of real problems, and to learn good practices the hard way, as well as a host of soft skills. It's a lot of fun because the impact is immediately visible, and you can't bullshit your way through like in a large corporation.

So I think the problem is that you are looking for a well-marked path. There are so many people who have unmet needs, and they don't advertise it as an internship on a job board.

Now this is where I will sound like a boomer. Go around and ask. Literally just introduce yourself and ask if there's anything you can help people with. Maybe you can throw a quick form together or write a script or two. You might have to fix someone's printer every once in a while, out there in the real world, not sheltered by an org chart.

That's what I used to do, and it was a fantastic learning experience. I remember those days fondly.

> So I think the problem is that you are looking for a well-marked path. There are so many people who have unmet needs, and they don't advertise it as an internship on a job board.

I agree with you 100%. One thing I am unsure about though, and which I believe is very important, is, how much should I ask for? I had an experience where somebody reached out to me through relatives to make a website, so I quoted them $1000, but they just never responded. I believe two primary ways of pricing are per hour and per project, but there are issues with both. If you choose to price per hour, the client doesn't know in advance exactly how much your services will cost, and I believe the client has no way to verify that you actually spent those hours working on their project? And the number of hours you spend largely depends on how you choose to approach the problem, so I would expect people to feel reluctant towards this kind of model. On the other hand, if you price per project, you might end up doing way more work than you expected at first, and isn't it also very common for client needs to change all the time? How did you approach this? Thanks.

That's a tough question.

My policy was to never compete on price. The cheapest clients are also the most demanding. I priced per project because the scope was small and it let me charge much more per hour. It was fun earning 50-100 CAD per hour right out of high school. It's not greedy; not every hour is billable.

That being said, you're also learning, so there's a discount there. If you work for free or cheap, you should do it for people who deserve it. My first clients were non-profits and companies that were just getting started.

A much smarter way to work is to approach people who need websites or dev work for their clients. After pairing up with a graphic designer, work just kept coming. You only need to be trusted once, not for every project.

If it's not immediately obvious, you will learn a lot about salesmanship and customer service. These are valuable lessons.

So exactly what are those ways in 2025 to bold a resume that will set you a part as an entry level developer in the hyper competitive industry?

See my other comments.

You learn an awful lot selling your skills as a freelancer.

Did you have parents that you could either stay with or could subsidize your living expenses?

Most people have an addiction to food and shelter and can’t wander through life aimlessly finding themselves trying to be a better citizen of the world.

Learning programming and being employable directly out of school is entirely different.

> I dropped out halfway through because I had a job offer after an internship in Berlin, and working for money and exploring Europe seemed a whole lot more fun than finishing my degree back in Canada. It was the best decision I've ever made, and our tuition was only CAD 5000 per year.

How long ago did this happen?

That would have been around 2015

I'm a CS professional of 15 years, getting a CS degree for visa purposes. I'm doing it via the University of London's World Class on Coursera [1], and it costs around ~20-25K USD for the whole thing. If all continues to go well, I'll be done in 3.5 years, all while working full time.

So that's another option to consider: do the CS degree part-time while working on breaking into the industry. You can adjust your workload each semester depending on circumstances, so it's flexible for someone job hunting.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

This comment really caught my attention.

I have considered enrolling in a university precisely for the same reason, but I never would have thought that something like that would be considered "valid".

I guess I'm full of questions for you, but in short:

- Where are you coming from and what is your target destination?

- Have you made 101% sure that this way of studying would be acceptable to the employers in your prospective destination country?

- Does one need $20-25K up front, or is there a payment plan?

Thanks if you decide to answer, and I wish you a good luck.

Hey friend,

Happy to answer. Feel free to get in touch on one of the socials in my profile to discuss further.

Q1. I'm from Australia, and the target destination is USA. Although I have no firm plans, I want to have the option in future. Australian's have access to a particular visa called E-3, which I have failed to obtain in the past due to lack of degree.

