Most of the anti-college rhetoric originates from the US, I think, because of the high cost. In Canada, where undergraduate tuition at some of our best universities is below $10k/year (usually much lower), "going to college" is far easier to rationalize.
EDIT: I didn't mean to be all smug about it. The cost of going to university is different in different countries, and if it's too expensive where you're at, maybe going as an exchange student is a viable alternative? That's the only big regret I have, never having done that.
Firstly, it does, in Scandinavia just like everywhere else. Secondly, it does for a reason. Not just because they can charge (though obviously...), or that teachers/professors would like to eat something every once in a while, but also because getting the results is quite expensive. Take a look at the universities rankings[1] -- how many schools in the top ten aren't British or American?
Before we get all smug about our educational systems largely free of exorbitant fees, arbitrary admissions, and racists nonsense like affirmative action (well, largely), we should take a look at the results Americans are getting. It's not all corruption and waste.
Most "top" universities receive their ranking for the quality of the research they produce, not quality of undergraduate education. There is likely a decent correlation between research output and undergraduate education, which one can determine by looking at schools that have some of the highest achieving undergrads (such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford) and noting that these schools also are major research centers. Note there are most certainly exceptions to this, ie schools without a ton of research output but with great education for undergrads (I'm thinking of Reed College here, but no evidence/just my perception) or universities that don't do much with undergrads but are major research centers.
However, I'd mostly like to address the fallacy of attributing the high international rankings of American universities to the high undergraduate tuition. At Caltech, I've heard many undergrads say that all undergrad tution is about 5% of Caltech's budget, with a lot of the rest coming from various research grants. At schools with less of a research focus and more undergrads, undergrad tuition might make 30% of the budget. I can't find the blog post at the moment, but there was a discussion a few years ago about what would happen if MIT gave a full scholarship to all attending undergrads, and the conclusion was that it would hurt (but not cripple) MIT financially, but appeared possible.
Those same universities have selection criteria which predict success after college independent of the college attended. So it's not like they are masterfully teaching anything; rather, it seems very much like they are simply rebranding the best students.
To the extent that they also teach students more and better, this is actually damaging socially because it sucks secondary educational capital into a few locations. Lower end schools could do more and better if they housed many more bright and ambitious students. But if they're all going to a handful of schools, they're not improving the social networks at Random State.
Although elite universities might not "masterfully teach", the students at these universities still learn more than students at a lot of universities simply because the classes are more difficult (these are generalizations, not the rule). If classes are more difficult/cover more content but aren't taught well enough/not all content covered, then highly ambitious students just end up teaching themselves a lot of the curriculum, but they still know the material of their classes by the end. Essentially, even though the teaching might not be better, I believe an average MIT student studying X comes out more knowledgeable than student from [[ state school ]].
And its an interesting thought to distribute top students. Assuming a fixed quantity of "bright and ambitious" students, wouldn't sending more of them to lower end schools weaken the social networks formed at elite schools and destroy something unique about American education system?
Please. There are thousands of these rankings. They all show different results and most of them are produced by Americans in the first place.
To start with how do you qualify a college good or bad? Nobel prize winners, number of sharks graduated, number of Forbes 100 people, scientific articles published?
Let all of these alone I just graduated from an high school outside USA and am accepted to those top schools along with my classmates. Everybody knows that US applications are about how good you can memorize SAT words and how well you can look on the paper. I know people who faked hundreds of projects and got into these top schools. Believe me their number far exceeds the number of people who actually deserve to be there.
A school with abundant resources attracts high profile customers rather than actual students.
Everybody knows that US applications are about how good you can memorize SAT words and how well you can look on the paper.
That's what it looks like from outside the USA. For US students, the SAT barely matters at all. Top criteria at elite schools are 1. race (don't be Asian-American), 2. sports (especially elite sports like crew), 3. contacts, recommenders, networking, 4. high grades from a well-known high school, 5. extracurricular activities, 6. objective tests.
Try that gauntlet and you'll be pining for tests of SAT words.
For the record: going to university is free in Sweden (and probably the rest of Scandinavia) for the individual, which is the relevant metric here. Obviously someone has to pay, but the cost is not part of the equation when you're making the decision (other than the alternative cost for not working).
I didn't say that. Listen, if you want me to describe to you how biased these rankings are in favor of Western institutions, I'd be glad to do so. For example, a common metric is number of publications, for which the accepted journals are almost entirely Western (or US-based). And then you have scores that are based partially on (perceived) reputation, for which American schools will always come first. For the QS World University Rankings, this accounts for 40% of their final score.
The thing is though, private education systems has shown to produce cost explosion as education is a needed thing and no one is controlling the costs. State financed education has a much better cost control. Like they don't build insanely expensive stadiums or put a grand piano in the cafeteria (seen this at a US university).
The problem with that is that it sets a precedent , basically saying "If you are poor , you better be a genius or you will have no qualifications and will work in mcdonalds"
How ironic, apparently in scandinavia they must not teach basic algebra, basic accounting, and basic tax law.
There is no free lunch in the world, you indeed pay for university.
The statement you make is so ironic because you are displaying an incredible amount of ignorance in basic math and taxes, thereby discrediting the scandinavian university system you are here defending!!
