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>But for most moderately smart people college is the best choice. I just don't think this is true anymore, given the financial burden of modern academic educat

>But for most moderately smart people college is the best choice. I just don't think this is true anymore, given the financial burden of modern academic education and the fact that they teach so little useful skills programming is increasingly a trade, and can definitely be self taught better than any college will teach it. the rest of the education may have other value but IMO not worth the time + money + opportunity cost

emodendroket 9y ago
The value of a college education isn't purely economic, but the salaries of graduates are still, in aggregate, higher than those of non-graduates.
- gr3yh47 9y ago
  I'd argue that the exonomic value is in the opposite direction. is the salary of a graduate higher than those of someone without a degree who has been in their career 4-5 years already? plus the huge cost of uni weighed against the 4-5 years worth of salary accrued during that time? i think this is trending towards that gap being smaller as a generation disillusioned with the value of college moves into upper management speaking from my experience only, and with regards to the US only as I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries
throwawayjava 9y ago
> programming is increasingly a trade, and can definitely be self taught better than any college will teach it. The "self-taught vs. university taught" distinction is disingenuous. Until we learn to program human brains, everyone is self-taught. Good instruction and a high-quality peer group definitely increases the rate and quality of learning. Some jobs are accessible to some people with a bit of self-guided learning (been there done that). But that's not a good model for everyone. And more importantly, not all programming jobs are accessible via this route. Lots of people can teach themselves web programming. Considerably fewer people can learn to build a safe self-driving car or sophisticated numerical analysis software. So here's my assertion: if you can learn to become a web developer without the help of a college education, then you can learn to build much cooler stuff with the help of a college education. Whether that matters to you, both in terms of fulfillment and in terms of (possibly low) salary differential, is entirely up to yo.
andrepd 9y ago
>given the financial burden of modern academic education In many countries they have figured out that equal opportunities in access to higher education are a crucial thing to have. That's why my M.Sc. cost me grand total of 5000 EUR over 5 years. >and the fact that they teach so little useful skills I wonder why you feel this way. Can you elaborate on that? Do you think university is obsolete?
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I'm not OP, but in my experience, university nowadays is less about learning how to think and more about memorizing for tests. The bar for passing tests is low too, and it selects more for persistence in study than competence in study. They don't even teach to be competitive anymore, because they don't want to hurt feelings.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    That's not my experience in the slightest. I imagine your experience will vary a lot depending on location and area of study. I would be wary of making blanket statements from your own (limited) experiences, though.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      I didn't make a blanket statement, that's why I said "In my experience." Even if just 10% of universities are like that nowadays, that would dilute the value of a degree pretty considerably.
  - hvidgaard 9y ago
    That would be lazy teachers. I enrolled university 11 years ago or so, and I almost exclusively had teachers that would stop me dead in the track during exam with "I'm convinced that you know all of this stuff very well. Let's talk about this <something related to the topic at hand>".
- gr3yh47 9y ago
  I'd be happy to elaborate. Only speaking from my experience in the US but many CS or IS graduates do not have the real world knowledge to excel in a job squarely in their field. They learn 90% of what they actually need on the job. My uni's CS degree required a ton of math that is irrelevant to 90+ % of development jobs, lots of language and liberal arts classes that are also useless in the field, etc, etc... at least here, uni is a total money grab. very expensive, not a whole lot of practical knowledge imparted.
zaarn 9y ago
Outside the US a college/university degree can be worthwhile, in Germany my yearly costs for Uni are about 400$, of which 50% are spent in the Uni's Mensa for Food. I think in general that if your country's government properly supports education you should go for a College/University/comparable path. Otherwise go for autodidact.

emodendroket 9y ago

The value of a college education isn't purely economic, but the salaries of graduates are still, in aggregate, higher than those of non-graduates.

gr3yh47 9y ago
I'd argue that the exonomic value is in the opposite direction. is the salary of a graduate higher than those of someone without a degree who has been in their career 4-5 years already? plus the huge cost of uni weighed against the 4-5 years worth of salary accrued during that time? i think this is trending towards that gap being smaller as a generation disillusioned with the value of college moves into upper management speaking from my experience only, and with regards to the US only as I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries

throwawayjava 9y ago

> programming is increasingly a trade, and can definitely be self taught better than any college will teach it. The "self-taught vs. university taught" distinction is disingenuous. Until we learn to program human brains, everyone is self-taught. Good instruction and a high-quality peer group definitely increases the rate and quality of learning. Some jobs are accessible to some people with a bit of self-guided learning (been there done that). But that's not a good model for everyone. And more importantly, not all programming jobs are accessible via this route. Lots of people can teach themselves web programming. Considerably fewer people can learn to build a safe self-driving car or sophisticated numerical analysis software. So here's my assertion: if you can learn to become a web developer without the help of a college education, then you can learn to build much cooler stuff with the help of a college education. Whether that matters to you, both in terms of fulfillment and in terms of (possibly low) salary differential, is entirely up to yo.

andrepd 9y ago

>given the financial burden of modern academic education In many countries they have figured out that equal opportunities in access to higher education are a crucial thing to have. That's why my M.Sc. cost me grand total of 5000 EUR over 5 years. >and the fact that they teach so little useful skills I wonder why you feel this way. Can you elaborate on that? Do you think university is obsolete?

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I'm not OP, but in my experience, university nowadays is less about learning how to think and more about memorizing for tests. The bar for passing tests is low too, and it selects more for persistence in study than competence in study. They don't even teach to be competitive anymore, because they don't want to hurt feelings.
- andrepd 9y ago
  That's not my experience in the slightest. I imagine your experience will vary a lot depending on location and area of study. I would be wary of making blanket statements from your own (limited) experiences, though.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    I didn't make a blanket statement, that's why I said "In my experience." Even if just 10% of universities are like that nowadays, that would dilute the value of a degree pretty considerably.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  That would be lazy teachers. I enrolled university 11 years ago or so, and I almost exclusively had teachers that would stop me dead in the track during exam with "I'm convinced that you know all of this stuff very well. Let's talk about this <something related to the topic at hand>".
gr3yh47 9y ago
I'd be happy to elaborate. Only speaking from my experience in the US but many CS or IS graduates do not have the real world knowledge to excel in a job squarely in their field. They learn 90% of what they actually need on the job. My uni's CS degree required a ton of math that is irrelevant to 90+ % of development jobs, lots of language and liberal arts classes that are also useless in the field, etc, etc... at least here, uni is a total money grab. very expensive, not a whole lot of practical knowledge imparted.

zaarn 9y ago

Outside the US a college/university degree can be worthwhile, in Germany my yearly costs for Uni are about 400$, of which 50% are spent in the Uni's Mensa for Food. I think in general that if your country's government properly supports education you should go for a College/University/comparable path. Otherwise go for autodidact.