Q2. Yes. Upon completing this, I will have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of London. It's a bachelor's degree as good as anywhere. The exams are proctored, and all the exams/assignments are graded via Goldsmiths University. It's 100% legit.

Q3. You pay per module, so you don't need to pay up front. You just pick how many modules you want to do that semester and pay for them. The only requirement is that you must complete enough modules per semester to finish within 6 years. Since the education is directly related to my work, it is also tax-deductible in my country.

>and all the exams/assignments are graded via Goldsmiths University

I realize that you are doing this to check off the degree box on your visa application, but if your degree will be from Goldsmiths (that is, "Goldsmiths, University of London" on a résumé, as opposed to the generic "University of London", that would be especially helpful.

I had a look at another student's diploma certification, and it says:

> "... having registered with the University of London and passed the approved examinations conducted by Goldsmiths College, has this day been admitted by the University of London to the Degree of BACHELOR OF SCIENCE".

So I don't think it would be unreasonable to mention Goldsmith's College alongside UoL as your education history.

Yes, I would describe your degree as being from "Goldsmiths, University of London".

> The exams are proctored, and all the exams/assignments are graded via Goldsmiths University. It's 100% legit.

- Are all exams done remotely?

- Is it possible to skip classes and go straight to the exams in case I feel confident I can pass?

Yep, all exams are done remotely, using Inspera proctoring software.

The "classes" are just videos on Coursera - totally optional. You have mandatory midterm assignments, and either a final assignment or an exam, depending on the class.

> Yep, all exams are done remotely, using Inspera proctoring software.

Looking at Inspera proctoring requirements, it only mentions windows/mac. Is it possible to use it inside a VM on Linux?

Searching the course Slack channels looks like it doesn't run on Linux, nor a VM (though I'm sure with enough fiddling the latter can be done)

Thanks for your answer once again! :)

I didn't get a CS degree to begin with. I recommended against CS degrees to both my kids, even though one of them is into coding; a degree in some other discipline pairs nicely with self-taught programming skills, and a lot of my colleagues have gone that route.

So I think the real question is less "should you get a CS degree" (I would have said no in 2015 too), and more "should you plan for a career in software development".

For what it’s worth, college for me played a much bigger role in developing my soft skills than it did the hard skills. I find these things sorely lacking with many people I work with, especially those who are extremely technical. I think these skills helped to advance my career more than anything else, and would be transferable to nearly any type of job.

I did end up with a CIS degree (computers in the business college), rather than a CS degree (engineering college). I’m not sure how the required coursework might influence the development of various soft skill. It was never something explicitly taught, just things I was forced to develop in order to get through to graduation.

Yes. I got a computer science degree, and would get one again today. Assuming you are able to finish the degree, no major has better ROI. As AI automates more and more types of work over the next few decades, computer science, the language of automation, will become more important, not less. A computer science degree teaches you the fundamentals (easy to miss in self study), builds discipline, exposes you to cutting edge topics, and opens doors to the best jobs in the industry.

Yes, it's possible to make it without a degree, but it makes things a lot more difficult. Don't second guess it. Do it!

Also, no reason to dread the intro classes IMO. Given his experience, it shouldn't be hard for him to ace them and race on ahead to bigger and better things. I learned some interesting things in intro CS, despite also coming in with prior programming experience.

Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions.

Absolutely. I learned so much from my degree. Even at a decent school, the top level classes walked me through algorithms, compilers, operating systems, and graphics in a way I might not have done myself. Plus, the best people in my class were great, and discussing how to problem solve with them for coursework was very very helpful. The whole thing was very helpful as practice in a bunch of different areas of CS.

On the practical end, your degree is still a big filter for how companies screen applicants. A lack of a CS degree makes it way more difficult to get in the door. I know there are counterexamples, but 99% of my coworkers had CS degrees. Unless the money is a huge burden, or the school you would go to really is crap, then yeah, the degree makes the rest of the journey much easier.