I'm sitting here cracking up and can't stop laughing at your comment.
Welcome to America! Cash is king. My art school degree when said and done will cost somewhere near $72,000. That is just tuition. I can't wait to see what the "open" education platforms of the future bring.
As much as people crap on art school an art degree can at least pay for itself as long as your willing to work for other, and not, say, make drawings of anime all day. Most of the anti-college rhetoric comes from 1 simple things.
Cost of degree > Worth of degree.
$200,000 for a degree which only nets a $35,000/yr job is starting to seem like a bad deal.
That's if you value the degree in terms of the salary you can garner after graduating, or believe that money is everything. There are simply some things that you cannot put a price on. College is not for everyone, but for many it can be an eye-opening experience that enriches lives in deep ways.
Re: There are simply some things that you cannot put a price on.
Debt that will follow you through bankruptcy is not one of
them. I know of people who took exactly that attitude about college and it destroyed their lives.
If you are not paying for college, or not paying much, it is true that it can be a fun 4 years and does not need to be considered a financial decisions. But when you are collecting more debt than an average mortgage you should really consider if the house you are buying is worth it.
If someone is looking for a safe financial investment that provides guaranteed returns on the dollar, college isn't likely to rank high on that list. We seem to agree on that. I said that college isn't for everyone. My point was that equating worth or value directly to a dollar value return is probably a bad way to look at an education. Many people can't afford a quality education, and it's an injustice. But how much money you can earn because of your degree is only one facet to weighing the benefits of an education. And, to me, it's a poor method of valuation.
Well first of all I do not equate education necessarily with college, education is a process and college is a place where that may or may not happen. My main point is that assuming large levels of debt should be approached as a business/investment decision, as should anything with such a large down side. And even if you are college material having $200,000 in debt and a degree in something that gets you a $35,000/year job is just not a reasonable thing to do. And with a debt/salary load like above college will be the best 4 years of your life, loan payments will see that it is so in the best case.
I re-read your comment, and I think that where we agree is that an education doesn't have to mean college. Also, a degree as a piece of paper is not really worth anything -- I was thinking of the experience of diving into learning, and the benefits of being in an academic environment that can't be reduced to a dollar value (at least not easily).
And who's fault is this for choosing to go to a private college? There are plenty of community colleges that are a viable alternative, quit bitching when their are plenty of cheaper alternatives available.
I'm in Brazil, where the best universities are public and free. I dropped out for very similar reasons of why us colleges are criticized. The problem is time is money, and even the best universities are extremely time-inefficient. I learned much more on the internet and coding by myself than I did on college. But most importantly, I learned much faster. College has way too much overhead, because it has to cater to all kind of people. But specially in software, theres just to much different paths to choose. And you probably don't even know where to go at the beginning. Here, it's very common that after you graduate, your employer will tell you, you know nothing, and only now you'll finally learn how things really work. Then why did I go to college then? It's just not efficient.
So as I see it. It's more efficient use of your time to start working by yourself then seek to learn exactly what you need to get the job done.
Others say what matters about college is not education. But networking and proving you can get things done. But you can also get those more efficiently somewhere else. Hackatons and linking to your code on github are much more efficient at these.
Overall, the main anti-college argument is simply that there are more cost and time efficient means to get the same that college gets you. If after considering that you still want to go to college. Then be happy and do it, you'll still get there, it will only cost you more time and money.
This about sums it up for me. I work full time (I'm 25), so it's going to be a royal pain in the ass to finish off my degree part time. Four full years of college is just insane. If I could just transfer my credits over to a half decent accelerated CS program ...
I feel like the programming field should accommodate better, more time efficient education. We're a different breed of workers, as we are constantly required to learn, and the best learning happens while doing actual work.
Going to college in the us doesn't really cost all that much unless you want it to. For example, I know many people (including myself) that completed our undergrad and masters for around $30k. Add in our pell grants and you can subtract something like half of that.
All of my peer group have fulfilling careers and none of us had any debt after about two or three years. And all of us work positions with people who did pay a lot for school and who are still paying off their debt. In other words going to hum drum community college and state school put us in precisely the same employment positions as people who paid 4 to 5 times as much.
"In other words going to hum drum community college and state school put us in precisely the same employment positions as people who paid 4 to 5 times as much."
It's no doubt more expensive today, the school budgets are different, tuition is different, grants are less available. But it's still possible to go from high school to an advanced degree for the price of a low-end family sedan instead of a Porsche.
Using today's dollars here's what my education would cost today (minus books because I have no way of knowing what the cost of used books for all of the courses would be plus most courses honestly don't use the books and aren't needed).
Community college: 2 years, A.S. degree (okay, 2 A.S. degrees, but that's not the point). 60 credits. ~$140 per credit in my area. Total: $8400.
That's the first two years of the undergrad down.
Transfer to local state college that possesses an agreement with the local community college to transfer the A.S. and place the student as a junior.
Current tuition around $9k per year. So $18k to finish up the undergrad.
Total undergrad tuition from the local state school $26,500.
Add $18k for the grad program. $44,500.
Now subtract Pell grants (only available for the undegrad): $5500 per year or $22000 for the undergrad. (it was I believe $6500 when I went so there's that).
Final tuition $22500 in 2012 dollars.
