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Comment by bkovitz | Hacker News Reader

"The first goal of college must be to get a proper basis for getting started with a job, and preferrably a career."

"I think the solution is to get more serious about packaging the education part in a way that doesn't force you to bundle in all the extras."

He is arguing to replace colleges with vocational schools.

An undergraduate degree is not job training. It's introduction into a community: the community of educated people. The classes are a formality. The main thing is induction into a community, a culture.

The fact that colleges have been marketing themselves as providing job training, using economic arguments like "See how much money you'll make with one of our degrees", is the real problem.

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From what I saw, the author was saying that the two functions of college should be separated. Part of college is classes and academic preparation. Part of it is social, meeting like minded and intelligent people.

He made the point that the social aspect of college is primarily a function of economic background...people who are middle class or above go to college to meet people and be exposed to new ideas, while lower income people have to work and make great sacrifices just to get a degree and the opportunities that come with it.

It would be nice if the two were separated so that more people could afford to get the piece of paper without paying so much money for the social experience.

The real problem is not that colleges have been advertising this, but that companies require it. On the one hand, I have learned a hell of a lot about Computer Science in college, but I could have survived an entry level programming job damn near anywhere straight out of high school. The problem is that the degree is a barrier to entry; it is almost impossible to get a decent job without one unless you are absolutely spectacular at what you do.

My friend once had this argument with me, saying that college isn't intended to train people for the job. Regardless of its intention, that is what it has become...the real question is, what are we going to do now that it has transformed this way?

I skipped college and went straight for the job. Learned more in one year at a software job than most people get in four years at a college.

But that is a great point: a lot of organizations, particularly big organizations, use a college degree as a "credential" for their first level of sorting through job applicants.

Yes indeed, college has become a clumsy sort of job training. That's how it is, and we have to deal with that.

However, colleges are not all the same. Small liberal-arts colleges are keeping the "community of scholars and teachers" tradition alive. Community colleges have a peculiar split in focus: between vocational training and college prep. Big state colleges offer undergrads training mostly in bureaucratic hoop-jumping, in order to fund real research.

That's the thing, though; it's only a differentiator for the first level, the entry level, in the absence of any other significant information. If you have anything of substance in your resume to get past it, most likely that will be considered far more important than your formal educational background by a factor of 10.

I worked nearly full-time while in college (also full-time) for 2.5 years before dropping out, much of that time spent at a small local ISP in Georgia. I came in as tech support out of high school, and a year and a half later ended up its chief system administrator and basically operating the facilities side of the place. After that ended, I dropped out. Noone at any job I have held since or in between (and I've held quite a few) has - after a look at my resume - thought to inquire about my degree, whether I had gone to college, whether I had graduated, or anything like that. The focus was all on the experience. And since that point I have not been considered an "entry-level" applicant at any subsequent job, so there's no interest whatsoever in using entry-level criteria to differentiate me.

The only problem is that first hurdle, and it's not impossible to overcome. It may be challenging, but it sure as hell is cheaper and easier to overcome that challenge than to go to college to achieve the same end -- assuming, of course, that that's your only purpose in going to college.

And let's not forget the most effective way to get a job: contacts.

Sending out résumés is pretty weak, even if you have a degree or two.

Of course. Out of my 6 or so jobs in 3 1/2 years I think the first one was the only one gotten that way. I think there was another one where the hiring manager found me on a job board, if that counts. The others - and everything that's happened since in the consulting world for me - are all predicated on relationships build in the course of working, as well as being socially involved in the discursive space of my profession.

It's introduction into a community: the community of educated people. The classes are a formality. The main thing is induction into a community, a culture.

That's a nice way of saying it, not wrong but certainly rosy colored.

A more cynical person might say the degree is a low quality signal you're an adult. The community is about social stratification. And the classes are indeed just a formality.

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