As advice, try to get evaluated out of the intro courses and skip to higher level stuff. Often if you can show a prof that you can program (before the school year begins) you can place right into a course that is at your level.

The AI arguments are also facile. A CS degree is still the best training to be ready to use AI effectively. You understand more about how it is built than everyone else, plus you know way more about every tool surrounding the AI, and would have an easier time making your own.

I know some people have success with alternative paths. But the main road is the main road for a reason here.

Edit: Please also look at the best schools for CS, and don't just discard them as options. My coworkers out of these schools got even more out of their classes and costudents than I did. Your son sounds talented, and the best schools can help talent go even further.

Knowing what I know now, I'd do mathematics or a hard science degree and learn programming on my own.

Looking at the careers of mathematicians who turned software developers after putting minimal effort into CS courses, they all make CRUD work for insurance sector consulting companies. The pay is fine, but the work is absolutely dreadfully predictable. I'm sure that kind of work is automatable before anything where you solve a hard problem.

Not to discourage choosing math over CS, of course.

You just have to do it for the right reason: Because math is friggin' cool, and programming is easier to learn on your own than math, and there is a skill transfer that goes from math to programming that doesn't go the other way.

I haven't had _any_ jobs where the programming involved solving hard problems, TBH. The hard part of my job is dealing with people and regulatory environments. The code is basically trivial.

I don't really mind it either, if I want to do something novel I do things on my own.

The majority of coding or software engineering jobs are not about solving hard problems. Just implementing stuff, getting ideas to work. I agree that most of the code will be trivial.

I’ve selected for interesting work primarily by working for R&D departments, for sketchy startups, and in niche domains.

The cost has been that I don’t have deep domain knowledge that could lead to making a startup myself.

And it’s the kind of stuff with few or no examples of anywhere, so no LLM help. For example, building cryptographic primitives for a custom zero-knowledge VM in the VM’s own esoteric assembler language. Nothing closely resembles it.

Yeah, my preference is to have stable, "easy" work so I can have steady income for 5+ years per job, then I do all my weird mad science stuff solo and have full control of the resulting interesting work.

I feel the exact same way as someone who is a teacher and researcher of CS. If I were to do it all over again, I would’ve done a bachelor’s in math, with an emphasis on discrete topics (combinatorics, graph theory), linear and abstract algebra, and category theory. I would have then pursued graduate education in computer science.

I’ve found myself drawn to areas of CS such as graph machine learning and programming language theory where I wish I had stronger math chops beyond calculus, linear algebra, and introductory discrete math.

I work in a big tech company and interview candidates for software engineering jobs every day jobs. I don't pay too much attention to the resume but I don't think I've ever interviewed a candidate that didn't have a college degree. A lot also have PhDs too.

I don't know if AI will reduce demands for SWEs, but it seems pretty risky not to get a degree IMHO.

In the end I believe degree is the simplest filter for recruitment and sometimes promotions. Thus at reasonable price it is not worst idea.

Even more so as demand reduces.

Sounds like your son already has strong computer science skills. I would advise he focus on something OUTSIDE of that in college like business or finance. That way he can have another tool in his toolbox. That’s what I would do in hindsight.

Yes, but my recommendation for decades has been to study CS if you want, but if anything else interests you then get a CS minor or double major. If he's designing PCBs of his own, he may be interested in EE or CMPE as a major (and if he does CMPE, depending on the school, it's already effectively a CS minor). Programming is relatively easy to get into without a degree or with an unrelated degree, other disciplines are much more difficult to break into without the diploma.

If he's actually interested in CS, then a CS degree (or minor) makes sense. If he's interested in programming, study just about anything else and minor in CS or double major. Being an AE or MechE that has a much better than average (for the discipline) grasp on programming is a better edge career wise.

> He’s looking forward to higher level coursework but dreading the intro classes.