Which isn't too bad, only $7500 more than what I paid in 2001.
Of course there's books and such, but like I said usually you can get them used, don't need them at all, and can return them after the semester and get some of the money back. I'm also not counting housing, food, other misc expenses, which is a significant expense for many students. One school I looked at charges ~$20k for housing and meal plan.
By comparison, MIT is $20,885 per term. In other words, even before Pell grants, my entire program, from High School to Graduate Degree costs around what one year costs there.
Tufts university, another well regarded school, run $41,998 per year.
Sidenote: it's interesting how hard it is to find tuition and rates at expensive schools. I picked MIT and Tufts because they were relatively forthcoming about it (even if the information was buried someplace). Other schools play fun games by showing per credit rates, and leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out how many credits their major requires, then do the math to figure out their tuition. Or they show per credit rates after financial aid for a family of the median income or other such nonsense. My favorite is where they'll list their tuition, and then not make it clear if it's per semester or per year. Stanford's tuition rates are almost absurdly cryptic (when the tuition rates page is even up) -- for the record it's $40,050 per year, add in other expenses and it's $52,341 per year or around $200k for an undergraduate degree, 10 times my program which gets you a graduate degree.
It's also very telling when most non-state schools I look at feature "financial aid" on the front page of their site. They know their tuition is too high.
Second sidenote: Tufts recommends $800 per year for textbooks if anybody wants to figure that in.
The reason why it's virtually impossible to get tuition & prices at expensive schools is because it's socialist. "From each according to ability, to each according to need." Tuition at MIT is free if you (or your parents) make under $100K/year. Same with Stanford.
The price you pay for any income range between there and full price depends upon this incredibly convoluted form, the FAFSA, that basically involves listing every asset and income source available to you, and then the college quoting a price back to you, which will be some combination of parental contribution, work/study, and loans, with the remainder made up by grants from the college.
Sticker price at Amherst when I went was just over $40K/year, including room & board. My parents actually paid about $12K/year, I think, with another couple thousand in loans for me.
Right. And I think this is a whole different and also entirely interesting topic. I'm constantly surprised how many families don't simply "cut loose" their 18 year old so that they have virtually no income when filling out their FAFSA paperwork. It almost guarantees favorable student aid.
More importantly, when private universities do post their tuition, they don't post them as "max tuition pending review of financial status", but increasingly they are as no reasonable person will pay something closing in on a quarter million dollars for an undergraduate degree (I'm thinking tuition, books, supplies, food, housing, the whole shebang) that some schools these days are commanding.
And I think it's because the universities spend quite a bit of effort trying to figure out how to shift the tuition to a deferment rather than a waiver or reduction. So we get a "tuition" link right next to the "financial aid" link and a wink and nod from the school because surely everybody knows those rates are negotiable.
I think I return to my main point which is that a decent undergrad education in the U.S. doesn't really have to cost $100k-$250k no matter the school one attends. However, the ridiculous rates private schools post doesn't help things. Their actual average tuition rate is likely much much lower - and the full price is a "penalty rate" for coming from money.
What's troubling is how a relatively simple breakdown like I provided earlier up this thread or yours seems to be a great mystery.
Besides that, at least in the US, most "computer science" degrees don't seem to create an analog experience to classic engineering diciplines. They don't focus on how to design and build software systems per se, but in the science behind computing. And the degrees that try to focus on the "engineering" are, or are regarded as, watered-down second-class degrees with less prestige (like information systems managment and software engineering).
I think part of it is direct cost and part is opportunity cost, but I think the actual reasons are more subtle..
For two generations, we've been fed the line that a "college education leads to success" while at the same time we've entered a world where the rate of innovation - not just in tech - is moving much faster than the curricula can adapt.
As a result, you end up with professors who have been out of their industry and have skills that are (likely) eroding. At the same time, they're teaching concepts that are being replaced and expanded upon. It's a dangerous combination.
At the same time, throw in the degrees that have sole purpose of training a professor to teach the same classes. At some point, the supply of these people will outpace the demand and whole departments are going to suffer.
Then throw in people who probably would have (or should have?) chosen a different path but ended up going to college to have "success." Either they succeed on their own (yea!), the have grade inflation or gimme classes devaluing the degree, or they fail.
If they fail, we end up with some who might have been GREAT at Job X but where pressured into going for Job Y and suffered failure.. so they're unlikely to reach either.
The "value" of an education is primarily two things at this point:
- learning how to learn -> if this doesn't happen until college, ponder what's going on the previous 12 years..
- the relationships & associations with like-minded individuals... if you can find them.
Some of our best 'Colleges' are only $3-5k/year in tuition. I went to a College myself. It taught me a lot, but now I find myself wanting more.
I think the decision should be based more on the experiences the person is looking for, instead of money. Especially in Canada, where getting a student loan isn't really a daunting task.
>Most of the anti-college rhetoric originates from the US, I think, because of the high cost.
Some of it is just cultural--I received a heavy dose of the anti-college mindset 30 years ago (from relatives while growing up in the southern US) when it was still pretty cheap.
High cost is not just tuition. It's also the time and energy required. When you look at it as opportunity cost, especially during the prime of your life, it might make more sense to spend it elsewhere, such as on the job or vocational/trade school.
