Why College Is a Poor Choice for a Lot of People | Hacker News Reader

Why College Is a Poor Choice for a Lot of People

levinotik.com

78 pointsxwowsersx89 comments

Most people don't know what they want to do with their lives at age 18, whether or not they think they do.

The strongest argument against college is an unmanageable amount of debt, which can haunt you for decades, and I have many friends who suffer from this.

The strongest argument for college is the connections you can make which will be with you for life. I know countless people who can trace their career opportunities back to people they met in college, whether or not they even graduated.

Both factors can be overcome. You can pay off your debt diligently, or attend a school that is so cheap this is a non-issue. You can make connections other ways. But you will pay a price one way or another.

In my opinion those two things are the fundamental factors that determine whether or not going to college is a good idea, and should be the main considerations that help you decide whether or not to go. Every other aspect of this discussion seems like a giant red herring.

"people they met in college"

For those of us who went to school, think back on the people you hang out with... did you sit next to them in class or meet them in clubs / parties / internships? The people I met outside classrooms ended up being more important than the people I met inside classrooms.

There might be a pretty strong argument for skipping school and doing a 4-year internship, getting a job, or simply living in an apartment in the student area of a big school. I'm claiming that unless the school is in a horrifically high crime area, nobody checks for school IDs at the LISP club meeting or the guest speaker lecture or the frat party or the language conference or the local 2600 meeting or classroom lectures. When I moved to a new area for work I checked out the local schools, couldn't get a tour to fit my schedule, crashed a history lecture, just walked in one day and sat down, pretty awesome experience, so I signed up. This might sound too extroverted for some people but I assure you it was less terrifying than public speaking.

Also there's go to school full time vs my strategy of Saturday morning part time. I met just as many people, if not more, and taking one class at a time is pretty cheap compared to going "all in". Or you can audit either for free or nearly free.

You are right about that, but you also have to make a conscious decision to become more extroverted. This is a subject that takes effort and is really hard for some people.

When I was at that age wasn't even aware what I was missing out. College just pushed me into an environment without me having to put much effort into becoming more social.

For some, there's a stronger argument against college: you mentally can't abide being taught. Those people need to learn on their own, and for software development there's little reason they shouldn't.

> you mentally can't abide being taught

Frankly, this sounds a bit ridiculous...how can someone that can't be taught be employable? Using software development as an example, they need to be able to be taught things, such as why overall design decisions were made, how a particular algorithm works, coding conventions, development processes, etc. These are not "pick them up at your own pace" kinds of things, and may not even have easily accessible documentation available to do so with in the first place.

Work teaching is generally efficient. If you're told anything at all, that is; more often you have to ask if you can't figure it out yourself. You can say "I got it, I'll take it from here" and people are happy to hear it. School teaching is generally the opposite.

My bosses always want me to figure out how the algorithm works, while fixing it!

Somewhat of an aside, but:

If you're a self-directed learner passionate about a subject nothing about a classroom holds you back. [1] It sets a minimum pace for acquiring new information, it sets a minimum domain of concepts and to some degree it will influence the order of the first few concepts you'll have to tackle, if you concede to only tackle the subject when the class begins.

I'm endlessly bemused by the repeated assertions of self-identified "passionate", "self-directed" learners that an organized class is some sort of jail cell from which their (self-identified) considerable curiosity and talents cannot break free.

If you are actually passionate, if you are actually self-directed, it may put a crimp in your process for about a week or two until you're so far ahead of the syllabus that keeping up with the topics as-covered in class is no more an obstacle than setting your learning aside to cook or do laundry.

Sure, it can still be an annoying distraction. But it's not a particularly notable one. It's certainly not a pen or a leash.

[1] Slower learners can certainly be harmed by classroom schedules. But one would expect the self-directed and passionate ones would have recognized their predicament long before they entered college and thus realized they need to tackle subjects before they sign up for credit-hours.

Indeed, a classroom also gives you access to a very valuable resource: proximity to an expert in the field. Of course, this depends on what sort of school you attend but in my experience if you show dedication and passion in a subject, it is pretty easy to get to know a professor and open a lot of doors that way.

But what about exams that consist almost entirely of trivia? That strategy, while effective against those who don't attend class and barely read the book, also punishes those who skip ahead. One might remember the grander concepts and ideas, but those bits of trivia will be lost.

Try listing Kahn Academy or free open online classes/certificates on a resume.

The only reason I went to college was so I could be taken seriously and offered a job in my career. Before graduating I had 0 calls backs, after I started listing a completed degree I had many many call backs.

College may be a poor choice for some, but if you dont want to get stuck waiting tables or making coffee then its a sure bet with the right major.

May I ask what you majored in?

Information Systems, but I had web development skills before graduation. I just didnt have job experience and no one willing to give experience until I had my degree in hand.

I know what you mean.