A late addition. Your son should test out of those classes given your description of his skills. Alternatively, he should talk to his advisor and seek to skip lower level courses. He'll still need the same number of credits, but I did this to get out of three lower level math and CS courses that I already had down. Some advisors are more amenable to this than others, though.

Unless he’s getting into a truly top tier school, have him go to a state university for much less. Community college and transferring is also an option but the social experience of going to a 4 year university is unique and fun. If you have something local where he can live at home or work enough while in school to cover part of the expenses, great. Spend $30-40k instead. I went to a fine state school in California and have talked to a lot of CS grads. I’ve rarely seen significant value add for paying more for a mid tier school than whatever the cheaper average option is.

Your son is not the average student. He will level up in school and will get hired if his interpersonal skills measure up to his tech chops. We have students who have not written their own compilers getting hired straight out of their BS today.

The competition is fiercer now, but good devs will still get hired. Average devs have a lot more trouble these days.

Does your son need to go to school? Maybe he's hireable as-is.

Finally, has he looked at financial aid? It can take a bite out of that debt.

4 years is a long time, especially these days, it is hard to say what the world will look like in 4 years let alone the CS industry but if he enjoys programming to the extent that it seems like he does to me it absolutely makes sense to study it and build his skills if doing that won’t put you all in massive debt.

My personal belief is that not hiring entry level engineers is unsustainable unless we get AGI capable of both outputting and _maintaining_ software better than humans, and if that happens all bets are off anyway.

True.

But can you come up with a good argument why a company should hire an entry level developer out of school - especially out of a tier 2 school in 2025 let alone in 2029? As I said I’m not being elitist, I graduated from a college that no one has heard of outside of the state.

Just so I don’t come off as elitist, I graduated from a no name state school in the south with a degree in computer science. But that was in the 90s.

My perspective though is going to come from someone who worked at Amazon (AWS) in 2020-2023 and mentored a couple of interns who got return offers the next year.

Companies aren’t recruiting for the most part from tier 2 schools and it’s hard to get an internship.

I was also looking for a job in late 2023 as someone who was experienced, credentialed, networked, etc.

The market for developers sucks right now. I would have probably had a hard time finding a job if it weren’t for my network and a couple of niches where I’m one of the industry experts.

When I submitted my job to hundreds of jobs as a Plan b, I heard crickets there are a lot of people chasing few jobs and to a first approximation, no one wants entry level developers. It’s getting worse as AI improves.

Anecdotally, there are projects I lead now that I would have needed at least one entry level developer to do the grunt work that I can just do myself using ChatGPT.

I would even go as far as saying if he doesn’t go to one of the top schools that companies recruit from, don’t even bother with a CS degree.

Get a degree in something else and maybe take some CS electives if he can’t get a degree from a top school.

What that something else is? I have no idea.

Absolutely not. I feel terrible for people coming out of school with CS degrees right now.

Life is already difficult for young people right now and 6 figures of college debt is just putting another obstacle in their path.

For what it's worth, I don't know that the open source route is particularly fruitful either. I hear people recommending that as a way to get hired, but I never hear much about it making a difference in the hiring process.

Just my .02, though.

He can use the time in school to push further and advance beyond his current knowledge regardless of the level of difficulty of intro or whatever courses. At the end he will have the degree which is valuable for most other jobs even more than it is for Programming, including government jobs especially...and if you are worried about job opportunities, college will be one of the best starting paths to get foot in the door with internships and on site interviews, recruiting events etc. I don't see it being easier outside of university than inside it. Have him scour every opportunity for career events and internships.

He could always join the Army and have college paid for partially or fully at state school depending on years of service. I did this. Aside from the money it is a great experience for a young man, something most won't have and he can get paid while doing it. It will help for hiring at least for government jobs as well.

I think it is a huge mistake to believe AI will take CS jobs to a significant degree any time soon. I think if it does it will take other jobs as much or more. So not worth optimizing for that way.

