Silicon Valley is wrong about college | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley is wrong about college

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44 pointskeithpeter61 comments

"Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste."

This is false. I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley, and I know no one who says that. Even Peter Thiel, who is arguably the iconic college skeptic, only says that college might not be optimal for everyone.

Silicon Valley is not a thing that can have opinions. He's just being inflammatory.

so then westboro baptist church is not a hate group, thanks for the clarification

I have no ability to downvote, so instead I leave my intention. Please try not to be so reactionary. Silicon Valley is a region in California. The Westboro Baptist Church is a private organization.

Good to hear that.

I posted this because I was interested in the role of the College mathematics teacher who was able to give Dave Winer confidence that he could understand the subject, and that confidence boosted Winer's belief in his abilities in other areas. I suspected there was a degree of rhetoric in the post.

http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/siliconValleyIsW...

This comment is interesting (ELGG is an important sharing tool with educational applications)

That line is unfortunate, however he does make some good points in the article. My experience is that private universities tend to cater more to the individual than to the needs of society at large. Countries with free college education are different in that respect. You could argue that one is better than the other, and that catering to the individual helps society indirectly. Of course, that's a longer discussion.

Well, it didn't say "Everyone Paul Graham knows in Silicon Valley says that, exactly."

In an attention-deprived environment, we write in shorthand sometimes. I don't have to tell you everything I read that led me to that belief, you can use your own judgement and look it up yourself.

You know I sat in the audience when you interviewed Zuck a couple of months ago, and I listened carefully to what you and he said about his experience at Harvard. Interestingly, I was at Harvard at the same time, and I know that a lot of the stories he's telling are not true, about what the adults were doing there at at the time. I was one of the adults. We were doing some pretty important stuff too, it turns out. :-)

Anyway the point is this -- we can all learn from each other. It would be great if you read past the first thing that turned you off and listen to the whole schpiel. I gave you and Zuck that much, I spent a few hours of my life to find out what you thought, even though I was sure a fair amount of it was wrong.

Dave, it would be more accurate to say that a lot has been written about the relative merits of a college education with respect to startups, but that is not evidence for a claim that "Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste."

It would be accurate to say that the question has come up, and been answered many times. As a simple exercise, scan CrunchBase, take the founders, scrape LinkedIn, and find the ones without college degrees. The bulk of people who are funded have college degrees, and if you assume that 'funding' is a proxy for 'values' then by that simple experiment your claim would be disproved.

It would be accurate to say that certain investment agencies, of which Peter Thiel is perhaps the most visible, have decided to weight the value a college education less than other investors, but Peter doesn't represent the "Silicon Valley" any more than Paul does.

The article you link [1] doesn't say anything about not valuing a college education, rather it says a lot about a college trying to maximize its endowment. Your comment about Harvard wanting to "participate in the success of the next Gates ..." isn't even in the linked text, you called it out of some other unmentioned source.

It is a perfectly reasonable argument to make that the people who advocate that a college degree has no value, are wrong. But "Silicon Valley" is not those people.

[1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-...

Paul, I gave this some thought, and we need to say what Silicon Valley is. So I gave it a shot.

http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/december/whatIsSiliconVal...

Bottom line -- it's not you or Peter Thiel. It's an industry. Much larger than any one or two people.

The college experience is still pretty worthwhile, but the consequences of taking out loans in order to attend college are gettin uglier.

My wife and I are both working in service fields - I am a teacher, and she is a counselor. We are both good at what we do. But we are at our income ceilings. We are paying as much in student loan payments as we are in housing costs. some of my colleagues will be in debt for the rest of their lives.

Going to college is not the same straightforward decision it used to be.

"Going to college is not the same straightforward decision it used to be."

Honestly, (and you've basically said this), taking out significant loans to go to college is not the same straightforward decision it used to be.

I understand that for some people it's simply not possible to go to college without taking on debt. I don't think this is the case for the vast majority of people. If someone would have made 18 year old me more aware of the burden that not going to a state school and working a job or two during my four years was going to be, I would have been a lot less likely to do it. Sure, I had fun, and I ended up without a lot of debt anyway, but it wasn't worth paying interest on for the better part of a decade.

