3 ms·

I will admit that my engineering degree was fantastic. Learned math at a level that allows me to do pretty much anything. However, this isnt true for every eng

I will admit that my engineering degree was fantastic. Learned math at a level that allows me to do pretty much anything. However, this isnt true for every engineer, every degree, or every college. And- Did I really need to pay 40k to learn math really well? My engineering job + coworkers were significantly better than college as far as increasing my ability to be an engineer. Even one of the most valuable degrees, I'm starting to become skeptical of its value.

wallflower 8y ago
Yes, if you are good enough, you do not need a college degree. Good enough is somewhere between the skills of a skilled college graduate and someone like George Hotz, the hacker who jail broke the iPhone and read the latest AI/ML papers to start his own self-driving car project. For the rest of us, an engineering college degree signals that we made it through the accreditation gauntlet. The professional organizations control the accreditation. Medical school enrollment is strictly limited by the number of residency spots which are funded by the US government. The AMA controls the former, as it could easily expand the supply to lower the direct costs. An argument can be made that a MIT ChemE degree is more difficult to obtain than one from Cal State Poly. However, as long as each school is accredited by ABET, there is a baseline level of knowledge that each graduate of the ChemE program in any ABET-accredited school should obtain. Software engineering is a term I personally hate, as there is no way to engineer software like a bridge. No standards, no stable technology.
brianpgordon 8y ago
There are two different questions here: 1. "Does an education really need to cost so much?" 2. "Do I really need an education?" The answer to #1 I can't answer. I would be inclined to cut certain things like athletics and student perks, but university presidents are smart people and I don't pretend to be able to do their jobs of maximizing institutional reputation at minimum cost better than they can. A 3-year professional degree that eliminates all general educational requirements seems like a pretty damn obvious win though. The answer to #2 is, I think, yes for most software engineers. Of course there are innumerable examples of brilliant people who become titans without a formal education, but you're making it awfully hard on yourself. I wrote code all through my teenage years before going to college and easily felt things out intuitively, but... let's just say that if there's a version of me out there who dropped out of college after 2 years, I hope I wouldn't hire him/me. And, barring winning the startup jackpot or pivoting to management, the difference in lifetime earnings between someone who really has their shit together and someone who's bringing up Wikipedia at work to try to remember how linked lists work is so wide that the price of a good state school education screams "worth it" to me.
- inimino 8y ago
  > Of course there are innumerable examples of brilliant people who become titans without a formal education, but you're making it awfully hard on yourself. Barring the possibility of going back in time to try the experiment, how do you know it's not actually the path you took that's the hard one?
- inimino 8y ago
  > A 3-year professional degree that eliminates all general educational requirements seems like a pretty damn obvious win though. Eliminating the only part of a university education that's useful? We already have coding bootcamps and they don't take three years. If I had to choose between a person (with natural aptitude) who took this 3-year path you describe and the same person, but instead they took only the ~2 years of general education requirements, and spent zero minutes studying engineering in the classroom, I would hire the latter without hesitation.
  - brianpgordon 8y ago
    That's so crazy that I don't even know how to respond to that. How would that part of the university education be useful to a software engineer? And how would it be even more useful than actual CS classes? Is this the nebulous argument about how humanities education makes you a better-rounded person somehow? You have to be trolling, right? Math and CS education make you a better engineer in much more specific ways than learning military history or 18th century English literature or art history or any of the other geneds I had to take.
    - inimino 8y ago
      And this is how we get engineers that think "I don't need to understand economics or history or politics or society or my place in it, I'll just let the people running the company I work for worry about all that so I can focus on important things like optimizing this endpoint". I would prefer a hiring process that filters out that attitude. > humanities education makes you a better-rounded person somehow That's literally what university is for. It sounds like what you wanted was a trade school, and there's nothing wrong with wanting that, but there is still a reason why a university education is valued by some people.

wallflower 8y ago

Yes, if you are good enough, you do not need a college degree. Good enough is somewhere between the skills of a skilled college graduate and someone like George Hotz, the hacker who jail broke the iPhone and read the latest AI/ML papers to start his own self-driving car project. For the rest of us, an engineering college degree signals that we made it through the accreditation gauntlet. The professional organizations control the accreditation. Medical school enrollment is strictly limited by the number of residency spots which are funded by the US government. The AMA controls the former, as it could easily expand the supply to lower the direct costs. An argument can be made that a MIT ChemE degree is more difficult to obtain than one from Cal State Poly. However, as long as each school is accredited by ABET, there is a baseline level of knowledge that each graduate of the ChemE program in any ABET-accredited school should obtain. Software engineering is a term I personally hate, as there is no way to engineer software like a bridge. No standards, no stable technology.

brianpgordon 8y ago

There are two different questions here: 1. "Does an education really need to cost so much?" 2. "Do I really need an education?" The answer to #1 I can't answer. I would be inclined to cut certain things like athletics and student perks, but university presidents are smart people and I don't pretend to be able to do their jobs of maximizing institutional reputation at minimum cost better than they can. A 3-year professional degree that eliminates all general educational requirements seems like a pretty damn obvious win though. The answer to #2 is, I think, yes for most software engineers. Of course there are innumerable examples of brilliant people who become titans without a formal education, but you're making it awfully hard on yourself. I wrote code all through my teenage years before going to college and easily felt things out intuitively, but... let's just say that if there's a version of me out there who dropped out of college after 2 years, I hope I wouldn't hire him/me. And, barring winning the startup jackpot or pivoting to management, the difference in lifetime earnings between someone who really has their shit together and someone who's bringing up Wikipedia at work to try to remember how linked lists work is so wide that the price of a good state school education screams "worth it" to me.

inimino 8y ago
> Of course there are innumerable examples of brilliant people who become titans without a formal education, but you're making it awfully hard on yourself. Barring the possibility of going back in time to try the experiment, how do you know it's not actually the path you took that's the hard one?
inimino 8y ago
> A 3-year professional degree that eliminates all general educational requirements seems like a pretty damn obvious win though. Eliminating the only part of a university education that's useful? We already have coding bootcamps and they don't take three years. If I had to choose between a person (with natural aptitude) who took this 3-year path you describe and the same person, but instead they took only the ~2 years of general education requirements, and spent zero minutes studying engineering in the classroom, I would hire the latter without hesitation.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  That's so crazy that I don't even know how to respond to that. How would that part of the university education be useful to a software engineer? And how would it be even more useful than actual CS classes? Is this the nebulous argument about how humanities education makes you a better-rounded person somehow? You have to be trolling, right? Math and CS education make you a better engineer in much more specific ways than learning military history or 18th century English literature or art history or any of the other geneds I had to take.
  - inimino 8y ago
    And this is how we get engineers that think "I don't need to understand economics or history or politics or society or my place in it, I'll just let the people running the company I work for worry about all that so I can focus on important things like optimizing this endpoint". I would prefer a hiring process that filters out that attitude. > humanities education makes you a better-rounded person somehow That's literally what university is for. It sounds like what you wanted was a trade school, and there's nothing wrong with wanting that, but there is still a reason why a university education is valued by some people.