I think it depends on where you live. Here in the Bay Area I am assuming we have the fiercest competition of all. Companies here have their pick of thousands of H1B students with masters degrees who have optimized for leetcode interviews and are highly motivated to do whatever it takes to stay in this country and bring their family over.

Companies no longer want people who loved programming for the joy of it and the art of it.

First of all it is amazing that your son is a self starter and really a builder. It would be a shame to squash that out of him.

My thoughts (certainly not a recommendation as every situation is unique) - foundations are always going to be critical. So things like cs (not just software eng), math, physics, biology will be super important because with AI you can have the audacity to tackle 10x harder problems. Now a 150k standardized program may not be the way to go about it. (Back home education was practically free so it was not even a question but in here things are crazy so I get it).

My 2 more cents is you have a 1-2 year window where large pct of population is either wary or cautious or unaware of how to use AI properly. If your son is the curious type id encourage him to build like a maniac (heck clone a few high priced SaaS products and learn how to sell). Worst case he loses 4 years while this AI dust settles. Best case he comes out of it with Independence and confidence to do a lot more than a grad who has only done course work (and even those are established in orgs)

If the goal is to learn about computer science, then yes absolutely. However, if the goal is to better one's chances of securing a meaningful and well-paid job, the answer is no.

I work in a FAANG company, and our recruiters know better than to send us candidates without a 4yr degree minimum in any engineering (no CS required but degree required)

I've had a manager tell me to lie about not meeting a degree requirement, though it wasn't at a FAANG.

In many countries degrees are 3 years.

And the FAANGs employ them at their offices in these countries.

Your people could be saving a whole year of their lives not studying algorithms they will never use.

She’s in the US.

I think immersing yourself in a university is a good thing for a few years. It almost doesn’t matter what you study as long as you don’t treat university as a school or degree machine. Sit in on courses from other fields of study. Engage in student politics. Build a plane / car / student coffee shop. Stick your head in a lot of research labs and ask the people there questions. Roam though the cellars, liberate an old mainframe / robot arm / CNC machine and make it work again. Do theater. Whatever. Universities are big, interesting places and there are not many other environments where you can learn, try out and hack on so many different things.

> His motivation for getting a degree was to be marketable to employers

In my 20 years in the industry, I was only asked once in an interview about my degree.

> but also to gain a better understanding of fundamentals

I believe there are many courses online, such as Coursera and others if he wants to learn more. None of them will have the social aspects or networking, but they are far faster and cheaper than the traditional path.

My suggestion is to sit down with your son, and start looking at the job market for junior or graduate jobs and see if it will make sense to invest $130k and 4 years of his life.

If he realises that this is not the way forward, I would suggest he start looking for local hackathons where he can join, learn, network and have fun.

The degree generally just gets you past the HR gatekeeper in tech, human or otherwise—ticking a job requirement box (unless you are in a super specialized situation).

Most small startups do not have HR.

Many still use recruiters…

I've been writing code since I was 12, and I'm 57 now. I majored in Computer Information Systems back in the 1980s. Honestly, I got a lot more out of the other aspects of going to college than I did from the coursework related to my major.

There's some important development that happens at traditional college student age. Some of that can be fostered by attending college. Some of it happens organically no matter where you are.

Your son seems atypical: he knows what he wants to do, he has solid skills, and he is probably already better self-educated than the typical graduating college senior would be in software development.

So at this point what he needs is not necessarily the education, but the magic piece of paper -- the diploma -- that makes him hirable in more places.

A business degree with a minor in a development-oriented course of study might serve him better than spending $160K on what essentially would be a mix of formalizing his learning / reviewing what he already knows.

Because, after all, isn't the point of an education to learn something you don't know already?

So back to that important development: your son needs to become more well rounded. He seems to have excellent aptitude for programming and data processing. How are his social skills? What is the status of his business acumen? Does he aspire to work for himself or start a company someday? To what is he going to apply those skills he's got?

The answer to that is what he should go to college to learn. A generalist degree in something like business might serve him very well. Wasting four years of his life and $160K on stuff he already knows probably won't do much except help him refine his skills in beer and girls. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but maybe not six figures worth of value, either.