"Honestly, (and you've basically said this), taking out significant loans to go to college is not the same straightforward decision it used to be."

One reason I returned to Europe.

I think I could've also gone to a state school and come out with less debt. Ultimately it worked out, but I have to imagine there are plenty of people for whom it did not work out. Even if your degree is worthless in practice (because of circumstance, career, etc), at least you be paying out hundreds of dollars each month for loans.

I understand that for some people it's simply not possible to go to college without taking on debt. I don't think this is the case for the vast majority of people.

Then why do 2/3 of all college students graduate with debt? Why have the largest tuition rises, by percentage, been seen in newly-defunded state universities?

This "income ceiling" you mention brings up a potentially interesting idea - why not scale the cost of college according to the expected value of your major? I know that in a broader sense this happens already, as "better" schools tend to be more expensive, but perhaps (to use a cliché example) an English degree and a CS degree shouldn't cost the same.

This plan has one important drawback: If we assume that society is better of by people majoring in CS instead of English then we should not discourage people from studying CS by increasing prices.

I think this is a bad idea - salaries paid to different fields are a good (although imperfect) way of measuring the value of those skills to society.

If we subsidize education towards less valuable skills at the expense of the most valuable, we end up discouraging people from going into the most needed professions.

"less valuable skills"

That's a pretty loaded statement. Teacher pay is based on years in the system because it is so difficult to measure individual teacher effectiveness, without incentivizing people to pay more attention to the "good" students and marginalize those who are difficult to teach.

Salaries are largely dependent on how much economic return the position provides to the employer, not on how valuable the skills are to society.

Teacher pay is based on years in the system because it is so difficult to measure individual teacher effectiveness, without incentivizing people to pay more attention to the "good" students and marginalize those who are difficult to teach.

It's politically difficult, not statistically difficult. Statistically VAM does a great job.

Paying attention to the "good" students vs the difficult to teach ones is not enforced by every objective measurement system, it's purely a function of how you compute the teacher's score. There are many choices:

    # focus on the best, ignore the rest
    student_scores.max() 

    # focus on the worst, ignore the rest
    student_scores.min() 

    # Focus on the cheapest improvements possible
    # independent of whether best or worst
    student_scores.mean()

    # Somewhere in between mean and max
    pow(student_scores,K).mean() 
    # 1 < K < infinity

    #Minimize inequality
    student_scores.variance()

Very good point, it seems like a perverse reverse incentive. However I don't think that the earnings of a given field speak to its "value" - as I'm sure any teacher would agree.

You would risk a system wherein only the most affluent could afford to study CS. And there's already some inequality in terms of unpaid internships, although I am not sure how the software industry compares to other industries in this regard.

I think this is a pretty good approach to the problem. It certainly applies to service fields in which there are pay ceilings. We already have some attempts at making this happen. For example, teachers and people in service-oriented fields can get about $5000 of federal loans forgiven if you work in a low-income or hard-to-staff position for 5 consecutive years. STEM teachers can get about $17000 forgiven.

But these are token measures right now. I have a colleague who has roughly 100,000 in loans. If you think this is unreasonable, keep in mind that in many states you need a master's degree to keep teaching. There is a 10-year forgiveness program, where if you pay off your loans at an income-adjusted rate for 10 years, the rest of your loan is forgiven. But, you pay income tax on the amount that is forgiven. So we have people paying appropriate income-based amounts, which don't cover interest. Then you get a taxed on a "windfall" of 100,000+. So now you have a 20-40,000 IRS bill, which doesn't qualify for any forgiveness programs. One arm of the government giveth, another arm taketh.

So I think the answer does lie in scaling college costs according to expected incomes, with appropriate measures in place to guard against gaming that system. It seems to come down to a question of whether we, as a society, actually value these service-oriented fields. Many of our elected politicians don't appear to, because they can afford to pay privately for these services (education, counseling, health care, etc.).

I'm skeptical of many "don't go to college" arguments, but this is one worth evaluating based on career preferences and personal/financial circumstances.