After I got a bachelor in computer science I made about 4 times as much as before.

Later I started a master while still working. Just on the side, for fun, because the work was kinda boring.

When my boss heard of it, he wanted to promote me.

He didn't even know what I studied or if it was a good master program...

I have been thinking about getting into a master program next year. Been thinking of doing it on the side too but maybe I should let my employer know.

Glad to hear it kinda worked out!

Haha, well, I quit the job before I finished the master :D

As I said, the job was boring.

Now I almost done studying and looking for a new job.

Right, a college degree unfortunately at times is basically a proxy for an intelligence test, a way to filter out job applicants. It is a signifier - this person did well enough in school to get into and through college. I'm not judging it in itself as bad or good. It does explain why, however, colleges can get away with poor teaching and little learning on the part of students sometimes (see the book Academically Adrift), and why there is of course a huge bias toward hiring students from more prestigious (selective) colleges.

Is it a proxy for an intelligence test or as a way to judge if someone has the dedication to commit to completing a substantial project/undertaking (such as 4 years of college)? I think the latter explanation is consistent with the rest of your comment. I suppose it could be both, though.

Getting admitted is a proxy for an IQ test. Getting through is a proxy for being able to grind on tasks. Both are useful job skills. (My job is intellectually satisfying, but also involves writing reports that really can be described as a grind.)

I think you're probably right from the perspective of a prospective employee.

That being said, having these sorts of discussion may sway employers to have a more open mind to non-traditional ways to become qualified for employment. And if that starts to happen, a B.S. or B.A. will stop being a litmus test and start being one path towards qualification for a job or a career.

This is actually a serious problem. If change in technology and the job market continues to accelerate (will there be long-haul truck drivers in 15 years?), we need to be able to retrain people without demanding four years of full-time education and massive student loans.

We need to develop a hybrid program where you can get job experience and education at the same time. Or adult transitional courses. Many people at my work get laid off and only have skills that pertain to the job that they lost.

For instance if long haul truckers become obsolete. Could we retrain those people to maintain the self driving trucks or perhaps trouble shoot problems?

"we need to be able to retrain people without demanding four years of full-time education and massive student loans."

The destruction of the middle class is a different, although related, issue and note that its always downward class migration not upward. Very few lower class jobs require a degree, so no need for schooling when the jobs go away and the former employees permanently class migrate downward. A more realistic life skill would be learning how to be happy "making coffee" than getting a degree for a job that doesn't exist and never will again.

Cultural engineering to convince people that you're more than your job, or that you should work to live instead of live to work, will eliminate more revolutionary strife than any drone or spy program.

My resume shows I went to an art academy for two years. I worked in art for almost a decade after school but the pay was abysmal no matter what I did. I am technically inclined and a self-taught coder and was able to get a tech job by demonstrating ability during an interview. I doubt my schooling had much to do with it. My trajectory for the last 14 years has brought me to work for a F500 company as a process engineer doing light dev work. I do not believe my Assoc. degree in Fine Art had much to do with it though. Combining tech with art meant that even as a struggling artist I was making enough to never have to wait tables or make coffee.

I think it depends on the job. Believe it or not, there are a lot of small and medium sized businesses that prefer this over someone coming out of a university with an actual degree. You are self-motivated, curious, and would come with a cheaper price tag since you don't have a degree. You'd also be less likely to quit for greener pastures.

The only reason I went to college was so I could be taken seriously and offered a job in my career.

I think you are correct that many employers use college degrees as an implicit hiring filter. Interestingly, the same United States Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971), that declared most uses of IQ tests as hiring screens illegal also declared most educational credential hiring screens illegal.[1] But the headline report about the case holding was the part about IQ tests, so a lot of employers and even lawyers don't know that it can be legally dodgy to require an educational credential as a hiring criterion.

The better way to hire is to give applicants a work-sample test. I have a FAQ about that[2] that is one of my best-liked comments on Hacker News, and I encourage you to give that a look and to let me know how I can make that FAQ more useful for job-seekers who have skills but who may not have a degree.

[1] http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1970/1970_124

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583580#up_6584957

Experience matters much more than degree in the web dev/ops field. The tricky issue with foregoing college is you have to get experience first, and without experience you likely won't get a corporate position. Networking, open source activity, volunteering, freelancing, and personal projects can help to get that first foot in the door. A year of real experience is more important than 4 years of college, imho.

With the right networking and projects in the high school years, you can have a position waiting on you and then have 4 years experience under your belt before you'd have graduated college. For some people, this will make more sense (and cents) than the college route.

There's a lot of people with college degrees waiting tables, but very few people with software or operations experience have a hard time finding work, regardless of their college education status.

> Try listing Kahn Academy or free open online classes/certificates on a resume.

I list Coursera on my resume. I understand it bears about the same weight as 'hobby' section, but I think it still tells my potential employer more about me than 'hiking' or 'skiing'.

