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Comment by rmrfrmrf | Hacker News Reader

If you're not getting value out of college, you're doing something wrong. College is a resource, not a teaching facility, and the amount you put in is directly related to how much you get out of it. There are too many people, in my opinion, who take the "$120k for a piece of paper" expression seriously and miss out on the vast number of opportunities that one gets from 4+ years of uninterrupted study.

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This only works if you have an idea of what you want out of college. The same group of people that are told they need college to be successful are often the people that can only take what is given to them, since they probably don't have a strong internal drive to be there. 4+ years of uninterrupted study requires a deep interest in some area, and a personal drive to carry out that study.

If you don't have an idea of what you want out of college it is best to figure it out fast. And even if you don't have an idea you are better off in college meeting a whole bunch of people and attempting to figure it out.

There are actually a variety of reasons why people don't get value out of college, and it's not always because they're doing something wrong.

For example, most young people are told to set their sights on college. Realistically, most young people are not suited for "4+ years of uninterrupted study." This might not seem obvious if you took AP/honors classes your whole life; in that case, the mean is probably much lower than you've been conditioned to expect.

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