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Comment by tigerthink | Hacker News Reader

Good point. Did anyone do one or the other and regret it?

I regret going to college before I understood how real life really worked. I would've taken it more seriously, picked a major a bit more deliberately, etc.

If I ever had kids, I'd tell them I'd pay for a chunk of college-- if they put it off for 1-2 years after high school.

Agreed. It only took me 1-2 years out of college to begin to regret all the things I DIDN'T study while I was there. If I'd taken a year or two, worked, and got some "partying" out of my system, my college years would have been much better spent.

College should not be a way to delay a child's real life. It should be part of their strategy to live a good one.

I regret my college loans... like I said elsewhere in this comment thread, if I could do it over, I'd make it as cheap as possible for myself.

I'm in the same boat - I had the choice between big-name school at $lots/year and no-name school for $free. Bad decision.

My college loans are by far the best investment I've ever made. I went to a good in-state public school (Purdue), and lived very cheap. If they weren't at less than 3% interest they would have been paid off in one year from the extra money it earned me at work.

I don't understand the blanket hatred of college; it appears to come from people who spent >$100k/yr and are now drowning in that debt. If doe properly it's a very good thing; I learned a lot, made connections and grew as a person. I would say it's worth more to me than what I paid.

$100k/year?! I thought even the expensive ones maxed out around $50k/year?

I found a list of the most expensive colleges (http://www.campusgrotto.com/most-expensive-colleges-for-2008...). I don't claim that this is an authoritative source but I've seen very similar lists elsewhere). There are three colleges in the US that break 50k per year for tuition, room, and board. There are quite a few more between 48k and 50k, though, and so with a standard tuition hike of a few percent they'll be over 50k next year.

My own institution is proud to be doing its own "lowest tuition hike in 41 years", at 3.8 percent. Thankfully I'm a PhD student and so I don't actually pay my own tuition.

Yeah, so there are only a small number of colleges that expensive.

How about we say $100k of debt for a degree?

Me too. I'd have found a way to make it cheaper. I'd already figure out how to network and how to leverage it to make it work for me and yet, I subsidized their game for longer because I wanted access to a school with small classes and personal relationships with profs.

All of that is pretty overrated, teaching quality on margin is worse and unless it's a Top 100 school, you're basically wasting time. And even if it is, you're still probably wasting a good deal of money.

Should've just left the military, gone to community college and taken a scholarship to keep as cheap as I could've. Oh well, now I know.

I did two years. It wasn't worth the cost. I wish I had used the money to elongate my runway (if you know what I mean).

I regret not finishing my Master's degree... Granted, I probably still wouldn't have used the degree much (M.Ed in Higher Education Administration), but the year I spent working towards it made me a much better researcher and writer than 4 years as an undergrad.

I definitely have never regretted going to college, though.

I did 2 years of CS and dropped out. For the past 3 years I've been very successful, but I regret lacking deep knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and operating systems.

I did a year of Uni and it was pretty much a wasted year, although I don't regret it. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't done it.

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