Need to come up with a long term strategy for dealing with credentialism. One obvious example comes from the military a couple centuries ago, buy and sell military officer commissions. I think this could work. If the primary purpose of credentialism is stealth enforcement of demographics, making it starkly monetary instead of stealth monetary isn't going to offend those people.

Another interesting aspect is spending your late teens/early 20s in school was, centuries ago, kind of a day care for young adults old enough to get into trouble and young enough to be utterly unable to run the family business (being nobility, owning a factory, stuff like that). So you need a new day care for kids who aren't old enough to play in the big leagues but too old to sit around and get in trouble all day. I propose mandatory national service. There's always .mil or peace corps, other alternatives could be envisioned. Some kind of 1930s CCC organization, perhaps. Something has to be done... there's not enough jobs to employ 22-67 right now, so increasing working years to 18-70 in the future will just doom us. Maybe lowering retirement age would help, what with natural ageism anyway, working years from 18-59 might be the ticket. You can either lower the upper limit formally and cheaply, or informally via ageism and welfare expensively, so may as well minimize costs. Besides, old people vote, and dropping to 59 will probably sell pretty well, so from a practical political view this is required.

If anyone has a better anti-credentialism strategy than buying/selling degrees, or a better baby sitting idea than national service, please reply.

> “There’s no reason not to…” is not a positive argument for anything.

It not be a positive argument, but it does set a floor for considering alternatives. Whatever you do end up choosing to do with your post-high school years, if it's not college, has to beat what college offers you.

There's a lot to consider. Are you good at motivating yourself to do stuff? Can you think usefully at a high level? Can you chart your own course, using only resources that you, yourself can acquire and integrate, and get somewhere in the four years you'd be giving up by going to college?

Then there's there's this: Are the questions you're asking yourself regarding the decision going to remain relevant after the new reality sets in? Can you trust your 17-19 year old self to make decisions?

I chose not to go to school, and that decision threw me into a purgatory that lasted until the end of my twenties. I lost my goals and ambitions and had to find them later. Now I've found personal traction and am working on personal product-market fit.

I don't know how my life would have been different if I'd have gone to school. I like my life now but I can't use that to say that the college decision I made was good or bad. Maybe it would have been better. Maybe I'd have found the traction I enjoy now earlier had I gone to school. Maybe I would have never found it.

Maybe it's a wash. In that case, it would have been better to go to school, because at least I would have had better jobs and situations while sorting through all my personal stuff to find traction.

School is a good default decision to make in a world where there are very few good default decisions available to make. Think long and hard before you decide to not take advantage of that.

Shouldn't the previous decade of schooling before college taught you how to make education decisions?

No. The problem domain is more complicated than can be understood and modeled by an 18-year old.

I agree with this. Granted this is anecdotal evidence, but I recently graduated from college with a degree in computer science. In high school, I had no classes on computer science. I wouldn't even know where to start nor would I be able to model myself an educational framework to understand computer science as well as college taught me. Now even though high school taught me the framework required to learn a new skill, I just feel that my total unfamiliarity and lack of peers or educators would have made the task especially daunting.

I had the ability to pick up new skills myself when I was that age. I taught myself how to program at 10. I was making websites at 15-16. I didn't need school to teach me how to learn. But that's not all school offers. Without a degree, you either have to figure out how to demonstrate your worth as an employee to someone by yourself bypassing all the usual social signalling, or you have to figure out how to be an entrepreneur, again without the benefit of the institutions we already have that evolved to fix this very problem.

Evolution doesn't create perfect solutions to problems, college is by no means perfect, but they do create effective ones, whereas designed solutions often aren't effective because they didn't take into advantage some important premise or edge case. Take this into account when you design the path you're going to take through your early twenties.

Most 'decisions' are made for you at that stage. College is the first time where real choices with lasting impact are made (imo, and for most people).

This is a good example of confusing macro vs micro. In the short term, solely individually, you are better off going to school. Society long term might be doomed by it because of work skills mismatch, financial issues, class issues, and waste of time / waste of human potential, but you're individually better off going to school... for now anyway, or more accurately, at least in the recent past, maybe not today.

Its like in a discussion about fuel efficient cars, pointing out the death rate is slightly lower in a land barge and its real nice for carrying my skis. Yes, but that'll also "destroy the planet" if all 6 billion of us acted that way. Nobody wants to live in the high crime city so we'll "ALL" move out, leading to guess what in the burbs?

Good, measured comment on a subtle issue.

The difficulty with not going into a formal program for an area you already have exposure to (say, physics, computer science, finance) is that for most people, at 17, you don't know what you don't know. The benefit of a curriculum is that the larger community you wish to enter has already figured out: this is the minimum knowledge people need to work with us.