This is true. Undergraduate education in Canada is well under $10k/year. Plus, thanks to favourable tax law, a large proportion of the costs are recouped in your first year of employment after graduating.
Going to school in most countries is a no-brainer.
I think this is absolutely correct. I'm a US college dropout who started taking classes again in 2001 or 2002 and have basically been constantly in some class for something (taking classes on the side) ever since.
if you're saying education isn't worth the time or money, I disagree, but if you're saying the US higher education system is so broken it's not even worth considering, I agree.
All learning is worthwhile - nobody is arguing you shouldn't go to college because it's a waste of time. The point is you need to think very carefully about your job prospects before you go into debt to get a degree. $15k debt for pretty much any degree is doable - you can pay that back pretty much no matter what job you get at graduation.
But going $200k into debt for a degree is financial suicide unless your degree is extremely marketable. An MD, say, or a law degree from Harvard or Yale. Even if everything goes the way you're expecting, and it may not, it's going to be decades before you're out from under that cloud.
At that debt level you've essentially traded your first house for your degree, and unless your career is wildly successful you're going to be in your 40s before you can afford to buy a place of your own.
One thing about college and life in general is that you must connect with people on their interests rather than your interests.
That is probably the single best skill you can easily get and requires no studying, just practice and interest in other people.
If you go back to the Steve Job's video from the Stanford graduation, he talks about connecting the dots and sitting in on classes. In my many ways talking to random people about random things will allow you to connect more dots later.
I loved college, both times I went and while the price and debt sucks, it was well worth it for me.
I'm a "college dropout." I've made good money since, doing what I love - designing and writing software.
I would, however, like the opportunity to take high-intensity week-long courses on topics that I choose. Don't make me sign up for a degree just to gain some useful knowledge. Offer me Data Structures and Algorithms, two hours a night for five nights. Give me a chance to take some Intro to Design courses (I didn't say 'Photoshop Tutorial')
Sure, I can get books that teach me this stuff, but sometimes I need the social aspect of learning.
I'm a college student and I wish more schools offered a tracking system like this. More free form and intense. Let me focus on something, give it my all and learn in groups. I know a fair bit of literature courses and history courses could not work like this (easily) but I do see the ability for a lot of the college landscape to be more enjoyable class-focus-intensity wise. I don't know of anybody who likes to waste their time doing something they don't like.
High-intensity week-long courses on topics that you choose sounds ideal. It reminds me of ArsDigita University, where the course of study was sequential and intensive, with most courses lasting one month.
Yes, clearly there's no "demand for learning", that's why Khan Academy is about to go out of business and traditional universities have refused to offer high-quality, free online learning.
Yep, as long as it's free. I can't think of many people who pay much to learn stuff, outside of traditional colleges. You might pay a few hundred to go to a conference, but this is much less than you pay to get a degree.
I can't speak for the CS major, since I wasn't one. Instead I decided to do philosophy, which is not something I regret. I still had plenty of time to learn Rails and work on some cool projects. Since college I've only ever been turned down for one job due to the lack of a CS degree, and it's probably not a job I would have enjoyed much. At my first job, I was the one who was a full-time salaried employee while the intern was the CS grad. Since then I've had the opportunity to work on some amazing projects with some amazing people. I've been a core team member for SproutCore and now for Ember.js and I've gotten to work on some great JS and Rails projects with people like Yehuda Katz and Carl Lerche of Rails Core.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't go to college. I'm glad I did (though I wasn't the one paying for it, so I don't have loans). However, I'm also glad I didn't go for CS. Yes, there are some things I did miss out on by not being CS, but instead I got to write code on my own time for my own purposes, not because a class told me what to do. I also got to do a lot of interesting philosophy study that I would not have done on my own time and I'm glad that I had the motivation from school to actually do it.
There's no "one size fits all" advice for whether you should go to college or get a CS degree, but in my case, I have no regrets.
I wrote an article on this topic about a year ago [1], albeit from the perspective of having gone to college. Personally, I found college to work really well for me. It helped me figure out who I was, what I wanted to do, and it helped me to build my network. Notice that the academics aren't in the top 3 benefits I got from college. I'd place academics at #4.
It seems like most of the people who advocate dropping out, or just not going, already have a really strong network built. But I didn't. I didn't even know I wanted to build companies until after I started college.
I agree college isn't for everyone. But it felt right for me.
I agree college isn't for everyone. But it felt right for me.
There's another issue here as well: many people don't know how to do college, and they think that college is just about going to class and doing okay in class. It really isn't. Class, especially these days, is mostly an excuse to meet people, to figure out what you're interested in, and, in those subjects you are interested in, to signal that interest to your professor.
I'm a grad student, and I noticed these problems—which are essentially cultural—in many of my students, which in turn led me to write a couple essays on the subject: http://jseliger.com/essays . The essays attempt to turn implicit knowledge of the sort a lot of people acquire along the way, or acquire from their families (especially if they come from wealthy families) into explicit knowledge that says, "Here is how and why things work the way they do."
That's because of a little-known (by the general public, anyway) US Supreme Court ruling in 1971 in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power.
Prior to that case companies were more comfortable hiring people without college degrees because they were able to give IQ tests to prospective employees. The court ruled tests that have a disparate impact on the racial or sexual makeup of new hires are illegal.