Myself, I am fortunate in that my choice of career (software industry) remains quite lucrative in the midst of a recession. My wife was not so lucky, in that the crash of '08 precipitated a slow decline of her industry. I am also fortunate that, prior to landing a stable career, my parents were both willing and able to help me out with my student loans, or with first & last month rent.

Sadly I think at age 17 - 18, I am not sure anyone would've been able to make me truly understand how all the trade-offs I was making. For one thing, I made my choice of college (and ostensibly career) in the late '90s, a relatively prosperous period. Maybe I would've chosen differently in a recession. For another, I don't think I had any concept of how hard student loans could and would bite.

I also find it worrisome that what are effectively lottery winners are supposed to be role models, be it Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or, for that matter, rock and movie stars.

Winning the lottery is not a good goal to set for a society or a generation (cf. Kant).

> (cf. Kant)

Sorry, but what do you mean there?

Reference to the categorical imperative.

„Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.“

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

Everyone can't win the lottery.

Silicon Valley is not a thing with opinions. You can't call an inanimate object wrong in this way. What you meant to say was, "I believe a College education is important." But that title isn't inflammatory and eye catching.

Anyway, I think the greater argument isn't, "Drop out of college and become Bill Gates." It's "College tuition prices have gotten so out of hand that it might no longer be worth what you pay for."

Going to a private 4 year can easily cost you more than 100k. With 100k and the right motivation, you can start any number of businesses and teach yourself more about entrepreneurship than you could have in a 4 year business program and you have the chance of it making you money instead of just being a purchase.

Almost nobody has the drive necessary for completely unguided self-education, and even those people will inevitably miss some important things.

I believe that a college education (lectures and assignments, at least) can be replicated online. I just don't see that anyone's done a particularly good job of it yet. There are lots of bits and pieces floating around, but not much overall structure.

As a teacher, I like on-line resources as granular as possible so I can remix them and present them to students. My practice is then the 'glue' that sticks the bits together for the particular individuals I'm working for.

Do you think that direct contact with a teacher (motivation and confidence building in the case of Winer's post) can be replaced by some other model?

As someone who left college early in favor of a career, take it from me, its a hell of a lot easier to learn things in school than outside of it.

I am pursuing a degree in CS but im also a Javascript Hacker out of the classroom, (wrongly hating Java by default, I blame the community). I thought I would struggle coming into a Java class because "Java is to Javascript as Ham is to Hamster" blah blah blah. College forced me to see the similarities, for-loops, dot/bracket notation, using a library to import certain methods etc... I would never have drill myself to learn these if I didn't go to school because I would have stayed away from Java as far as possible but I'm glad I did. It also gave me extra confidence and self-validation that the code I write works kind of like Test Driven Development ;)

Everyone should go to as much education they can afford or what they seem necessary, and learning out of classroom is important as well

The idea that education will address the problem of the low information voter is nonsensical.

The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is too low to be represented in double precision arithmetic (last time I did the calculation). Therefore, you have no incentive to vote correctly.

Even if education gives you the tools to become a high information voter, why would you bother? Just vote for whichever candidate gives you $0.01 worth of self congratulation about not being a racist, having good family values, or whatever.

I'm not sure I understand your point. What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%?

One votes for the same reasons one refrains from littering in a public park, or gives a few dollars to a charity, or donates blood, or contributes to a Kickstarter campaign, or volunteers to go to war, or pays taxes. Not mainly because of the chance that your individual contribution will make a difference in and of itself, but to do your part in making society better for everyone. From the perspective of the whole social organism, if you refuse to do these things because your individual contributions don't make a direct difference, you're one of the harmful cells.

What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%?

You need P(affecting outcome) x (value of positive outcome) > cost of voting.

Even assuming the value of a positive outcome is vastly bigger than the size of the world economy (e.g. $10^15, maybe $10^20), P(affecting outcome) is so fantastically low in any state with political leanings that you might as well not bother.

Littering in a public park is a separate issue - the effect of littering is cumulative, whereas the effect of voting is based on a threshold. Your litter makes the park incrementally worse. Donating blood does make a significant measurable difference - one particular person gets your unit of blood, and this helps them avoid death.

A dollar value can be assigned to all the things we've mentioned. Donating blood is worth multiple dollars, littering in a park is probably harmful to the tune of a few pennies. The dollar value of your vote is so small that double precision floats treat it as 0.