Personally, I did not know what I did not know, and I sincerely doubt I would have learned on my own what I did learn, without the guidance of course curricula. Even though I work as a computer scientists, and most of my education is in computer science, I am enormously happy that I also minored in physics in college. I learned just enough to appreciate it (hopefully) better than the layman. On my own, I doubt that would have happened.

I agree with this from a CS perspective but I don't think the argument extends to other fields necessarily.

Part of what college gets you and a la cart self-learning doesn't as easily is the confidence that you know what you don't know. That is also why employers prefer a degree. It tells them you have a complete base of knowledge that was well thought out.

The reason this doesn't work in CS is because practice is so far ahead of the academy in most areas. In other fields, such as physics and history this is not the case.

The article is written from the perspective of someone who has not enjoyed the benefits of a college education: The premise is that at ~17 years old (or any age), people know what to learn and how to learn it.

Good college educations require a diversity of classes so students can learn from and about the incredible diversity of valuable ideas and knowledge. The belief that you already know what you want and can dismiss the rest is ignorant and arrogant (usually one follows the other). If you believe that, you most need a college education -- open-mindedness, an intellectual humility, and the desire to seek challenges to your ideas are hallmarks of the well-educated and are major benefit of good college educations; the more I learn the more humble I become! As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."

College has requirements regarding what and how you learn because they know more about it than you do, and would be shortchanging you if they did otherwise. Does a good developer let clients design their own solutions or let them choose bad ones? The educators are experts in their fields and in education; they have experience with thousands (at large universities, even millions) of people getting educations, research on learning, and much more. What do you know about it? I'm not saying that their ideas are all correct, correct for you, or shouldn't be challenged, but it's foolish to discard them wholesale.

The DIY hacker myth is exciting -- people will do it all themselves -- it's the old American rugged individualism. People who follow it limit themselves to their own imaginations, rather than the combined imaginations of a university full of smart people (including fellow students). You can't even imagine what you don't know; if you are dismissing whole fields then you are not even looking.

College is not for everyone, but that's a meaningless truism used as an excuse. The more intellectually able and curious you are, the more an institution full of very smart highly-educated people, experts in their fields, willing to spend months teaching you, waiting for you to walk into their offices and ask them questions, should appeal to you.

There's a good case to be made that learning job skills is not the main benefit of going to college: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/10/10/bryan-caplan/murray-n...

Well, naturally everything you learn in college is well-known and available very cheaply. The question is how are you going to know what there is out there? I was pretty set on Engineering, and I knew it had something to do with math and something to do with technology, but there's plenty of things that I hadn't seen until I started: Control Theory, Materials, etc.

It's also not easy to know which things are considered important, and which are considered marginal. What should a course in economics contain? If I were to look at the things I've read on the internet, it would be half Austrian Economics, and barely any micro.

There's also a cost issue. Let's start with time. When I look back, everything academic in college could have been squeezed into 2 years. (Three terms of 8 weeks for 4 years.) Now I wouldn't say I'd have a better idea of what to do at age 20 rather than age 22, but looking back I'd rather have the 2 years. I've found numerous ways to do the other stuff you do in college. It's much easier to socialize when you are making a bit of money. And much easier to get a good mix of people when you're not constrained to people roughly your own age, doing something very similar. (Of course you aren't forced to hang out with people at your institution. You just assume you should.)

Then there's money. When I went, the UK system was cheap. Now it's 9K GBP, which is a lot for many people. The US system is quite pricey. There are plenty of stories about people who owe $100K, which really ties your hands when it comes to what to do after. You can't even declare bankruptcy, so you'd better not take too big risks.

> which things are considered important, and which are considered marginal. What should a course in economics contain?

Most online education sites have 'tracks' now - sort of packages of courses, so that you learn not just some particular skill, but the whole related area.

> There are plenty of stories about people who owe $100K

Recently, there was a thread on Reddit from a guy owning 1mil in student loans. 100k is not bad at all by today standards. Get ready for the bubble to blow.

> Now it's 9K GBP

That's 9K GBP a year, don't forget. Bloody ridiculous.

I want so badly to leave college.

It's very difficult to stomach the $20k it's costing my parents. I'm not having fun. I'm not making many connections. I'm not learning much in the classroom at all. I feel unchallenged, I feel bored, but the worst of it is I know I could be working harder somewhere else, and learning more in the process.

I should have had the foresight to know the interest I had in highschool for programming was not going to be shared by all of my classmates. I should have taken a year off and grown a bit. I should have tried to take a chance and get an apprenticeship for some startup and see where that took me first. But really, I (like many HN readers, I'm sure) come from a conservative upper middle class town. College for the most part WASN'T a decision. It was a step. And I wish I had the sense to realize that it didn't have to be.

