6 ms·

I think a lot of my peers have (for better or worse) a stronger aversion to debt and risk, having matured right after or during the last economic crisis. We've

• exabrial 10y ago
  I really think the problem is that people are unwilling to shop around for a cheaper college education. In the Midwest, I bought an affordable engineering education by starting at community colleges before going to a large university. I'm very successful in my career if that's the measure you want to use. If you are adamant about going to a university on the coasts, you'll pay out the nose.
  • lfowles 10y ago
    Figures (for 2016) from the midwest university I went to: 14 credit hours: $4206/semester in-state $11,159/semester out-of-state 14 credit hours of engineering classes (includes additional per-hour fees...): $5381/semester in-state $12,335/semester out-of-state [0] https://www.k-state.edu/admissions/finaid/ https://www.k-state.edu/admissions/finaid/
    • JoshTriplett 10y ago
      Figures (for 2016) from the community college I went to for my first two years: $1267/term in-state $2815/term out-of-state
      • daveguy 10y ago
        Damn. Sounds like the smartest students would go to community college first. The degree you get after transfer is the same regardless. You just have to make sure those credits transfer -- probably the biggest concern. Otherwise you're just paying a premium and repeating courses. Did yours transfer?
        • JoshTriplett 10y ago
          All of my credits transferred. I went to university in the same state as the community college, and the community college specifically had it as a goal that everything should transfer. I'd recommend talking to advisors at both the community college and your planned university to confirm. One other excellent property my community college (https://www.pcc.edu/ https://www.pcc.edu/) had: because they also catered to high-school-completion students, and students transferring in with gaps or inconsistencies in their knowledge, they had a placement exam for math and English as part of the application process. That exam could place you anywhere from "you need a few years of remedial classes" to "you can go directly to second-year classes".
        • IndianAstronaut 10y ago
          One program at my old high school let you get community college credits for the classes you took. It was a fantastic idea that let people start their careers early and come out with far less debt.
    • soylentcola 10y ago
      Similar for the one I went to on the east coast. State school, in-state rates. Around $10k or $11k each year although it was closer to $8-9k when I went. Either way, between working part time through high school I paid for the first year or so. Worked basic service-type jobs back home during summers (retail, restaurant, etc) to pay for the next year's rent and food budget. Worked very part-time during the year (like maybe 6 or 7 hours a week at the computer lab) for bullshit money to spend on stupid stuff like $4-a-head keg party cover charge on the weekends because I wasn't just confined to school and work. The rest was taken out in loans and after all was said and done, I probably owed around $25-30k in low-interest loans with an insanely low payment rate for the first year or so out of school. So yeah, I owed the equivalent of a decent new car and when I was still scraping by as a recent grad I had to make <$80/mo payments before moving up to the "full" minimum payment of <$120/mo. That at least allowed me to keep up with payments while getting settled but incurred no penalties when I started paying much more than minimum once I was stable. I guess my experience was that I financed the equivalent of a new car while gaining that much more each year in salary after a few years due to having that degree. Was it rough right out of school? Definitely. I had roommates for a good few years after graduation and never got to blow thousands on stuff like Spring Break or shopping trips. Still, I'm glad I didn't end up like so many people I've met who went to schools that cost 2-5x as much, owned a car, went on trips, and didn't start paying for any of it until after graduation.
  • slezakattack 10y ago
    Couldn't agree more. I went to school in South Dakota for next to nothing compared to other schools, got involved in my program, did internships every summer I could, and now working a job I love with next-to-no college debt. I've been out of school for a little over 4 years and plan on paying off the rest of my debt by end of year.
  • sotojuan 10y ago
    There's a stigma against community college in the US for high-achieving students. At least where I went to high school, it was where the kids who did okay/poorly in high school went to get a second chance in hopes of transferring to a university or at least have an associate's degree. If you were to tell the average high school student who's in the top ~10% of their class to go to CC, you'd get laughed at. Also, we're spoiled in programming and engineering in that we can go to almost any valid school and still get a job if we can build and ship software. In other careers, college or location choice really does matter! On a better note, where I went to high school most students (even top ones) went to in-state schools, but that's because Texas has pretty good public colleges (though last time I checked they're getting more expensive).
    • JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > There's a stigma against community college in the US for high-achieving students. > If you were to tell the average high school student who's in the top ~10% of their class to go to CC, you'd get laughed at. There shouldn't be any such stigma; it's a great path to follow. If it was the last degree you got, sure, a 2-year degree won't get you the results you want. But as the first 2 years of a B.S. or graduate degree, it's a completely sensible path. I went to community college for 2 years, graduated with an A.S., transfered into a full university as a junior, and then finished a B.S. and Ph.D. there. I can definitely vouch for that path, and never once has it mattered in the least where those first two years took place. > Also, we're spoiled in programming and engineering in that we can go to almost any valid school and still get a job if we can build and ship software. In other careers, college or location choice really does matter! True, careers like law or business seem to have a much larger problem with credentials.
      • chillacy 10y ago
        Part of the stigma is at least well deserving where I grew up, since if you had anything over a B average at my high school, the state schools would give you a full ride for all four years. Of course most people ended up paying a bunch of money to go to one of the UCs.
  • mattmanser 10y ago
    Honestly no offence meant, but you won't be very good in your connections. You won't know the right people, the alumni or professors or generally all the actually important people that will give you massive leg ups if you want to start a company. As for learning? Your peers won't challenge you, you'll be exposed to easier lessons, to easier concepts, you won't really get challenged at all. When I was keeping up with this stuff, in the UK the shit unis taught Java, the good ones Lisp or Python. The whole ethos is different. A friend of mine got a 1st (best degree in UK) from the 2nd tier University he went to. But he couldn't remotely handle complicated code written by our literally genius colleague (I've honestly never met someone so insanely good again in 15 years). He was not anywhere near 1st material in a real top-tier university. He would have been lucky to get a 2:2. I know someone who did the 2nd tier route and who is genuinely good. He, perhaps like you, is the exception, not the rule.