Companies were forced to look for some other indicator the person they were about to hire can read and write and is reasonably intelligent, so many of the jobs that used to require only a high school education plus an IQ test now require a college degree.
There are some companies that still give tests to applicants, but they're just asking to get sued.
It's kind of ridiculous people are going tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt as a proxy for a three-hour IQ test, but I don't see any indication things are going to change.
Tim Ferriss posted a very good article on this matter [1].
Personally though, I would advocate for everyone to at least try college, before deciding that the college path isn't for them.
I think especially in the tech community, we expect superb technical instruction to be handed to us. But as many commenters have already pointed out, most of the value of an undergraduate education comes from what you learn outside of the classroom, not from the instruction you receive in class. Those lessons in social interaction, personal growth, and commitment typically will serve as a strong foundation for you as you go after the next big thing.
And that foundation I think can be very reassuring, especially if your dream is to start up your own company. If your start up doesn't pan out, you will still have your college degree as back up, which will make it much easier for you to apply for a job or network with old friends to find one.
Yes, it may be expensive, but there are a lot of financial resources there that you can take advantage of if you look hard enough. Many colleges (like Stanford) have an amazing financial aid program that make it very affordable for you to attend.
As cletus correctly points out, college is a means to an end, but you will only know whether it can be a mean or not unless you tried it.
In my case I looked out and saw what it offered and said, "No thanks." That's because I'm a unique individual and I have certain ideologies that you might not have. You may need structure or whatever it is you're wanting in a college, but I think I can do without. But not just doing without, doing better without it.
tl;dr: it's not about a anti-college, it's about choice. Everyone says go to college but at the end of the day I made a choice. And you have a choice and a right just as much as I do.
As part of the introduction for new students to the CS programme of my university, you get to meet a few people who graduated, and they talk a bit about what it's like getting through and out the other side.
After I graduated, I got invited as one of these people, and I also talked about choice. Most people that end up at university have been doing what society or their parents have been telling them all their life, and I told them that they should all really think about their studies and that for the first time in their lives they get to make real choice sabout their lives, and if they find out after a while that studying this CS programme sucks for them, then they shouldn't do it.
But if they enjoy computer science, if they avoid getting poached by companies before they've graduated, if they finish the slog and get their master's, they will end up having more choices than they would have if they had dropped out. You give up a little bit of freedom and opportunity now, for potentially a lot more later on.
Attending university opens some doors and closes others. But not attending also opens some doors and closes others. Some of these you can figure out beforehand, but most of it you have no idea about, so in retrospect it's impossible to know if your choice was the best one. I suspect all of us that are a bit older are wearing tinted glasses when we give out advice to the younger generation. :-)
That said, I have a bunch of friends who dropped out of university after figuring out it really didn't suit them, and they're doing great. Only one of them pondered going back to get his degree, and only because his company would pay for it, but he ended up not doing it anyway.
I don't regret my choice to finish my degree, even though it meant I missed the craziest years of the 90's dotcom boom. I think you won't regret your choice either. But remember that it's never too late to go to uni if you ever need it.
I like the tone of the post but I think it's a bit lacking in explanation on why college is important.
College makes you develop as a person. You interact with other students, you learn new stuff, you do your homework and the end result is - you've grown. It's about the process, not the end result like so many anti-college posts seem to focus on.
It's the experience of college that makes it important. The way I look at hiring college grads for instance, it's not about their grades, it's about knowing they can stick it and do it on their own. Finishing college is a merit.
I believe processes like college force you to develop as a person. Speaking from my experience, it was one of the most influential experiences I have had, and I studied Comp Sci, nothing fancy. The other would be my 5 years in the army, which similarly most people would dismiss as a waste of time, but I don't think I'd be the same person without it.
The way I think of it, it's about the process, and like it or not, going to college takes you through that process. Sure it's not for everyone, but come on people, stop hating :)
I think people in tech are a bit myopic regarding college. Traditional undergraduate programming education does seem very antiquated because the practice of programming lends itself to autodidactism. This is less true in other areas of education -- the ones that don't have an interpreter to tell you what, or at least where, you have done wrong.
I'm not arguing that contemporary universities are well-designed. They are not and there are many archaic elements ripe for disruption. I just want to point out that we have a pretty strong bias that is not necessarily generalizable.
(Personal bias note: I thought undergraduate education was intellectually useless, but absolutely worth it as a life experience. Now, I'm in graduate school and I am shocked by how much I enjoy it. Additionally, I am building something this summer to correct a structural problem with academia that I see in my own field of interest.)
You're going to have to stay somewhere a lot longer than a semester to find students/teachers to really connect with. CivE, CS, painting, doesn't matter. I completely understand the disappointment at going to school and finding out that hey, not everyone is motivated by the same thing as you, not everyone has the same goals, etc... but it's just something you have to accept. It happened to me at my "dream school", and if you're an architecture student then that pretty much makes you SOL. If you want to go to college, then do. Don't get too caught up in analyzing it, ESPECIALLY if you want to major in art. If you can keep your ideological goals and your practical goals separate, college as it is will make a whole lot more sense.
Edit: In summary, don't let your expectations get in the way of your goals. If school is an effective way of getting from A to B, then let it be just that.