I WANT to be working my ass off. I'm 20 years old. If I'm not working as hard as I can now, what will I really be able to produce at the age of 40? I have one youth. I look around at everyone and their pacifiying drug use. And truly, I was looking forward to partying coming into college, but I grew bored of it in a single semester. It wasn't any different than highschool, just drinking and smoking with kids I barely know and didn't really care for. Reminds me of the underlying feeling in the Great Gatsby; you can be lonely together at many of these parties. I want to be like Nick at the end of it, I want to damn it all to hell, and go move far away to focus on myself and my career.

I'm only in my third semester and I consider it a mistake. I can't imagine it getting much better, I've taken most all of my CS classes and now I'll just be taking random classes completely unrelated to my major to get a piece of paper. I'm discontent with the slow flow of learning that college creates. I feel constrained, and that bugs the hell out of me.

I was going to say, you might be exposed to more things in higher CS classes, but it sounds like you've already taken them up front. That's impressive. If I might be so presumptive as to give advice, can I suggest talking to your advisor about exactly what you said. I'm sure there is a way to get more out of your college experience for the remaining time.

You are obviously driven. But you are also just 20, you don't have to be working as hard as you can (or don't have to be doing so in a job). You do just have one youth, as you said, and the truth is once you get a job and have demands, you won't have the freedom that college allows, and you might miss it. You can either realize that you will be spending the rest of your adult life after college working and take it easy on yourself for the next couple of years, or you can use that extra time you have to work really hard on learning things you won't be able to devote yourself to after college. Either is understandable and acceptable.

As much as college sucks sometimes, it will be good to have that piece of paper to fall back on, and to have finished something, and you can have an opportunity to use your time now if you look at it this way.

Best of luck.

Sorry to hear you are not having a good time.

In any case, college is what you make of it; it might sound obnoxious but if it's boring, that's on you. Challenge yourself by taking more challenging classes, by going deeper than the professor requires in your current classes; take graduate level classes, arrange research or independent study with a professor. Learn new fields to diversify yourself, or to learn about the world -- get a double major in Chinese, Indian history, literature, experimental psychology. Access to the amount of expertise around you, with the availability to talk to you, will never happen again. They won't have time for you, and worse you won't have time for them.

> I'm only in my third semester ... I've taken most all of my CS classes and now I'll just be taking random classes completely unrelated to my major to get a piece of paper.

You are in your third semester and have almost completed your major? In computer science? Wow. There is so much more you could learn!

I felt the way you're feeling not too long ago. I'm open to talk to you if you want, shoot me an email ge.espitia@gmail.com.

I felt the same way. Just remember that it's those other people who are wasting their time in college. It doesn't have to be you. Start pushing yourself now and you'll come out way ahead of your classmates. And make sure to go out of your way to find those few classmates who actually give a shit about learning. I didn't do that and regret it now.

And you're only 3 semesters in. I doubt you're out of CS classes to take. Take the ridiculously hard CS classes that no one else wants to. Take graduate level courses. And enjoy the random classes completely unrelated to your major, you never know when they'll be useful to you. My favorite class in college was an American history class and I was a CS major. Who cares? It was a great class and I feel all the more educated for it. You shouldn't just be there to take CS.

Do you not get along with your classmates? Is it possible you are not embracing this experience?

Work your ass off while in college. Sounds like you are not taking any initiative here. Right now I bet you have tons of free time. Use it to better yourself in ALL ways. Exercise. Read. Get out there and meet people.

If you're convinced you can make better use of your time without college, quit! You could see what the market offers for your current skills, then decide. Work your ass off at enjoying yourself too.

A couple of options occur to me:

1. Don't take random classes. My two main regrets from college are not taking more classes in foreign languages, and not taking more math. You may well know more of either at this point than I did, but it can't hurt you to know more. There are other whole fields as well that you might find interest you. If you've done the math, then why not physics or chemistry? If you've done the languages, then a well-chosen history class might be enlightening.

2. You could take a year off, particularly if you can find a programming job that suits you.

The first thing to realize is that the constraints you are feeling are mere social convention, and you don't have to follow most of them. Just because your peers are smoking up and chilling out doesn't mean that you have to do the same thing. It's your life, and your choices. Other people do play into it: you're still gonna want your friends and family to be happy with you, but you don't have to be the same as everyone else for them to be happy. They would probably be happier seeing you be your best self.

The second thing to realize is that there is no shortage of work to be done in this world, merely a shortage of money and motivation to aim towards that work. If you can't find something to aim towards, you aren't exposing yourself enough yet to the real problems that need solving. College can be good for that - wait for the moments in class when a prof says "and no one knows how this works yet" or "someday someone will figure out how to do this and make a million". Then go deep on that problem. You may not solve it, but you'll develop real skills like you want to.

