Comment by ssharp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ssharp | Hacker News Reader

College is proven way to improve productivity and lifetime earnings. And it's scaled fairly well. And unlike poker, it's not zero-sum.

"In fact, apart from very specific cases, I think that school is a bad thing, not worth doing even if it was free."

Very wrong. You're not going to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, accountant, etc. by playing poker and traveling. You're not going to get recruited by an employer because you claim to have read a lot of books.

What the author is actually saying, but incorrectly applies to everyone (startup bubble thinking, maybe?), is that for would-be startup founders, college may be obsolete. This is in no way, shape, or form, indicative of the value college provides to the rest of the population.

People have lots of motivations and reasons for attending college and many of them are completely valid, logically and economically.

I believe he notes that if you are going to school to become a professional (i.e. doctor) then it doesn't necessarily apply.

To your point, you also aren't going to become a zookeeper or programmer by playing poker or travelling, but you also won't necessarily become one by going to college. You WILL become one if you make the effort to do so, it doesn't matter whether it's in college or elsewhere.

I really think that is the takeaway that I got from the post as well. You become what you put your effort into, no amount of schooling is useful without the desire and drive to really make someone successful. While many of us here don't agree with the exact path he lays out, the gist of the message is to only go to school if you have a really good reason for going and the drive to make it worthwhile. Hustle and drive are key factors to success in this world, anything you can do to improve those will definitely be more useful then a college degree. These skills/personality traits are also not taught/picked up very well from classroom studies. I have been in college two different times in my life, and the first time I had no business being there. I was driven and wanted something the second time. Definitely much more useful the second time around, even though it was expensive. If you don't have that purpose and drive, go figure yourself out first.

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