5 ms·

I know this might not be received well by the HN crowd, but I feel like the classes and networking are secondary, the main value of a reputable college is havin

I know this might not be received well by the HN crowd, but I feel like the classes and networking are secondary, the main value of a reputable college is having a reputable college you can put on your résumé.

enitihas 6y ago
I think that is an opinion very popular on HN, so don't worry about the reception.
swiley 6y ago
Yeah in the US that’s exactly it. Administrators for the sake of administrators everywhere.
nicolas_t 6y ago
I've heard that a lot but I did get a degree from a reputable college in my home country (one of the best in France for my subject matter), yet I've only worked outside of France for my entire professional life and pretty much no French colleges are well ranked on international rankings (mostly because the rankings are biased towards much bigger institutions). And, well, the fact that it is isn't ranked well on any of those international rankings has not been a problem for my carrier at all. I have rarely been asked where I went to university and I don't think that it's affected my carrier at all. However the fact that I have no student debt because tuition was pretty much free has been a boon for my professional life.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  I have the feeling like OPs reputation theory is self fulfilling in the US and a narrow effect that came up with those paid education thing they have over there. It's like that artificial value you get for your extra money. Like wearing the brand of cloth you bought on the outside of it for everybody to see.
- luckylion 6y ago
  It's different if you worked in France though, right? From what I understand, the grandes écoles are very similar. It's not so much that you'll get an education that's ten times better, but you'll have a degree from a school that says you've been selected for leadership.
  - nicolas_t 6y ago
    Yes, probably, I mean I come indeed from a Grande école but since I've never actually worked in France, it's never really been asked for. And the few times when ranking was important (visas for Japan and Hong Kong), the fact that it's not well ranked internationally means that I got no exta points. In the end, I do think that degrees matter less than what people think and that it's completely possible to have a good career without the school name or university name having much of an influence (obviously it's anecdotical and probably depends on the field). I do strongly believe that being saddled with lifelong student loans is probably more detrimental than the positive aspects of a degree in most cases (maybe with the exception of lawyers but the only those who can cope with the lifestyle)
    - luckylion 6y ago
      I absolutely agree that you can have a good career without having a degree (or a degree from the right school), but you will have a very tough time getting beyond a certain threshold. I understand it's very obvious in France for upper management and public/political higher positions that it's not merit-based. The same is true for most countries, with varying degrees of impact and obviousness. But if you're not going for that threshold, you'll likely not run into issues. And if you're in niche-careers, it's probably true as well.
    - eternalban 6y ago
      The fact remains that most educated people are aware of the French approach to higher education and the exacting filter applied for entrance and matriculation. As an example, in a previous job, I noted that the new French software engineer had come from INRIA and was a graduate of a Grand ecole. The fact that this resource went on to demonstrate well above average work and domain abilities was not a surprise to me. So note that some of us do pay attention even if it is not mentioned during recruitment.
- _n_b_ 6y ago
  Interestingly, though, it seems that in France, people place a lot of weight on which university you went to long after it becomes irrelevant... especially for the people who went to grandes écoles. I still don't understand how it matters that somebody, for example, want to les Mines 20 years after they've graduated. But I agree with you; I've worked in a lot of places, and in all of those except France, once you have real work experience, your university degree doesn't mean a whole lot for normal engineering jobs.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
This is also the main problem, because it suppresses any real competition. All the while these organisations are grading their own students we will continue to get a somewhat mediocre system.
echelon 6y ago
> having a reputable college you can put on your résumé. At what point will firms rank new grad candidates inversely proportional to the prestige of their university? Prestigious universities equate with more expensive candidates. Many positions probably don't demand skills beyond the ability to write mostly CRUD apps. The pedigree doesn't really matter in that case. All companies have these roles. Somebody needs to do the mundane work.
- throwawayoverhe 6y ago
  > At what point will firms rank new grad candidates inversely proportional to the prestige of their university? Never. > Prestigious universities equate with more expensive candidates. But that doesn't mean you rank those people lower. It means you offer them the job at the budgeted salary. If they don't accept the job offer at the salary range you've budgeted for the position, then you move on to the next candidate. This might make less sense if there's a strong opportunity cost (i.e., missing a candidate because they already accepted a job), but that's not typically the case for new grads.
bko 6y ago