I understand your struggles, but as my fellow commenter's point out it's more about the process than the content.
The social interactions are important. You could end up meeting the person you end up starting a Company with, but there are benefits outside the social interactions. Having goals, doing the work to accomplish your goals, and then seeing the results is something that I took away from my College experience. Being able to say "I'm going to get a 4.0 gpa this semester", and then developing a system to accomplish that goal is something you will carry with you for the rest of your life.
So I say go for it. Make a decision about which institution, and pull the trigger. Even if it isn't everything you dreamed of, stick with it and finish it. Follow through, and go through the process. You will be thankful you did when it's over.
I'm a Junior Computer Science and Visual Design student at one of the top-20 Universities in the US.
"I want to... go to college and meet like minded folks"
--> It has taken me three years to connect with a handful of students that share my interests. On the other hand, at one Startup Weekend I made just as many, arguably higher-quality, connections. Therefore, I would argue an event like Startup Weekend is a much better use of time and money than college.
"I want focus, and stop trying to solve everything and finishing nothing"
--> I find that most course projects are turned in incomplete at the end of the term, and there is rarely motivation to continue working on an assignment after the course is over.
We must first establish the expectations of the value proposition of college in order to share a common ground for the premise of our argument for/against college. My value proposition for college has always been:
1. the ability to broaden your base knowledge: if you love science/tech, then you must also partake in liberal arts, fine arts, poli sci, social sci, economics, etc.
2. the ability to improve your social skills (personal growth) with like-minded peers: high school was a fail for most people in terms of maturity and dating (especially the geek set) and so college is an opportunity to get it right without the stigma; the experience and maturity gained in this key skill include romance/dating/heartbreak/bad-sex, etc.
3. Social Networking (related to 2, but more about your professional objective): most kids today rely too much on internet social networking as the answer and assume that this is the best - wrong - true social networking involves taking the interpersonal initiative to shake hands with those who have the authority, connections and knowledge to help you along in your studies, career, interests, and it's not easy to go up to total strangers whom you admire and say "hi".
These three qualities of college can not be easily replicated outside of a college environment (Number 1 is most easily replicated). However, the assumption is that all colleges possess the above opportunities for you to pursue, and therein lies the problem. How many colleges have the networking leverage that makes it worthwhile to attend that college?
So, at the end of it all, what does it come down to? Prospective Networking. The individual student MUST TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE of the one resource they cannot easily replicate outside of college: networking with the "right" crowd, including your peers (future CEO/visionaries/tech co-founders), professors, researchers, guest speakers, etc.
The problem of course is, outside of the TOP 50 Universities and colleges, what is the value of attending the second tier schools other than sex, booze and cram sessions? Nothing. If you can't get into a Top 50 schools, I believe that the value proposition does not merit the tuition paid for the other schools out there.
1) a place where scientists and profesionals can get together with younger people interested in their fields and expertise.
2) a place where this young people can form groups with similar interests.
3) a curated plan for learning ("you will have an easier life if you study some physics before tackling power generators design").
4) access to resources and freedom to act on those resources in a meaningful way.
5) an exclusive certification based on merit that a person completed a carefully designed training and has a level of expertise in areas where if things fail people die.
If universities can't fulfill that rol, companies will (and are doing it, specially in the states).
In the US first year students are called Freshman, so in order to "bond"; You need stick in there for a couple of years; That will happen in Highschool, College, Work, Community, the In-Laws and anything else that matters in life.
Thank you for this post. I recently got into MIT and have been torn and confused over whether or not it is worth going. All these anti-college posts on HN were not helping but this post shared some good perspective.
Unless you also have the choice of going to Stanford (which has better weather and startup scene), go to MIT if you got in. If you can't afford it, or decide to do something else, do a voluntary withdrawal, even without paying for the first semester.
In my experience, MIT dropout is about as good as MIT graduate for some purposes; better for a few and worse for more, but overall preferable to never having gone to college.
I would probably say finishing a STEM degree at a top university is worthwhile even now if it can be done without too much difficulty. The only argument against it, assuming you enjoy school and would like to attend, is if you have another time limited opportunity (a side project taking off, acting career, etc) which is incompatible with school. Otherwise, I'd do it.
The useless college programs are in soft majors at mediocre schools with unmotivated and marginal students, who have better options in skilled trades, or at least taking some time off rather than treating school as a mandatory step in a scripted life.
I think if you get an opportunity to go to MIT you should not turn it down!
You will probably regret it later if you do.
MIT is the #1 college in the world for CS/Engineering type studies, it would probably be worth it for the contacts you make alone, not to mention that if you get through the course you will probably be headhunted based on the institution alone.
Yes. Go to college. The only reason that I'm doing the (amazing, fun) things I'm doing now is because I went to college and met some amazing people. People I would not have met in a tiny town in North Carolina. Things I would not have learned. Challenges I would not have been able to rise to.
I hadn't thought about this before, but I wonder how many people on the anti-college bandwagon had the benefit of starting in an environment that provided some of those opportunities that you (and, by chance, I) didn't know about or have access to in small NC towns.
For the record: I just barely managed to finish college because it was too structured for me, so I'm by no means suggesting college is for everybody. It's just that, for some starting points, even the lowest-ranked university can be a big step up.