Thirdly, work and school are not a mutually exclusive choice. Yes, your parents will be unhappy if they think you are failing out, and may put up resistance to the idea of a job interfering with your schooling. But it sounds like you are in need of more challenge, not less, and you should be able to spin an internship, job, or project as a good career move to your parents.

You do only have one youth. You should enjoy it. But good work can leave you with just as many good memories as partying it up. Don't be a slave, but don't be a zombie either. Find someone with a similar mindset and go do something cool.

BTW, I started my first startup when I was your age, while in college. My partner dropped out of school to work on it, but I stayed in while working. It was hard. My profs would get mad at me for getting Cs when they knew I was capable of As. But I learned so much more. The Cs didn't really affect my career. Finishing my degree did, and the learning definitely did.

"this old-style, formal education that we find in college and graduate programs will become an increasingly niche endeavor reserved for the few for whom it makes sense for one reason or another."

Some academics have gotten this & are trying to change the system; Jose Bowen from Goucher College comes to mind -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/education/edlife/a-convers...

I did not go to college and I flunked 2nd and 3rd grade. My parents pulled me out of school and tried to teach me at home which had better success than the school system but not much. I dropped out of school at 15 and started working in kitchens washing dishes. A friend of mine worked in an IT department and he started teaching me computer network, hardware and things like that, because I kept asking him to. I fell in love with IT and taught myself over a dozen programming languages and have not had issues with finding a job. Sure I can't spell well, english sentence structure and all that is something I still can't figure out, but I don't let it hold me back. I am in the top 2% of income earners in the U.S. and for my age bracket better than that, I report to the CTO and have had a successful career so far.

My view is you need to find your gift in life and go with it. If it's your dream then you will have the fire and motivation that others will want, if you try to live someone else's dream you will be a miserable person and never at the top of your game or income potential.

The real issue is not college or not college, if you need college to live your dream then do it. Don't expect a college degree on it's own will bring you success and happiness.

I fundamentally agree, but there are a few angles it omits:

- Knowing what to learn. Being interested in something is great, but it usually means you learn a lot about a rather narrow field, rather than being exposed to the breadth of things. A college with its variety of courses and its availability of professors that have spent their entire life on a subject might help to provide a good overview as a preliminary step.

- Humane disciplines What the article describes is very much applicable to technology and science subjects, but less so if you’re going for an arts degree. There the academy plays a way more integral role and a lot of research happens for the sake of being published in scientific / academic publications.

- Academic prestige / salary. This is probably more in favour of the article. Following up on the previous comment the role of the academy is very different in different fields of study. In liberal arts the academy is the central part of the system and a lot of people working in the field are researchers or otherwise contributing to it. Thus the prestige of teaching at the academy is high – and so is a professors salary when compared to what a lot of the other people in the field make. In technology however this is very different. There’s a lot of money to be made in the field and the most prestigious places to work at are intelligent startups or ground breaking companies like Google. Being a professor in the same field yields comparatively lower rewards and – pardon the generalisation – comes with lesser prestige. Especially since even in classically academic fields like research and innovation the tech companies have long ago taken the lead.

This is the choice I made (UK based) and 5 years later I can say I'm doing fine and have no regrets. But what does concern me is the way college[1] staff reacted to this decision, from warnings in one to one chats down to outright scaremongering that I was throwing my life away even though I had explained that I could not find a course that I felt would be of value or advance my knowledge in what I WANTED to do. This is the same situation my younger sister is currently facing, she would much rather pursue the apprenticeship route to gain practical experience (she is wanting to pursue events management) but her college keeps pushing her back to the university route offering little to no support for her choice and the provided tools for finding apprenticeships or opportunities are next to useless.

Thankfully my family has a history of self-employment so for us convincing family that it is the right path is not difficult, but with colleges acting as very persistent recruiters for universities this will be a very hard decision to make for a lot of people as the advisors parents listen to are saying it is not a viable option.

[1] For those unfamiliar with the UK system college is attended separately before university.

The assumption that college is a four year commitment is absurd. AP classes mean you can get credit in high school, or the CLEP test allows adults to quickly get credit for classes. Community Colleges allow you to transfer credits. You can take extra classes, often at no extra cost.

It's only 4 years if you go in taking the absolute minimum amount of full-time credits to get the degree.

The reality is that most people take more than 4 years to graduate, especially at lower tier colleges.

Yeah, but the lower tier colleges are unlikely to attract the sort of student this article talks about. the people who have trouble completing their degree in time generally either fail classes or were underprepared for college. They are not the subject of this article.

College is a poor proposition for students at the lower tier colleges as well, but for different reasons.

I'm five years into college (working at a startup for now to motivate myself to finish). I have no difficulty whatsoever with the material, it's just an absolute waste of time to show up to class every day for years just to get a competency certificate for shit you can learn in a textbook. I'm gonna need that full six years just to get my self through all the bureaucratic bullshit.