Bryan Kaplan argues that the majority of the value of a reputable college is signaling. > Suppose your law firm wants a summer associate. A law student with a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford applies. What do you infer? The applicant is probably brilliant, diligent, and willing to tolerate serious boredom. If you’re looking for that kind of worker—and what employer isn’t?—you’ll make an offer, knowing full well that nothing the philosopher learned at Stanford will be relevant to this job. If the value of education was the information taught in the classes or the network, you should see a somewhat linear increase of value as you progress. For instance, after completing your second year out of four, you should receive ~50% of the college premium. > Most of the salary payoff for college comes from crossing the graduation finish line. Suppose you drop out after a year. You’ll receive a salary bump compared with someone who’s attended no college, but it won’t be anywhere near 25 percent of the salary premium you’d get for a four-year degree. Similarly, the premium for sophomore year is nowhere near 50 percent of the return on a bachelor’s degree, and the premium for junior year is nowhere near 75 percent of that return. Indeed, in the average study, senior year of college brings more than twice the pay increase of freshman, sophomore, and junior years combined. Unless colleges delay job training until the very end, signaling is practically the only explanation [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-c...
- supernova87a 6y ago
  This is very true! I believe (don't have a good reference) that companies in the past had more incentive and means to cultivate or train people on the job, and thus, a formal signal of education wasn't as important. (and until 1950s(?), wasn't as available to many) I seem to observe that now many companies generally want to pick the already-developed crop of people who fit the bill to a T, have had education or previous employment do the job of training / filtering who to consider, and not engage in the training part of it much any more. Maybe it's due to the increasing cost of hiring people that you must only take a chance on a sure bet, and that there is less and less appetite (financial return-wise) to spend money on training people who are just as likely to pick up and leave for another company.
  - 6y ago
gonzo41 6y ago
Before i had a degree, my father said it's really important etc because of all the things you'll learn. Now after he says it's just about making sure doors are open that would have otherwise been closed. I guess maybe i needed to do my studies under one set of assumptions to have the motivation. Whilst only finding out on the otherside that those years were really only spent to get me my first job. And now my degree doesn't matter.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  I would agree the door-opening effect is true for many walks of life but it doesn't apply to software engineering and similar disciplines. I'm a drop out; I studied economics and have been doing very technical work (low latency application development) for over 15 years now. Worked for UBS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, etc. No one ever asked me about my degree. They were all (rightfully) interested in what I can do for them. True passion for the job will carry you much further than a piece of paper from a uni.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    Did you have a hard time getting your foot in the door? After 15 years, most people do not care anymore about your education; but when getting that first job, unless you have an impressive portfolio (and even then...), that piece of paper is huge. With a recognised piece of paper, you can get much more easily get into a recognised company, which has a trickle down effect for the rest of your career.
    - bitcharmer 6y ago
      I was looking for my first job during the dotcom crisis and it took me about 18 months. I took a semi-programming job at slavery-level salary just to get my foot in. What really helped was the fact that I had spent 3 months as an unpaid intern at a reputable software house 2 years earlier. I remember my friends mocking me back than for being a looser and an idiot for "working for free". This sentiment (entitlement?) is even stronger among young people today. They refuse to acknowledge that when you come in with zero experience and nothing to offer and get free training - you are the real beneficiary.
yc-kraln 6y ago
I think it's almost exactly the opposite. No one cares what college I went to, but the network I built during my time at University is still paying dividends.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Top tier universities offer both. Proof that you can get in, and once you’re in, a network of others who also can get in.
supernova87a 6y ago
Well, it definitely serves a strong filtering mechanism to find people who have a certain level of probably-going-to-behave-in-ways-you-expect when you're trying to hire. Whether that leads to the most optimal outcome is not always clear, but it seems reliable enough (though boring) that many use it as a filter. We don't have great alternative mechanisms to find employable people otherwise, and given the current unpopularity of standardized tests / uniform measures of performance or skill, what can an employer do?
govg 6y ago
This is a pretty common opinion here on HN, and colleges regularly get criticized for being nothing but a brand name.
intended 6y ago
This is the popular view on HN. I take the opposite stance - being in person makes a huge difference, possibly one not appreciated by the demographics here. People continually reduce the experience to “sitting in a box and ingesting information. But a classroom is much more than that - it’s the ability to interact with other students, to deal with real world issues and practice even basic skills like asking questions. It’s chances to interact in larger groups. It’s resources which can’t be shared online at all (libraries, information terminals, printers.) There are also people who depend on interacting with people to process ideas. All of this modulated by the degree. If you are doing some courses, you very much depend on interacting with people - doing a negotiations module online is very different from an in person class to pick an example. And fundamentally- human brains on average are designed to work with people. Mine isn’t, and being at home and studying isn’t a bad deal- but i would cease being objective if I didn’t recognize that there are many ancillary and direct benefits to studying in college, and for some people in person studying is the only way they can achieve it. Finally I present to the people here Blooms 2 Sigma problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem People sorely sorely underestimate what “education” is actually about.
- Olreich 6y ago