I would encourage him to either go to school and round out his learning, or just jump into the working world and find where his skills are deficient and let that inform a future college decision. Just my $.50

Yes, college helps with the internships neccesaray to get a foot in the door. Otherwise there's nothing to differentiate your self from other applicants.

A masters degree ime is neccesaray for any of the most interesting fields of cs work from what I've noticed or will help alot.

Also 130k is unessesary. Go to community College, transfer credits to public university to finish the degree.

If the intro classes are to easy it's an opportunity to tutor for money too. This also goes on your resume

If he wants to move and work abroad, he's likely going to need a degree to meet visa and sponsoring requirements. Doesn't have to be a CS degree, though.

I think it might not be worth his investment. More and more people around the world are doing computers jobs the skill is going to be less and less valued. Maybe a minor in CS would be more worth it for him. Plus he sounds like he already has done a lot of work with it.

Most of the big companies are now tech companies now so we are probably at peak tech. The FAAG companies in the united states are looking at major outsourcing plans over the next 20 years in the united states. Just like manufacturing did back in the day.

That was different when I did it back in the 90s.

Disclaimer: I’m a tenure-track community college instructor in computer science in Silicon Valley.

Assuming your son is in the United States since you mentioned “state university,” an option for reducing costs is attending a community college to get the lower-division courses in CS, math, physics, and liberal arts finished at a considerably lower cost. This also allows your son to buy some time and assess the state of the market two years from now. Two years of community college tuition is much lower than two years of university tuition, and depending on the state it might even be tuition-free.

If your son is still in high school, I also highly recommend he take Advanced Placement tests and score sufficiently well on them so that way he will get college credit for those courses. This could potentially save time in college, thus reducing costs.

+1 this. This was the route I took. I'm old now, so my experience is maybe less relevant. But the price difference seems even more extreme now.

I also think it's worth a real discussion about what your son hopes to gain out of a college education. If the value for him is more vocational, then this strategy above seems almost like a no-brainer. If he's hoping to get that kind of intangible university life experience, community college probably isn't going to deliver.

OP's son programs confidently in 6 languages and develops toy compilers and custom hardware on his own. If he is "dreading the intro classes" already, imagine what two years at a typical community college will do to his momentum and enthusiasm, all to save a bit of money.

It's saving 60k almost and a degree is half bs Gen eds anyway. Why pay so much to take intro to econ, Calc and English classes at an expensive to school?

I would CLEP / test out as much as possible then.

I thought of another possibility: if he enrolled at a university that will allow him to skip or test out of the introductory CS courses, then this will also save time, though he’d still likely need to take non-CS intro courses such as calculus, physics, and a variety of liberal arts/humanities courses.

There’s also the possibility of applying to universities where even the intro level CS courses are quite rigorous and where there’s an expectation, tacitly or explicitly, that CS students have prior experience. Berkeley’s CS 70, for example, is ostensibly an introductory course on discrete math and is required in the EECS program, but it’s much more rigorous than the standard introductory discrete math course taught at most other universities.

If I were planning on going into software development, then yes, I would get a CS degree. But I would, honestly, not plan on going into software development today. Not so much because of the threat of AI, but because I do not want to participate in building the Torment Nexus.

After 20 years of doing this if I could do it all over again I would get a CS degree and an engineering masters. I am a self taught developer with unrelated bachelors.

My experience doing this I have learned there is only thing that influences career fulfillment: barrier of entry. You can make money anywhere in software as dependent upon the success of your employer regardless of level, skill, or competence.

To be happy doing the work, however, requires operating at the appropriate level of challenge. If you are the smartest guy in the room everyone around will be full of excuses and selfish retardation. If you are in over your head you will be the one inventing improper excuses doing selfish things.

So, always strive for the most exclusive and challenging job you can get.