Very true. I took all the AP classes I could in high school (incuding some independent study) and was able to get a year knocked off of college easily. I probably could have gone to school in less, but a) my college capped my AP credits to 30 and b) I only took 15-16 credit hours most semesters.

It's also bad to assume you will actually completely your degree. Lots of people won't hack it, and they'll end up with more debt and a few skipped years of being in the workforce.

Very few people, % wise, finish in under 4 years. The average is much closer to 6 years (http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/11/r...). You may be in a bubble of extreme high achievers that makes it hard to see the reality of most people. And that's data from all tiers combined, not just low tier schools (does that mean non-ivy?).

But the article is about people who are high achievers.

There are two types of those: learners and thinkers. The latter have difficulty doing busy work at any speed.

I have to disagree as someone who took all AP classes in high school but couldn't afford to take the tests at the end. I guess if your parents aren't poor or you're otherwise able to get them financed sure, but not everyone has that luxury.

College Board offers programs to subsidize the cost of the test. In any case, the AP test generally mirrors the CLEP as well, so you can take that.

An associate at USVP asked me about my lack of degree. Me: "I'm following the Bill Gates model." He: "What, you have a Mother that is a Lawyer and you dropped out of Harvard?" I laughed. They put in a few million. This was a while ago; mileage may vary.

Good story! No one asks about my lack of degree. I don't have an education section on my resume. If they did ask, I'd ask in return how exactly it would matter to getting the work done. I'd expect silence.

The point is many people go to college and end up at "Enterprise Rent A Car" or T-mobile Store. Is it even justifiable for a person to have take student loans and end up those kinds of jobs. There is true problem here, you do not need college if you are "learning for learning sake" and your college degree does not give bang for a buck if you are going to college to end up in a general job. There are exceptions. I agree with the author.

I'm glad this discussion is happening more and more. What I think it really comes down to is education doesn't automatically equal school.

There aren't very many schools that make your resume stand out. If you aren't going to one of them (Harvard, MIT, etc.), then any cheap, accredited school will do. The degree on the resume gets you past the filtering process, and nobody cares that it is from a no-name school.

Like the NBA, all college should be "one-and-done".

https://medium.com/@timrpeterson/all-college-should-be-one-a...

You want one and done? Get an associates degree.

skipping college is probably controversial because you can't make a distinction between doing it because of laziness or because of passion. at the bottom of your heart you know which one it is.

the problem with doing something else is that you will, still, take yourself with you. if high school was crap, now college is crap - it's likely that other thing is going to be crap too.

why don't you do something on the side instead of "smoking and drinking" with people you don't care?

You can ride around on a motorcycle without a helmet and wager no harm will come to you; it's a safer bet with a helmet.

In this case the analogy is: You can ride around on a motorcycle with a helmet that has a "certified" sticker, or no sticker. Same helmet.

site down, cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bbQiznH...

If you want to get into the US, as a foreigner. A year of college is worth more than a year of work experience.

I recently stopped going to college (a few months ago). I've been thinking about the decision for around two years now and it was the best decision I've ever made. I have never been as productive and generally happy as I have after leaving classes.

What I agree most with the article is that college is not the correct decision for those who already know what they want to do or have a specific goal in mind. Attending classes for me felt like a waste of time simply because they did not push me towards my goal. It felt like I was lying to myself every day by going to class just to let society know that "I am going to college, I am doing the right thing". Once I completely (and I mean 1000%) stop giving a s#!t about what anyone else thought or said (including my family), I found myself to be happier, more confident, more motivated, more everything.

Now, everyone still tries to convince me that I should go back. That I never know what the future holds. Honestly, most of my friends who go their degree have jobs that require little of what they actually learned. Not only are they getting paid borderline a minimum wage but they are being routined to death. I'd say 80% are not happy in their day to day which is crazy. I really feel like if things were to get bad, I am perfectly employable without a degree. My projects and experience have taught me 1000x more than I ever learned in a classroom. Actually, I can say that 90%+ of what I know is through my own reading, my own project, my own initiative, my own everything.

My conclusion on the whole debate of college is that if you know what you want, go out there and get it. Just like there is a cost opportunity of not going to college, there is also cost opportunity to GOING. Think about it deeply and do as your intuition dictates.

Notes:

- I was majoring in business (marketing). I believe, at least in my case, this and many of the liberal arts majors are best learned by doing. If you really have a passion for it, grab some books and practice it. Whatever it may be. As for other studies like medicine, biology etc (the sciences) I've seen it is best to go and study it. My brother is doing medicine and I really don't see how it would be possible for him to not go to college and be able to do brain surgery.

- I love this phrase from the article and to me it is an issue I feel strongly about. Times have changed, we should too.

"The idea of college education is deeply ingrained in our culture. People seem to go down the college route almost impulsively and the correctness of this path is, for most, unquestionable."