  I don’t disagree with anything you said. I think it strongly argues for university being highly inefficient compared to optimal education strategies. University cohorts should probably be smaller, with smaller class sizes and more stringent entry requirements to work toward the ideal 1:1 student:teacher ratios. Sure it’s more expensive, but if you get 2 std deviations out of it, that’s huge. For certain gen ed classes, maybe have the whole cohort in a single class, not for lectures or exams, but for discussion and collaboration. Make those courses fully project based and assign them uniformly across degree boundaries. Right now, graduate level courses and prestigious institutions are the only ones even trying to offer a higher education. The majority of universities at this point are paper mills, rushing hundreds or thousands of students through programs without most of the benefits you described. It’s a system optimized for making money or university survival, rather than student achievement or societal benefit.
ekianjo 6y ago
i dont see why the two are mutually exclusive or something. You can both have a reasonable education in a college AND have it play a role as signaling as well, because nobody is going to check what you studied in details.
ashtonkem 6y ago
They’re not unrelated. Part of going to an elite school is the ability to network with older elite school members; this is literally what fraternities are for.
ThomPete 6y ago
You dont need to have that to get a great high paying job. Most jobs in the tech industry are talent based not merit based. There are some areas like doctor or experimental physics where physical presence makes a lot of sense. But most education can be found and consumed much better by thinking of the internet as your entire college and then work much more on self-motivation and curiosity which are the real secrets to educating yourself.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "...the main value of a reputable college is having a reputable college you can put on your résumé." That might be true for software developers but it's certainly not true for any other engineering field, medicine, most sciences, etc. that require labs or other equipment. The university I attended had its own research reactor on-site for its nuclear engineering program. It's not even really true for software developers at the top end of the spectrum. Sure, if you're entering a software career trajectory where your education is unnecessary (which is most of them these days), then, yes, going to an elite school is a waste. If you plan to be building OSes, programming languages, doing AI/ML, etc, then learning that stuff from people who know where the cutting edge is invaluable.
dahart 6y ago
Why do you feel like that, what evidence is there for your hypothesis in your personal life, or in statistics that you’re aware of? There’s a wide variety of viewpoints on HN, so I think it’s unnecessary to speculate on what other people think, but personally the thing that doesn’t sit that well for me is that you’ve stated an opinion with nothing at all to back it up. FWIW, having gone to both a not super reputable college (state school), and also a very reputable one, I can’t say that reputation is the “main” value, I might have benefitted from it but I wouldn’t even know. The math classes at the reputable school had much higher standards, they were harder and I learned more. I have some lifelong friends from both schools, but the group from the reputable school is generally much higher profile and further reach. I sold a business to someone I met through the reputable school. I also now work for someone I met through the state school.
munchbunny 6y ago
I highly disagree with this one. I have one of those brand name diplomas, but the piece of paper is largely irrelevant. Nobody has cared or even asked about it since maybe 3 years out of college. As a restrospective thought experiment, if you offered me that piece of paper in exchange for a student loan the size of my college education, I would turn it down. But if you offered me the 4-year experience I actually got for that same loan, without the brand name, I would take it in a heartbeat. (You can't actually separate the two since the brand name in part enables the college to implement the product.) Aside from actual academic knowledge like practice with low level OS and network concepts, here's what I got from those four years that I think made a concrete difference in my life and career: 1. The personal mentorship I got from a professor, who I met during a summer internship, but he was from my comp sci department. It was serendipitous that the two circles collided, but it was crucial, and, to the point, it was enabled by the college network. 2. Meeting people through friends in college who would become co-founders or connections into other jobs. 3. Taking very specific classes on soft skills, such as writing workshops. One in particular, which I took early in college, was like getting two in depth code reviews a week for twelve weeks, except it was for my writing. That course made me fluid and precise at writing. I still suck in comparison to many of my former classmates who write professionally, but it made me a stand-out effective communicator in engineering. In retrospect I would have paid 1/4th of a semester's tuition in a heartbeat for that course (took 4 courses that semester). 4. Being surrounded by people who weren't engineers, who were formidable doers and thinkers, about other fields, such as global health policy and politics. I still remember getting my ass handed to me in a dinnertime debate by someone who was obviously more knowledgeable and more thoughtful about public policy than I was. Getting intellectually smacked down by friends regularly taught me humility and appreciation for the value of expertise in other fields. 5. Spending four years in the company of driven people with high standards. For the people who embrace it, it rubs off on you the same way working on a strong team does. It demystifies high performers and teaches you that you can turn yourself into one. 6. Due to spending time around people who had money/power, you learn to not be (as) intimidated by those people. It's a crash course in walking and talking like an "elite" whether or not you are one.
izzydata 6y ago
I think it depends if you actually intend to learn something or not. College is really only what you make of it.
zjaffee 6y ago
The main value is extra curriculars being of a higher caliber at top colleges than at lower tier ones. Getting to engage with other very talented people building organizations and so on in a much more serious way matters. There's a reason why ivy league college newspapers are far more impactful than at lower tier schools.