Yes it's worth it, as long as he will get a job working on or with AI. There will still be plenty of jobs in 4 years and he will presumably use AI so much in college that he will be better at using it than most workers who did not study CS

Saying working with AI is like saying working with a mouse and keyboard now. It’s table stakes not a competitive advantage

There is a difference between having the skills to build a mouse from scratch and the skills to use a mouse....

Don’t you think a) everyone is thinking the same thing and it’s going to be common place in 2029, b) he is going to gain enough skills at a tier 2 state school (I graduated from one so that’s not meant to be an insult) to stand out , c) that the companies that need the top talent are going to recruit people graduating from there?

Yes, many are thinking the same thing. The nice thing is AI is complicated enough that really learning the field is hard enough that most people won't ever actually be valuable in the field.

Look at the people who are getting hired to do the hard AI problems. How many of those are new grads from tier 2 schools? In 2029 what do you think that cohort is going to look like?

The things which look like "easy" AI problems are actually harder than they seem. There are no clean abstractions here, if you don't know the math you are kinda hosed doing something as simple as fine tuning an LLM for some specific use case, or even building a good application. For people who a really actually good, there are millions of opportunities outside doing "foundation" level work.

There are in fact abstractions

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/customize-models-in-amazon-...

https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/models...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/concepts/...

So now where do you think things will be in 2029 by the time her son graduates?

And you still haven’t answered the question - why would this be something that everyone isn’t pursuing, there are already people who are doing it and upskilling in it and what are the chances that he is going to be competitive coming from a tier 2 school as a new grad?

Those are tools, not abstractions. What happens when you try to fine tune your model and it doesn't get better (or it gets worse) at the task you are optimizing for? What happens when it gets better in training then doesn't get better on live data?

You actually have to know what you are doing in this space.

The question was answered - the field is complicated - deciding to do it and being capable aren't the same thing. The field is not going to be inundated with capable people. By your thinking, one cannot be paid millions of dollars to be a lawyer because of "competition".

And guess how many of those lawyers are recruited from a tier 2 school? Also companies aren’t paying new grad lawyers millions of dollars. What are the chances that he is going to have the capabilities?

Saying that he can make a lot of money by chasing after the same thing everyone else is chasing after and has a years long head start is like saying he should become a football player because of the money he can make in the NFL.

The number of companies that need any more than the abstractions available from the cloud providers is vanishly small and will grow smaller in 4 years. Those companies aren’t hiring new grads from tier 2 schools.

You are obsessed with schools. Most people forget that within a year of working.

Many lawyers making millions are from second tier law schools.

In computer science, Jeff Dean went to the university of minnesota.

So you can show an anecdote. But look at the colleges where almost all of the lawyers of the top tier law firms attended, where new grads who are hired at BigTech etc.

Or you can look at the median earnings of CS graduates who graduated from the top colleges vs 2nd tier colleges after 5 years.

White shoe law firms aren't the only places people are making millions. I deal with lawyers making millions at law firms you never heard of and never will hear of.

Why look at the median? This kid seems like he's far and away above the median. There is a correlation between best school and best performers, but big tech as an example does their own recruiting and at least in my experience at google, most engineers did not attend one of the very top schools. My team had an engineer who never ever graduated college.

Drop the obsession with prestigious schools and workplaces. Plenty of people are making a very handsome living without the badges from the best places.

The cost of college is astounding. However, companies are not giving preferential treatment to non-grads. Find a school in your state with a good internship program for CS majors with a track record of converting interns to FTEs.

Perhaps of interest (from today's New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs...

There are many reasons why one might want a college education and college experience, but purely from a vocational advantage POV the cost and time seem hard to justify.

I graduated 15 years ago, so who know if my advice is worth anything anymore...

I think the best part of my computer engineering program at the University of Waterloo was the integrated co-op system. (Basically, internships.) It meant my degree was 5 years instead of 4, but I got work experience and professional connections at several companies and came out with a slight profit instead of a ton of debt. I even turned my last internship into a full-time job after I graduated.

