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I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing or that people "copy and paste" the assignments. Sure it may be possible, but what prevents peop

I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing or that people "copy and paste" the assignments. Sure it may be possible, but what prevents people from copying and pasting public git repos? Either way, this whole focus on "portfolios are everything and credentials are meaningless" spits in the face of all the work I did to get my university education. And it didn't involve "copying assignments". And you come out with one hell of a portfolio if you take your education seriously. I mean I don't think self-educated people are without merit. I happen to think they're really important. But I only ever see them rag on higher education, despite them having "never been there". Just another example of wunderkin super genius knows all because he was able to follow a non-standard path and make it. Glad he was smart enough to become a Google employee. But I question whether he should be giving advice on paths to get there when there's always many paths to a position. And especially after reading his brief comments on how credentials imply you're a liar.

ynx 7y ago
yeah, as someone who had a partial education, I totally get the value of a degree, so whenever someone says "higher education is useless" I read it as "However successful I am now, I wasn't the kind of person who would succeed in school then"
- randomdata 7y ago
  Whenever I hear someone say "higher education is useless" I hear it in reference to the "common wisdom" that higher education increases incomes. In which case they are absolutely correct. Higher education is useless in achieving that. Incomes have held stagnant for many decades, even as more and more of the population attain higher levels of scholastic achievement. Mathematically, incomes cannot not remain stagnant if more money is earned as a result of attaining higher education. I'm not sure I have heard anyone claim that "higher education is useless" in general. Education is never useless in general.
  - jshowa3 7y ago
    Statistically, higher education does increase incomes when factoring in multiple disciplines. The data is pretty clear on this.
    - randomdata 7y ago
      A contradiction! Incomes have not increased if incomes are stagnant, and the data is quite clear that incomes are stagnant. How do we resolve this? Perhaps you are confusing increased income with being higher up on the income ladder? It is true that, statistically, those with higher education do find themselves higher up on the income ladder. They are not making more than they did before, when they did not have higher education, however. Incomes are stagnant. All we're really observing there is the fact that people range from more to less able, from geniuses who seemingly can do anything to those who have crippling disabilities. At one end of the spectrum you have the people who do well in school and also the workplace due to their natural ability, and at the other, those who struggle in everything they do, be it school or the workplace because of their disabilities. And then everyone else somewhere in between. Statistically, the more able will find themselves higher up on the income ladder, and able to go further in school, thanks to being more able.
      - jshowa3 7y ago
        An increase income range is an increase in income. Most companies do not hire high school students or drop outs for more than minimum wage. How you can reconcile a higher educated person being higher up the income ladder, but not making more than what they made working minimum wage at a lower education level, eludes me. What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity. Meaning salaries have not changed all that much for about 2 - 3 decades through raises despite high productivity.
        randomdata 7y ago
        > An increase income range is an increase in income. I think I see the issue here. I am talking about the population as a whole, you are talking about an individual. It is true that over time individuals tend to move up the income ladder. And that more capable people move higher up the ladder thanks to being more capable, free of disability that hinders their achievement. However, the steps of the ladder have remained unchanged over decades. Making more than someone else is not the same as making more than you otherwise could have. If we break that ladder up into percentiles, the person at the top of, say, the 70th percentile made x of number dollars in 1970 and the person at the top of the 70th percentile still makes x number of dollars today, in real dollars. In 1970 that person did not have an education above high school. Today that person does. Despite promises, their income did not increase with increased educational attainment. Incomes are stagnant. There was no advantage to gaining that higher education with respect to income. The person at the top of the 70th percentile, who got there because of the abilities and constraints they were born with, would have ended up there regardless. > What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity. What stagnant income means is that incomes are literally not changing, relative to inflation. On average, if you made $1 last year, you will make $1.02 this year, assuming a 2% inflation rate. A real increase of $0; stagnant. To put it another way, incomes, in nominal dollars, are increasing at the same rate as inflation.
JDiculous 7y ago
> I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing Then actually pay attention to the arguments they're making instead of talking about how offended you are because it goes against your self-interest as a degree holder. It's not as if the people bashing modern education are some kind of elusive minority. I've got a master's degree and I've always though our education system is stupid, and at least in the U.S. not unlike a giant pyramid scheme given the cost of tuition these days. Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself for free on the internet.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself for free on the internet. I don't know who "you" is (perhaps you in particular are very gifted) or what you personally learned in college, but on my end in college I specifically took particular classes to learn topics that I had previously tried and failed to learn on my own, so, if it's meant to be generic, I'm pretty confident your claim is false.
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    > ...or what you personally learned in college I went to a bad No-Name University for undergraduate and then Top Tier University for phd school, so I have an unusually representative view here. I do agree that, for CS, the no-name university was... bad. Fortunately, I realized this early and did a lot of self-study. I probably learned more reading taocp and going through MIT open courseware courses in the library during the evenings than I learned in my actual undergraduate courses. The mathematics courses, even at No Name, definitely provided me with a better education than I could have ever gotten on my own. I'm pretty bad at math, it was my worst subject in high school. So I double-majored in it during undergraduate. This dovetails with your advice to use university as a time to learn things you already tried and failed to learn on your own, or which you otherwise know will be difficult to learn on your own. The CS education that undergraduates get at Top Tier University is far better than what I got, even though I worked through that Top Tier University's online courseware/lecture notes/exercises during undergraduate on my own. My hot take: college is always worth it, but only if you intentionally invest in "leveling-up" past your previous potential. That will happen almost by default at Top Tier unless you're a genius (...but you'll pay a lot for it). But not if you're going to university at No Name. So, in that case, students should definitely a) minor or even double-major in something they're not good at, and b) heavily supplement their CS courses during evenings/weekends. Also, this is all highly specific to very self-motivated learners -- the sort for whom "self-taught" is a reasonable route. I'm one of those people. Over time, I've realized that we're a very small minority. Our perceptions of what others are capable of learning on their own, and prescriptions for how others should learn, are typically quite warped. Most people probably do need something like a 4 year college degree to become a competent programmer.
deleted 7y ago
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ynx 7y ago