enitihas 6y ago

I think that is an opinion very popular on HN, so don't worry about the reception.

swiley 6y ago

Yeah in the US that’s exactly it. Administrators for the sake of administrators everywhere.

nicolas_t 6y ago

I've heard that a lot but I did get a degree from a reputable college in my home country (one of the best in France for my subject matter), yet I've only worked outside of France for my entire professional life and pretty much no French colleges are well ranked on international rankings (mostly because the rankings are biased towards much bigger institutions). And, well, the fact that it is isn't ranked well on any of those international rankings has not been a problem for my carrier at all. I have rarely been asked where I went to university and I don't think that it's affected my carrier at all. However the fact that I have no student debt because tuition was pretty much free has been a boon for my professional life.

Krasnol 6y ago
I have the feeling like OPs reputation theory is self fulfilling in the US and a narrow effect that came up with those paid education thing they have over there. It's like that artificial value you get for your extra money. Like wearing the brand of cloth you bought on the outside of it for everybody to see.
luckylion 6y ago
It's different if you worked in France though, right? From what I understand, the grandes écoles are very similar. It's not so much that you'll get an education that's ten times better, but you'll have a degree from a school that says you've been selected for leadership.
- nicolas_t 6y ago
  Yes, probably, I mean I come indeed from a Grande école but since I've never actually worked in France, it's never really been asked for. And the few times when ranking was important (visas for Japan and Hong Kong), the fact that it's not well ranked internationally means that I got no exta points. In the end, I do think that degrees matter less than what people think and that it's completely possible to have a good career without the school name or university name having much of an influence (obviously it's anecdotical and probably depends on the field). I do strongly believe that being saddled with lifelong student loans is probably more detrimental than the positive aspects of a degree in most cases (maybe with the exception of lawyers but the only those who can cope with the lifestyle)
  - luckylion 6y ago
    I absolutely agree that you can have a good career without having a degree (or a degree from the right school), but you will have a very tough time getting beyond a certain threshold. I understand it's very obvious in France for upper management and public/political higher positions that it's not merit-based. The same is true for most countries, with varying degrees of impact and obviousness. But if you're not going for that threshold, you'll likely not run into issues. And if you're in niche-careers, it's probably true as well.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    The fact remains that most educated people are aware of the French approach to higher education and the exacting filter applied for entrance and matriculation. As an example, in a previous job, I noted that the new French software engineer had come from INRIA and was a graduate of a Grand ecole. The fact that this resource went on to demonstrate well above average work and domain abilities was not a surprise to me. So note that some of us do pay attention even if it is not mentioned during recruitment.
_n_b_ 6y ago
Interestingly, though, it seems that in France, people place a lot of weight on which university you went to long after it becomes irrelevant... especially for the people who went to grandes écoles. I still don't understand how it matters that somebody, for example, want to les Mines 20 years after they've graduated. But I agree with you; I've worked in a lot of places, and in all of those except France, once you have real work experience, your university degree doesn't mean a whole lot for normal engineering jobs.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