Here's one line of thought - You can hand over 130K to your son, and let him decide.

Then he'll have to treat that as an investment, either into college (and hence he'd hopefully be Very Serious about it), or use it for something else - travelling, entrepreneurship, MF/stock investment, etc. The weight of the decision and the ensuing use of the monies are both the payoff, not a degree per-se.

Maybe, ever since I graduated from college I learned again and again that pretty much anything worth thinking about in life boils down to math for me. I'd maybe/probably study CS, as a minor or double major, but Pure/Applied Math programs can be more intellectually enriching in this day and age. This is a completely person analysis, it'll change for everyone.

If he enjoys programming for the sake of it I think it’s valuable but it’s not necessary. He could also get a full CS degree for a fraction of the cost if you’re factoring that in.

The job market is bad but lots of hiring for AI positions, both research and application of AI are still in demand. But this could very well be cyclical.

No matter what someone has to train the AI, control the AI, etc.

He may wish to consider a degree in another country.

If he goes to Finland or Australia he can get a world-class education for far less.

Costs in the US have always puzzled me, so the cost/use factor is completely off.

Here in Germany I would still recommend getting a BSc in CS if you're interested in the topic.

upvoted for visibility, quick reaction - not for $130k no way, is he self motivated enough to spend a year at home self of self study? i am a 39yo tech founder who also learned C++ at high school age, the world was different 20 years ago but 130k is a huge amount of debt, and my career was generated almost entirely from side projects. My actual degree is in computer hardware engineering despite the software career. It made no difference

your son could move to Germany if you can't cover the cost.

if he's that bad into it, he'll be doing gigs and projects with students and cracks all over the world.

it's not about getting a degree in CS, it's about how bad you want to feed your curiosity. the field is still in it's teen years. there's whole human-like brains to build, hardware and infra and artificial minds that run on it.

employers? your son sounds like he'll be one in no time.

math + computer science is a no brainer if you like it and are smart enough to do it.

There is a strong argument that understanding the relevant math (which isn't rocket science) behind AI gives one a leg-up. Most people just can't be bothered to do it and it's really important and actually practical in the modern world. Linear algebra, calculus, probability + statistics, optimization, discrete math.

I didn’t get one in 2002, and wouldn’t have even bothered trying in retrospect.

It’s a harder path, but honestly… only slightly.

> a decent state university ... He is looking at ~$130K in costs

130k seems high for public school. How much of that is room and board?

Have you looked at college costs recently? Look what Michigan costs for an in-state student: https://admissions.umich.edu/costs-aid/costs

Or Maryland: https://financialaid.umd.edu/resources-policies/cost-attenda...

Or Texas: https://onestop.utexas.edu/managing-costs/cost-tuition-rates...

I think you get the picture...

At first I thought maybe you were cherry-picking some examples from more prestigious schools. Then I checked on the tuition rates for the schools I attended. $29,000/yr for the less desirable school. $35,000/yr for the more desirable/well known school. That's the IN STATE rate. Neither of these are considered top tier or prestigious by any means. Just regular state schools that are virtually in the middle of nowhere.

Let's say you get a student job on campus to help cover costs. In my state you can only work a maximum of 19.5 hours per week in a student job by law. If you earn minimum wage (which you probably will) you can earn a maximum of $14,327/yr while attending school with your student job. That isn't enough to cover housing at either of these schools, let alone tuition.

People used to joke about people who went into six figure debt for an arts degree from a private college. Now a degree from a no name state school will set you back six figures.

Well aware it's absurdly expensive.

I was just highlighting that whats taking 10k/year in public school tuition (18k for Michigan (!) ) to ~130k for the degree is the living expenses, which exist wether or not they attend school.

God no.

I'd just study law or something incredibly hard that hasn't been tokenized yet.

Law is one of the first areas being tokenized by AI.

Plus the head honcho and gang are trying real hard to make laws suggestions rather than rules

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