yeah, as someone who had a partial education, I totally get the value of a degree, so whenever someone says "higher education is useless" I read it as "However successful I am now, I wasn't the kind of person who would succeed in school then"

randomdata 7y ago
Whenever I hear someone say "higher education is useless" I hear it in reference to the "common wisdom" that higher education increases incomes. In which case they are absolutely correct. Higher education is useless in achieving that. Incomes have held stagnant for many decades, even as more and more of the population attain higher levels of scholastic achievement. Mathematically, incomes cannot not remain stagnant if more money is earned as a result of attaining higher education. I'm not sure I have heard anyone claim that "higher education is useless" in general. Education is never useless in general.
- jshowa3 7y ago
  Statistically, higher education does increase incomes when factoring in multiple disciplines. The data is pretty clear on this.
  - randomdata 7y ago
    A contradiction! Incomes have not increased if incomes are stagnant, and the data is quite clear that incomes are stagnant. How do we resolve this? Perhaps you are confusing increased income with being higher up on the income ladder? It is true that, statistically, those with higher education do find themselves higher up on the income ladder. They are not making more than they did before, when they did not have higher education, however. Incomes are stagnant. All we're really observing there is the fact that people range from more to less able, from geniuses who seemingly can do anything to those who have crippling disabilities. At one end of the spectrum you have the people who do well in school and also the workplace due to their natural ability, and at the other, those who struggle in everything they do, be it school or the workplace because of their disabilities. And then everyone else somewhere in between. Statistically, the more able will find themselves higher up on the income ladder, and able to go further in school, thanks to being more able.
    - jshowa3 7y ago
      An increase income range is an increase in income. Most companies do not hire high school students or drop outs for more than minimum wage. How you can reconcile a higher educated person being higher up the income ladder, but not making more than what they made working minimum wage at a lower education level, eludes me. What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity. Meaning salaries have not changed all that much for about 2 - 3 decades through raises despite high productivity.
      - randomdata 7y ago
        > An increase income range is an increase in income. I think I see the issue here. I am talking about the population as a whole, you are talking about an individual. It is true that over time individuals tend to move up the income ladder. And that more capable people move higher up the ladder thanks to being more capable, free of disability that hinders their achievement. However, the steps of the ladder have remained unchanged over decades. Making more than someone else is not the same as making more than you otherwise could have. If we break that ladder up into percentiles, the person at the top of, say, the 70th percentile made x of number dollars in 1970 and the person at the top of the 70th percentile still makes x number of dollars today, in real dollars. In 1970 that person did not have an education above high school. Today that person does. Despite promises, their income did not increase with increased educational attainment. Incomes are stagnant. There was no advantage to gaining that higher education with respect to income. The person at the top of the 70th percentile, who got there because of the abilities and constraints they were born with, would have ended up there regardless. > What stagnant income means is, they aren't making more relative to their productivity. What stagnant income means is that incomes are literally not changing, relative to inflation. On average, if you made $1 last year, you will make $1.02 this year, assuming a 2% inflation rate. A real increase of $0; stagnant. To put it another way, incomes, in nominal dollars, are increasing at the same rate as inflation.

JDiculous 7y ago

> I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing Then actually pay attention to the arguments they're making instead of talking about how offended you are because it goes against your self-interest as a degree holder. It's not as if the people bashing modern education are some kind of elusive minority. I've got a master's degree and I've always though our education system is stupid, and at least in the U.S. not unlike a giant pyramid scheme given the cost of tuition these days. Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself for free on the internet.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself for free on the internet. I don't know who "you" is (perhaps you in particular are very gifted) or what you personally learned in college, but on my end in college I specifically took particular classes to learn topics that I had previously tried and failed to learn on my own, so, if it's meant to be generic, I'm pretty confident your claim is false.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  > ...or what you personally learned in college I went to a bad No-Name University for undergraduate and then Top Tier University for phd school, so I have an unusually representative view here. I do agree that, for CS, the no-name university was... bad. Fortunately, I realized this early and did a lot of self-study. I probably learned more reading taocp and going through MIT open courseware courses in the library during the evenings than I learned in my actual undergraduate courses. The mathematics courses, even at No Name, definitely provided me with a better education than I could have ever gotten on my own. I'm pretty bad at math, it was my worst subject in high school. So I double-majored in it during undergraduate. This dovetails with your advice to use university as a time to learn things you already tried and failed to learn on your own, or which you otherwise know will be difficult to learn on your own. The CS education that undergraduates get at Top Tier University is far better than what I got, even though I worked through that Top Tier University's online courseware/lecture notes/exercises during undergraduate on my own. My hot take: college is always worth it, but only if you intentionally invest in "leveling-up" past your previous potential. That will happen almost by default at Top Tier unless you're a genius (...but you'll pay a lot for it). But not if you're going to university at No Name. So, in that case, students should definitely a) minor or even double-major in something they're not good at, and b) heavily supplement their CS courses during evenings/weekends. Also, this is all highly specific to very self-motivated learners -- the sort for whom "self-taught" is a reasonable route. I'm one of those people. Over time, I've realized that we're a very small minority. Our perceptions of what others are capable of learning on their own, and prescriptions for how others should learn, are typically quite warped. Most people probably do need something like a 4 year college degree to become a competent programmer.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]