This is also the main problem, because it suppresses any real competition. All the while these organisations are grading their own students we will continue to get a somewhat mediocre system.

echelon 6y ago

> having a reputable college you can put on your résumé. At what point will firms rank new grad candidates inversely proportional to the prestige of their university? Prestigious universities equate with more expensive candidates. Many positions probably don't demand skills beyond the ability to write mostly CRUD apps. The pedigree doesn't really matter in that case. All companies have these roles. Somebody needs to do the mundane work.

throwawayoverhe 6y ago
> At what point will firms rank new grad candidates inversely proportional to the prestige of their university? Never. > Prestigious universities equate with more expensive candidates. But that doesn't mean you rank those people lower. It means you offer them the job at the budgeted salary. If they don't accept the job offer at the salary range you've budgeted for the position, then you move on to the next candidate. This might make less sense if there's a strong opportunity cost (i.e., missing a candidate because they already accepted a job), but that's not typically the case for new grads.

bko 6y ago

Bryan Kaplan argues that the majority of the value of a reputable college is signaling. > Suppose your law firm wants a summer associate. A law student with a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford applies. What do you infer? The applicant is probably brilliant, diligent, and willing to tolerate serious boredom. If you’re looking for that kind of worker—and what employer isn’t?—you’ll make an offer, knowing full well that nothing the philosopher learned at Stanford will be relevant to this job. If the value of education was the information taught in the classes or the network, you should see a somewhat linear increase of value as you progress. For instance, after completing your second year out of four, you should receive ~50% of the college premium. > Most of the salary payoff for college comes from crossing the graduation finish line. Suppose you drop out after a year. You’ll receive a salary bump compared with someone who’s attended no college, but it won’t be anywhere near 25 percent of the salary premium you’d get for a four-year degree. Similarly, the premium for sophomore year is nowhere near 50 percent of the return on a bachelor’s degree, and the premium for junior year is nowhere near 75 percent of that return. Indeed, in the average study, senior year of college brings more than twice the pay increase of freshman, sophomore, and junior years combined. Unless colleges delay job training until the very end, signaling is practically the only explanation [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-c...

supernova87a 6y ago
This is very true! I believe (don't have a good reference) that companies in the past had more incentive and means to cultivate or train people on the job, and thus, a formal signal of education wasn't as important. (and until 1950s(?), wasn't as available to many) I seem to observe that now many companies generally want to pick the already-developed crop of people who fit the bill to a T, have had education or previous employment do the job of training / filtering who to consider, and not engage in the training part of it much any more. Maybe it's due to the increasing cost of hiring people that you must only take a chance on a sure bet, and that there is less and less appetite (financial return-wise) to spend money on training people who are just as likely to pick up and leave for another company.
- 6y ago

gonzo41 6y ago

Before i had a degree, my father said it's really important etc because of all the things you'll learn. Now after he says it's just about making sure doors are open that would have otherwise been closed. I guess maybe i needed to do my studies under one set of assumptions to have the motivation. Whilst only finding out on the otherside that those years were really only spent to get me my first job. And now my degree doesn't matter.