    • djtriptych 10y ago
      Genius coders make complicated concepts easier to wrangle, almost by definition. Don't know anything about your friend's skill level, but I did want to challenge that perception.
    • jasoncchild 10y ago
      It seems like the "connections" aspect is spot on, especially if you are considering founding a startup (and also seeking funding). That said I've certainly met and worked with engineers with degrees from prestigious institutions that were lacking in their skill set, particularly when it came to "real" field work.
    • DGAP 10y ago
      And to get into the right colleges you need to go to the right high schools, and to pay for the right high schools, you need the right parents. It's almost as if the west coast isn't as meritocratic as it likes to think, and is really just a mirror image of Wall Street...
    • nikdaheratik 10y ago
      You can meet those people if you move out to the coasts after college. It's a long freakin' way from Kansas to California and if your goal is to have as little tuition and/or debt as possible to begin with, you're pretty much forced to go into whatever state you grew up in the U.S. I'm from the same state, and I chose the four year traditional route and it worked for me since I had lots of scholarships. If I didn't have as many, I may have started at the Community College instead. Additionally, your point about 1st tier versus 2nd tier is kind of off when most of the time people go to community college to get their general ed. requirements out of the way and then transfer to the larger Uni for the specialized classes. If you're majoring in C.S. and you want to take Physics I,II, Intro level English, and programming I/II that's going to be nearly the same no matter which Uni you're at.
  • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    More generally, they're not being strategic about college. There's a lot of people who get a degree from a prestigious school because that's what's expected of them. The strategic way to use college to start a startup would be to independently learn how to slam out CRUD web-apps, go to Stanford for a single semester, meet literally everyone you can in the CS and business departments, then drop out. You could shop around for a cheaper education, but you'd pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time for a less useful product.
    • glangdale 10y ago
      Um, maybe I'm stuffy and old-fashioned but I suspect I would run a mile from someone who popped up for a "single semester" to "meet literally everyone they can in the CS and business departments". You would probably wind up with a Rolodex crammed with other busy little networkers and not much else.
      • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
        Yeah, I agree with you there - meeting people isn't the goal, just a thing you have to do to get what you actually want: building meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships. Starting that process with a bunch of 18 year old Stanford students is probably the best way to become a startup founder, and the easiest and cheapest way to jump-start that process is to go to Stanford for a semester (at least while you don't have the bona-fides that would let you succeed at a start-up anyways).
  • wsinks 10y ago
    This is what I wish I did. I didn't work hard enough and chose the 'affordable but still expensive' UC system.
• pavlov 10y ago
  If your college education can get you a $16k summer job, isn't the price of college almost inconsequential compared to the life-long opportunity it's clearly buying you?
  • huac 10y ago
    My point is more so that students feel like they need to take the corporate route, instead of pursuing a more entrepeneurial path. Especially given that corporate internships help alleviate tuition and other costs, at least compared to low/no wage startup internships (this obviously doesn't apply to internships at Uber, FB, etc.) And $16k after tax, housing, and food in NYC (Wall Street baby) isn't a ton.
    • exabrial 10y ago
      Move out of NYC. $16k is livable in other parts of the USA.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Right, but the original poster is talking about a banking job that you then leverage up to a higher wage on the next rung up. You're not getting that by working at Dairy Queen in BFE.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
      • shostack 10y ago
        A lot of people suggest moving somewhere less expensive. For banking and other industries where jobs very geo-centric, that just isn't realistic. Beyond that, I think the macro trend we are seeing that is in part causing the huge migration to cities is uncertainty with employment. The reality is it is easier to get a new job (let alone a good job) in a big metro with lots of businesses than it is in the middle of flyover country. For people burned by lack of employment, gainful employment, or secure employment, having a a couple companies within reasonable commuting distance is seen as a real risk since remote work is hardly common yet. In those cases, the high costs of city living are seen as the cost of upward mobility and more stable employment. Unfortunately, the net result we've been seeing with housing/rent cost increases, etc. is that this leads to a reduction in overall standard of living compared to say, the Baby Boomers. Bottom line, younger generations have the deck stacked against them in a lot of ways. Often times it is not "which is the better choice" but "which is the less worse choice."
• internaut 10y ago
  I agree with your synopsis. Wages are too deflated for good overall economic prospects. If I can criticize ourselves, it is with this: I think millennials are too risk-averse, not because the opportunities are out there in waiting, but because the job opportunities are so poor. There comes a point when you live in some degree of (relative) poverty at which not making a startup is dumber than making one. There seems to be two cohorts of entrepreneurs. Working class ones forced into it by desperation and upper middle class ones who see it being at worst a good contribution to their CV if they fail, with unlimited upside. The acqu-hire system attests to this as a valid strategy because paper certs have such limited signaling potential now that everybody has them. Honestly in either case it is a hard road. It is so much easier just to give up. Part of the reason I think people come here is the invigoration of seeing other minds at work.
  • huac 10y ago
    > upper middle class ones who see [entrepeneurship] being at worst a good contribution to their CV if they fail, with unlimited upside. Bridgewater told me, and others, that they love students who do things outside of traditional finance internships. 'Go travel the world! Go start a startup! Don't do wealth management!' The attitude feels so much like that New Yorker article about traveling the world with only a backpack, phone, and a trust fund [0]. It's not just a line on your CV - it's a great story to talk about in the interview. But the opportunity cost is very high, unless you're rich enough where that doesn't matter. [0]: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/why-i-quit-my-job-to-travel-the-world http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/why-i-quit-my-jo...