Go. By the time you start at MIT I hope there is no doubt in your mind that it was a good decision. Have you ever noticed that when you look at the 'About Us' page on so many start ups in the valley, they are filled with MIT grads/drop outs?
Just attending MIT for a few years puts you ahead of the pack. Do it.
There's a really big difference between going somewhere good (and MIT is very, very, good) to do proper studies; and going somewhere mediocre to major in something like "Media Studies" or "communications".
I would love the chance to study in MIT.
If you want to make college into the best 4 years, try to experience it.
Work in scientific projects, try the ACM Programming contest, do some human classes. Live four years for your school. After that, you will be ready to pursuit the entrepreneurial dream.
Thanks for the replies everyone. My main concern was that their courses are extremely rigorous and thus would consume a huge portion of time, possibly not leaving enough time to work on awesome side projects. Even still, I'm sure there are other opportunities. Will write a blog post on this soon.
> My main concern was that their courses are extremely rigorous and thus would consume a huge portion of time, possibly not leaving enough time to work on awesome side projects.
You will have the rest of your life to work on your awesome side projects. Chances are forfeiting your next iphone app to study compiling to continuations will be a more fulfilling accomplishment in the long term.
You will indeed have little time for side projects, socializing, or sleep. Many graduates find it to be worth it, but not all - I sincerely regret the lost opportunity to spend some time exploring my interests without intense pressure, before entering the workforce.
Do you realize how enormously an MIT degree will help you to "adventure" in future? You will be able to take on many more "awesome projects" for the rest of your life if you know you have secure employability to fall back on when things are rough.
I'm back at school now after some time off and I'm happy to be back, though when things suck it's frustratingly easy to say "welp, just need to wait for the summer."
My goal for my remaining time at college is to learn things I cannot learn other places and take advantage of the opportunities I have. But after spending time in the valley, my emphasis has shifted from getting good grades (before my time off, I obsessed over this and was constantly anxious/depressed) to learning as much as I can - two goals which are, amusingly, not always aligned.
Is it just me or is there a trend of reactionary posts (or just submissions?) on the same topic? A few days ago it was Go (why Go is awesome, why I'll never use Go, why Go has its pros and cons) and now it's college's turn.
What you realize later in life is that the point of all these steps by and large is simply to get you to the next step.
Go to high school and your goal is to get to college. Once you get to college nobody cares about high school, your transcript or your permanent record anymore.
Go to college and your goal is to build a network of friends and colleagues and to get to the working world or to a grad school.
Get to that and nobody cares about college anymore. And so on.
Granted you learn things along the way but learning really seems to be secondary. The ability to read, an Internet connection and a Web browser is all you really need to learn (although there is obvious value in directed instruction, course structure, tutoring/mentoring, etc). The "learning" part of education is probably the most interesting at the moment what with Stanford (and others) offering courses online, the Khan Academy and so forth.
I dropped out of university on the first try. I went through several years of "you don't need a degree". While that might be technically true it hurt my career, I didn't have the same network of contacts that others did and (for a time at least) I didn't have the same theoretical background.
In the end I got a mediocre degree from a mediocre institution studying part-time for three reasons:
1. To put me in the pile of CVs "with degree" (the "without degree" pile more often than not just ends up in the circular file);
2. As an exercise in finishing something. This is actually important, particularly for programmers. Starting things is easy, finishing is hard. There is value of sticking with college for 3-4+ years both to yourself and as a demonstration to future employers; and
3. Visa reasons. It would be near-impossible for me now to work in the US if I hadn't gotten a degree.
People like to bring up Jobs, Gates and Zuck as examples of why you don't need a degree. There are two problems with that:
1. Statistically speaking, you aren't one of these; and
2. All of them went to college.
I can't stress (2) enough. They just didn't finish. Thing is, they found their "next thing" (well, Jobs' path was a little more roundabout).
Going to college in the US involves a more complicated decision process than elsewhere because of cost and--let's face it--elitism.
Going to Stanford, MIT or CMU as a programmer is no doubt valuable and I won't question the value of the education those august institutions provide but a huge part of the value is the name. It's social proof but it's also arguably elitism.
That same social proof comes into play when you have Google or Facebook on your CV.
Going to such places might leave you with staggering debt. In CS, at least for now, that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. But there are cheaper options (eg UT Austin seems to be a well-regarded state school for CS).
Anyway, the moral of the story is that college or not you should always be looking to the next step. To put it another way: college is a means to an end not an end in itself.
If your chosen field involves expensive or, worse, government-controlled equipment, college is an absolute must. As a nuclear engineering student, I got to learn using software and materials it would have been literally impossible for me to obtain otherwise.
"Is it just me or is there a trend of reactionary posts (or just submissions?) on the same topic? A few days ago it was Go (why Go is awesome, why I'll never use Go, why Go has its pros and cons) and now it's college's turn."
it's not just you. it's a signal/noise problem. I read HN through a filter site I made and I've thought about clustering these types of stories on my filter site, because I don't think they really deserve separate billing. it's kind of like the site wants to have trees of links, instead of one flat list.
anyway, the reason I call it a signal/noise problem (and of course this is just my opinion) is because often the reactionary posts feature very, very unimpressive reading, and are really only there to serve as a focal point for discussion, or maybe to serve as something to upvote, for people who disagreed with whatever the story is reacting to.