We should consider that the process of choosing who to vote to has some other benefits (other than the small probability that your vote is the vote that changes the outcome)

Mostly, there are two things to do before voting: 1) decide your position on multiple issues 2) think about how much the implementation of the system allows your positions to be communicated/counted (so some positions become more important because the system will allow them to have an effect)

both of these actions can be beneficial (and much so). 1 means thinking about life in society 2 means thinking about effective ways of agregating knowledge and preferences in a society

you could think of the elections as a holiday celebrating the fact that we live in a society, and inviting to think about it

I recently decided not to attend UC Berkeley in favor of starting my career in product design. A lot has already been covered here, but a couple points:

> Got a chance to reboot my education, which was something I really needed to do.

Your entire personal anecdote is based off of you dropping out of high school. One could argue that if you had completed high school, there would be less value in college for you.

> I don't think Gates and Zuckerberg are good role models for young people.

You don't think Bill Gates is a good role model for young people? What's a better role model then one of the world's richest people trying to solve giant social issues? Gates should be a role model to all rich people! Zuck's not there yet, but his recent charitable giving suggests that later in his life he'll follow the same path.

> Most kids who try to be the next billionaire entrepreneur will fail.

When did being an entrepreneur become all about making money? Of all the college dropouts-turned SV kids I know (including myself) money is never the primary driver.

> And if we push the kids toward that, we will lead them to believe, mistakenly, that it's enough to create a massive fortune. It is not enough. And if they fail to create the fortune, according to this standard, they will have failed in life.

What 'standard' are you referring to? I think a lot college students these days understand that money doesn't equal happiness.

I think the author is a bit misguided as to the reasons behind some kids choose not to attend college. Personally, I'm devoted to product design, learn better on my own/with a small team, and affiliate strongly with SV culture. I'm not worried that I'm not going to be 'educated' – I see that as a ten-year, twenty-year, or even lifetime goal.

As a current college sophomore, I agree, education is important. However, I strongly believe that a degree does not define a person as educated. As long as you continuously have a general thirst for knowledge and act on it, you'll build your way to becoming an educated individual.

Excellent, now what part does mathematics play in your model of education?

PS: I have learned to respect craft skills over the years. Those skills do not normally earn degree level certification in the UK (exceptions being surgeons, opticians and dentists).

Depends on the flavour of the mathematics being taught. If it's a computational calculus course where all you do is memorize integration patterns so you can integrate a boatload of functions, then it's not very beneficial. However if it's a logic course, where you learn how to prove theorems and understand what a proof really is, it would help you in any field. As long as the course doesn't train you to become a computer than I believe it's beneficial to one's education.

Oh, this topic again. What the heck...

>Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste.

I wasn't aware of Silicon Valley being of one voice on this matter. Is there a representative spokesperson I don't know about?

>I find this disturbing. I want them to educate better citizens, not richer business people.

Personally, I'm not aware of how college made me a better citizen.

> But first comes the person, not the bank account.

I am not a better person than someone who didn't or couldn't go to college.

>When you look at the problems our democracy has, probably the biggest one is the "low information voter."

After the grade pressure was off, a potential job was the only thing that could get me to research anything. Later on, I learned to let my own curiosity have a say in what I looked into. I think I became a lot more "educated" when I got to that point.

I would like to defend Silicon Valley a bit.

More and more education is out current needs. And it will never catch up, as a huge system, with many constrains, large inertia etc. A programme which was perfect (say) 30 years ago may be not longer up to date - when jobs and technologies change rapidly.

Additionally, now almost everything programming-related is on the Internet. See http://xkcd.com/519/ for a comment on usefulness of formal education.

Sure, when someone's dream is to become "the next Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg" it's not the right motivation to quit education. But I know a lot of smart people who dropped out because of their IT work, or company - and their motivation is not unlike one's who finished their degrees.

I think college, aside from a few useful things you learn and problems with student debt - if nothing else is a good education for playing a game (and learning some discipline). You have rules and constraints - structure. You can determine what the point of the game is.

For example, the point could be - to get the most A's (high marks) with the least amount of effort and the most free time left over for fun. You don't have to take school itself seriously, but it is similar to a career where it pays to play the game.