People who have accepted the fact that I dropped out, that see why the decision for me was correct, that are proud of the work and value I am producing, will still try to convince me to go back. I don't blame anyone for this, I think we were all brought up since babies to believe that college is the way to go. I just feel we need to question this belief a lot more. - Great article!

It depends... I know that most of what I learn in cooledge is "worthless" - but the paper itself holds some value.

I got an AA in CIS and immediately took the first job within range (I live in farmland, so programming jobs aren't exactly normal within range). The paper got my foot in the door, but now I have provable experience and solid, real references.

I'm still going to school, slowly working towards my BA. I have experience, so why am I getting my BA? Because there are opportunities I've been passed over simply due to AA vs BA/MBA/etc.

The key is to actually think about things and balance what you want and the cost of college. For too many the only goal is paper, without a thought to how that translates into green. Thus you end up with a 100k piece of paper with someone working at McDonalds or Star Bucks.

I'm using accredited classes, at an affordable accredited school - affordable is the important part. I will have my BA with no debt to show and years of experience in the field I've chosen.

I agree. It really depends. As I mentioned, I feel if you have a goal or vision for what you want, then you can really make the decision. Sounds like you've got your goals set and if college is a part of that, great, that's what I consider success. As Earl Nightingale said, "Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal".

Thanks for sharing this here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on my situation.

I started programming in freshman year (2006) of high school and fell in love with it. I've been coding since, but also started getting excited about startups. A year after graduating from high school, I started one with a couple of friends from college. It's the best decision I've made.. I have learned so much in a few years. I am convinced I wouldn't have learned as much by focusing in school.

I've been in school for about 4 years now getting a CS degree. I started taking less classes per semester last year because I was doing bad in them. I had a lack of interest and also spent a lot more time involved in the startup. That hasn't changed. I have 5 classes left to graduate, but my GPA needs to go up by a lot in order to do so.

There is a lot of pressure from my parents to finish school since I'm almost done, but I'm really struggling to do well in my classes since I'm just not into them. It really feels like I'm wasting my time.. getting stressed about my grades.. and I'm not sure what to do.

The obvious solution is to keep going and finish... but it's a constant battle every week to convince myself that this is the best path and to keep going.

The lack of interest kills, I've been there. College will always be there, opportunities won't. Take the semester off, you never know how much your life will change in a few months. Plus, if you have a good amount of projects under your belt, it's likely that you can find a job doing what you like and be able to pay your bills. Remember though, if you do, make a conscious decision to work your ass off. Not necessarily because this is now your 'job' but look at it as a purpose/mission. You must hit X by Y. Really puts the pressure on (the good kind).

More than anything though, ask yourself what you want to do. Analyse all the scenarios and where you would feel happiest. Do you really believe in your work? in your startup? Have your feet grounded and boom, chase your dream like it's do or die.

The author's linkedin page : https://www.linkedin.com/in/levinotik

Education Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University

I wonder if he chose his field himself, or if his parents picked for him, and now he rolled into software development by himself, resenting his parents' choice.

Quick creative application of the legal principle called "Cui bono".

It's interesting how many people who advise against college are so well educated themselves. I've seen Michael Bloomberg and Rick Santorum discouraging college or playing down its value, but I bet their kids go to college and probably graduate school.

When people say 'college isn't for everyone', they mean it's for them but not for you. You can see this play out as college becomes more expensive and the province of the wealthy.

AFAIK, the U.S. used to lead in the number receiving college educations; we've stagnated and other countries have passed us. Consider which of those countries will attract more skilled jobs.

Isn't that sort of obsolete thinking? We don't have any skilled jobs for our current crop of college graduates. Why train more, just so they can drive busses?

> Isn't that sort of obsolete thinking? We don't have any skilled jobs for our current crop of college graduates. Why train more, just so they can drive busses?

A few thoughts on that argument:

Unemployment now is moderate and dropping, especially for college graduates. The lifetime income of college graduates is significantly higher than others.

Also, your argument (which I realize is widespread) look only at graduates' initial jobs. College education is not initial job training; it benefits people in many ways, as individuals, as citizens, as community members, as family members, and as workers; it benefits them over a lifetime. To evaluate it based only on one part of life (work), and only on a short period that also is the least significant (their first job) doesn't make sense.

Also, looking at careers: Note that most of the world is run by people with college educations. Future jobs will become more and more intellectually demanding. What is our message to 18 year olds: Abandon your dreams, just give up and drive a bus? From people like Santorum, the message is: Your kids should give up and drive a bus while mine go to college.

How many people 'dream' of spending 4 more years studying abstract/obtuse subjects? You can do lots of things; most things in fact, without studying art history.

The money angle is probably valid; the 'dreams' angle is just the opposite of that - folks like to make cabinets, or trek mountains, or write. They don't really want to study math to become an actuarial.

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