bitcharmer 6y ago
I would agree the door-opening effect is true for many walks of life but it doesn't apply to software engineering and similar disciplines. I'm a drop out; I studied economics and have been doing very technical work (low latency application development) for over 15 years now. Worked for UBS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, etc. No one ever asked me about my degree. They were all (rightfully) interested in what I can do for them. True passion for the job will carry you much further than a piece of paper from a uni.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  Did you have a hard time getting your foot in the door? After 15 years, most people do not care anymore about your education; but when getting that first job, unless you have an impressive portfolio (and even then...), that piece of paper is huge. With a recognised piece of paper, you can get much more easily get into a recognised company, which has a trickle down effect for the rest of your career.
  - bitcharmer 6y ago
    I was looking for my first job during the dotcom crisis and it took me about 18 months. I took a semi-programming job at slavery-level salary just to get my foot in. What really helped was the fact that I had spent 3 months as an unpaid intern at a reputable software house 2 years earlier. I remember my friends mocking me back than for being a looser and an idiot for "working for free". This sentiment (entitlement?) is even stronger among young people today. They refuse to acknowledge that when you come in with zero experience and nothing to offer and get free training - you are the real beneficiary.

yc-kraln 6y ago

I think it's almost exactly the opposite. No one cares what college I went to, but the network I built during my time at University is still paying dividends.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Top tier universities offer both. Proof that you can get in, and once you’re in, a network of others who also can get in.

supernova87a 6y ago

Well, it definitely serves a strong filtering mechanism to find people who have a certain level of probably-going-to-behave-in-ways-you-expect when you're trying to hire. Whether that leads to the most optimal outcome is not always clear, but it seems reliable enough (though boring) that many use it as a filter. We don't have great alternative mechanisms to find employable people otherwise, and given the current unpopularity of standardized tests / uniform measures of performance or skill, what can an employer do?

govg 6y ago

This is a pretty common opinion here on HN, and colleges regularly get criticized for being nothing but a brand name.

intended 6y ago

This is the popular view on HN. I take the opposite stance - being in person makes a huge difference, possibly one not appreciated by the demographics here. People continually reduce the experience to “sitting in a box and ingesting information. But a classroom is much more than that - it’s the ability to interact with other students, to deal with real world issues and practice even basic skills like asking questions. It’s chances to interact in larger groups. It’s resources which can’t be shared online at all (libraries, information terminals, printers.) There are also people who depend on interacting with people to process ideas. All of this modulated by the degree. If you are doing some courses, you very much depend on interacting with people - doing a negotiations module online is very different from an in person class to pick an example. And fundamentally- human brains on average are designed to work with people. Mine isn’t, and being at home and studying isn’t a bad deal- but i would cease being objective if I didn’t recognize that there are many ancillary and direct benefits to studying in college, and for some people in person studying is the only way they can achieve it. Finally I present to the people here Blooms 2 Sigma problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem People sorely sorely underestimate what “education” is actually about.

Olreich 6y ago
I don’t disagree with anything you said. I think it strongly argues for university being highly inefficient compared to optimal education strategies. University cohorts should probably be smaller, with smaller class sizes and more stringent entry requirements to work toward the ideal 1:1 student:teacher ratios. Sure it’s more expensive, but if you get 2 std deviations out of it, that’s huge. For certain gen ed classes, maybe have the whole cohort in a single class, not for lectures or exams, but for discussion and collaboration. Make those courses fully project based and assign them uniformly across degree boundaries. Right now, graduate level courses and prestigious institutions are the only ones even trying to offer a higher education. The majority of universities at this point are paper mills, rushing hundreds or thousands of students through programs without most of the benefits you described. It’s a system optimized for making money or university survival, rather than student achievement or societal benefit.

ekianjo 6y ago

i dont see why the two are mutually exclusive or something. You can both have a reasonable education in a college AND have it play a role as signaling as well, because nobody is going to check what you studied in details.

ashtonkem 6y ago

They’re not unrelated. Part of going to an elite school is the ability to network with older elite school members; this is literally what fraternities are for.