It doesn't make sense to go to college when everything you learn in college can be learned in a book. Also, some subjects just can't be taught in classrooms-- Foreign languages for example, is pretty dismal in colleges. I've yet to meet someone who actually speaks a foreign language who studied for nearly 8 years in high school and college. Education is evolving and we shouldn't cling on to this archaic method of learning when there are plenty of better ways to learn.

It us bizarre to me since the most in demand employees are basically high tech liberal arts. A mix of engineering, art, psychology, and performance is pretty much the killer skill set right now (and I'd imagine in the future. My BA in theater and dance mixed with programming and troubleshooting skills has always been an easy sell when interviewing.

In Europe the knowledge you need to be a educated voter and citizen is supposed to be taught at high school. Most european countries dont have generic education lessons at all. I dont think the purpose of colleges should be making someone a good citizen, that is the role of public education that everyone receives.

Seriously, this post again? These are not black and white issues like every article on HN would lead you to believe.

I think you are right, I live in a world of shades of grey. Now, what wighting would you give mathematical knowledge in the education of children? Say the weighting factors for all subjects added to 1.00.

So, if I pay into Social Security and expect to see something when I retire, but am opposed to government control of, say education, or the postal service, I'm an ignorant hypocrite?

I guess Dave missed the lessons in college on informal logic because he would have learned about strawman arguments and the part to whole fallacy.

I mostly agree with you, Dave. I wish you included one more dimension to your thought, the cost of it. Is college education something to pursue at any cost? What is the role of online, self study type of learning? My thinking is: college education is important but NOT at any cost.

Disagree with the post although never before seen sex and accounting mentioned in the same sentence or on the same side of the comma.

If they have the kind of drive at an early age, school only gets in the way. But school is very important for the dreamers who just talk.

"Got a chance to reboot my education, which was something I really needed to do. I had a professor in my freshman year of college who showed me that my mind could do math. And from there, I took charge."

How important do we think Maths education is?

Very?

If I consider the math courses I took in college undergrad (I was a C-S major) there are some that are useful in everyday day life like pre-Calc (aka. algebra + trig) when I build a new deck or figure out how much grass seed to buy. Others courses such as Calc I and II are useful in understanding the issues and trends around me, both business and political. But the vast majority are valuable to me every day as I work on systems software: Mathematical Logic and Discrete Math, Graph Theory, Linear Algebra with Differential Eq & Intro to the Theory of computation.

How can you not think Mathematics is important to tech?

My studies in math led me to graph theory, before I took any Comp Sci. So yeah, I'd say my math was pretty helpful.

It also stretches the mind. It's like saying weight training is useful if you're going to be a basketball player, even though there's no point in a game where you all stop and lift weights. :-)

When you learn how to prove a theorem you are learning how to debug a program.

I most certainly agree! Music to my ears as I teach basic mathematics to adults. Probably near your 'pre-Calc' courses, but with an empirical and less abstract focus here in the UK.

What I was getting at (and my not have explained clearly in my first comment) was the importance of a teacher who could inspire confidence in the student, in this case Dave Winer.

scientific/rational thinking is fundamental to being able to understand and interact with reality.

Fantastically important.

Fundamentally, math == logic, and logic is the basis of all of mankind's post-Enlightenment gains in productivity, standard of living, etc.

I don't understand how college helps "low information voters". I would guess those people don't go to college or can't afford it anyway.

If you want to help educate people, make it free or almost free, like Khan or startups in the Valley are trying to do.

Your blog post is all over the place.

When you look at the problems our democracy has, probably the biggest one is the "low information voter." The ignorant electorate that says they want government out of our lives, but keep your hands off Medicare and Social Security, for example.

== Puhleeeeeeez.

I live in the UK, so I may not be up with US politics, and I know Winer has political views. Are you saying that Winer underestimates the median voter, or that Medicare is wrong?

PS: I suspect you are being down-voted because you are not making your meaning clear.

Regardless of policy, step back and look at the logic:

"The biggest problem with our democracy is that [everyone esle] is stupid"

This is the worst kind of ignorance, generally speaking.

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