I can't really address your country's collegiate experience.
But I can address the people concerns. You will likely find that most students don't jibe with you. You have to find your own way. Along the way, you will find people you will be friends with, but they likely won't be entry-level students, and taking the gap years will have separated you fairly irrevocably from those who haven't.
If you want to go to college, go to college. Take from it all you can, even if you can get by with less. Do well and don't depend on the approval of others.
I'm not down on college -- I learned a hell of a lot there. I'm down on degrees.
(I just interviewed a person sporting a BA, a Masters, a PhD and a high-falutin' title who couldn't write a simple "find the length of a string" function. It was . . . I don't have words; I was absolutely floored).
Show me that you can design, write and debug code, and that you're not a jerk, and you're in business. That's all I care about.
I've got no disagreement with people who take a "gap year" or two before going to university. This works well because now you have a much better sense of what matters to you. That sense will only grow and sharpen as you spend time around a lot of different ideas and people.
Best wishes, although I'm afraid I don't know enough to suggest what institutions may work for you.
If it's Eur17 a semester, then I absolutely encourage you to go into literature/art. You won't be taking on crushing debt in tuition, and you can always go back and study something employable in the future if you so desire.
The problem only exists when spoiled American kids take on USD100k+ of debt to study an unemployable major.
I can't imagine trying to learn art and literature without formal higher education. Programming... maybe, but literature? no. But yeah, just because it's mandatory for literature doesn't mean it's mandatory for programming. However there's a distinction between programming and CS.
That's definitely the case for me. I'm going to move in with two friends I made from college, both are very smart, one is a programmer with ideas to form his own startup, working with him is so much more useful than any class from college.
"I want to join a team or even better, go to college and meet like minded folks"
That sounds like me 3 years ago. When I graduated High School I was looking forward to going to college so that I could meet people who, like me, were interested in building really good software and learning new things... for the sake of learning.
My first year in college I met many people who helped me connect. I am a core team member on the Cappuccino web framework, and that experience is what helped me connect. I thought everyone wanted to learn for the sake of learning, and wanted to build great things. It was enough to suffer through classes which I had little to no interest in, but were required for my "well rounded" education. As my year ended I failed calculus, but that didn't bother me much because I opened doors. I had a few internship offers because of the product I shipped and the work I did on Cappuccino. I turned them down so that I could continue my studies over the summer to catch up (from failing calculus the first time). A mistake I still regret.
I was fortunate that my first computer science professor was like me, interested in learning for the sake of learning, and he built some astonishing cool things. My second semester CS professor (at this time I only took one CS class a semester while I was fulfilling my general education requirements) was terrible. The class was called "Software Engineering" where he would lecture on perl, HTML, and CVS, on occasion he mentioned SVN. My freshman year I spent my nights (many times staying up until 3am in the morning) working on something Cappuccino related. In one night I could learned more than 6 weeks in that second CS class.
I was less enthusiastic my second year (last year), everyone I had met who had interesting and shared the same goals had graduated and moved off. We had discusses starting a business, but each of our situations put those plans on hold... Because I was ahead (because I skipped one CS class) I didn't have a single CS class my second year, since my general education classes were not yet fulfilled. That year was hell, but I worked on many side projects, became much more active in the Cappuccino community, etc. I ended up interning at Inkling in San Francisco last summer, and it was a great experience!
I'm finishing up my 3rd year now, and it's still painful. I spent my of my first semester building BugHub (http://bughubapp.com), and I expect that is what I'll be doing the rest of this semester too. The truth is, I still don't learn much from my CS classes, honestly I should be teaching some of them (I'm certainly more qualified to teach "Web Programming" than a man who worked on compilers at IBM 20 years ago.
What I learned from my nearly 3 years here is that most people don't share the same values I do. Most people are more interested in getting that piece of paper and getting a job that pays the bills with a little left over. University is preparing them to be QA testers. No one is prepared to take on real software engineering challenges. They can't even really explain what an object or class is, or what the difference is. I haven't found anyone else interesting in starting their own company. No one can show me something they're proud of, that they did on their own. It's been disappointing to say the least.
So why haven't I dropped out? College has given me the opportunity to spend time working on my own things. The time I have spent in college led to me learning a lot, but not because of school. It's because I still stay up until 3-4am in the morning working on my own things, trying to understand new stuff, and asking questions to some of the smartest people I know (online). Every opportunity I will have is because of what I've done on my own, not the piece of paper I'll get next year. I can't say that when I graduated high school I was ready to be thrown into the industry... College gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time learning on my own and as a result I'm much more prepared. The department here doesn't have a lot of offer me, but I'm fortunate to have grown up in the age of the internet where there are so many resources to learn if you really want it.
I can't say this will be your experience, but I was naive going into college... and your premis reminded me a lot of me.
>So why haven't I dropped out? College has given me the opportunity to spend time working on my own things. The time I have spent in college led to me learning a lot, but not because of school. It's because I still stay up until 3-4am in the morning working on my own things, trying to understand new stuff, and asking questions to some of the smartest people I know (online).
Then what are you paying for, exactly? Why don't you drop out and just not get a job for awhile while you do your self-study?