ThomPete 6y ago

You dont need to have that to get a great high paying job. Most jobs in the tech industry are talent based not merit based. There are some areas like doctor or experimental physics where physical presence makes a lot of sense. But most education can be found and consumed much better by thinking of the internet as your entire college and then work much more on self-motivation and curiosity which are the real secrets to educating yourself.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "...the main value of a reputable college is having a reputable college you can put on your résumé." That might be true for software developers but it's certainly not true for any other engineering field, medicine, most sciences, etc. that require labs or other equipment. The university I attended had its own research reactor on-site for its nuclear engineering program. It's not even really true for software developers at the top end of the spectrum. Sure, if you're entering a software career trajectory where your education is unnecessary (which is most of them these days), then, yes, going to an elite school is a waste. If you plan to be building OSes, programming languages, doing AI/ML, etc, then learning that stuff from people who know where the cutting edge is invaluable.

dahart 6y ago

Why do you feel like that, what evidence is there for your hypothesis in your personal life, or in statistics that you’re aware of? There’s a wide variety of viewpoints on HN, so I think it’s unnecessary to speculate on what other people think, but personally the thing that doesn’t sit that well for me is that you’ve stated an opinion with nothing at all to back it up. FWIW, having gone to both a not super reputable college (state school), and also a very reputable one, I can’t say that reputation is the “main” value, I might have benefitted from it but I wouldn’t even know. The math classes at the reputable school had much higher standards, they were harder and I learned more. I have some lifelong friends from both schools, but the group from the reputable school is generally much higher profile and further reach. I sold a business to someone I met through the reputable school. I also now work for someone I met through the state school.

munchbunny 6y ago

I highly disagree with this one. I have one of those brand name diplomas, but the piece of paper is largely irrelevant. Nobody has cared or even asked about it since maybe 3 years out of college. As a restrospective thought experiment, if you offered me that piece of paper in exchange for a student loan the size of my college education, I would turn it down. But if you offered me the 4-year experience I actually got for that same loan, without the brand name, I would take it in a heartbeat. (You can't actually separate the two since the brand name in part enables the college to implement the product.) Aside from actual academic knowledge like practice with low level OS and network concepts, here's what I got from those four years that I think made a concrete difference in my life and career: 1. The personal mentorship I got from a professor, who I met during a summer internship, but he was from my comp sci department. It was serendipitous that the two circles collided, but it was crucial, and, to the point, it was enabled by the college network. 2. Meeting people through friends in college who would become co-founders or connections into other jobs. 3. Taking very specific classes on soft skills, such as writing workshops. One in particular, which I took early in college, was like getting two in depth code reviews a week for twelve weeks, except it was for my writing. That course made me fluid and precise at writing. I still suck in comparison to many of my former classmates who write professionally, but it made me a stand-out effective communicator in engineering. In retrospect I would have paid 1/4th of a semester's tuition in a heartbeat for that course (took 4 courses that semester). 4. Being surrounded by people who weren't engineers, who were formidable doers and thinkers, about other fields, such as global health policy and politics. I still remember getting my ass handed to me in a dinnertime debate by someone who was obviously more knowledgeable and more thoughtful about public policy than I was. Getting intellectually smacked down by friends regularly taught me humility and appreciation for the value of expertise in other fields. 5. Spending four years in the company of driven people with high standards. For the people who embrace it, it rubs off on you the same way working on a strong team does. It demystifies high performers and teaches you that you can turn yourself into one. 6. Due to spending time around people who had money/power, you learn to not be (as) intimidated by those people. It's a crash course in walking and talking like an "elite" whether or not you are one.

izzydata 6y ago

I think it depends if you actually intend to learn something or not. College is really only what you make of it.

zjaffee 6y ago

The main value is extra curriculars being of a higher caliber at top colleges than at lower tier ones. Getting to engage with other very talented people building organizations and so on in a much more serious way matters. There's a reason why ivy league college newspapers are far more impactful than at lower tier schools.