7 ms·

Is college actually good at that sort of thing, or is it just better than staying at home? If I spent half my college tuition on networking, social clubs, confe

Is college actually good at that sort of thing, or is it just better than staying at home? If I spent half my college tuition on networking, social clubs, conferences, hobby groups, etc, I bet I could do a lot better than I did at my college campus.

cellular 6y ago
Dang! That is something I had not considered before! I think that would be a great strategy! Spending the money on hobby groups, conferences etc could be put on a resume! Now thinking of all kinds of options that would give better experience...it seems driving to these might be the bottleneck. But surely there are ones that can subject a student to different opinion/people etc without needing to commute. Heck even a good internship could replace dorm life, and would actually PAY the student.
netcan 6y ago
Theory and practice. In theory, you could take your college costs and spend them more wisely elsewhere. Internet age gurus like Peter Thiel, Seth Godin & others have been advocating this for 20 years. Want to learn business? Take $50k out of the $200k price tag of a fancy college and start a business with a few similarly minded people. Pay a seasoned business person to advise you. After 4 years, you will know much more about business. Same for software engineering, etc. Same for side-effects like networking horizon expansion and everything. In practice, all that money (whether parental savings to student loans) is tied up with college. The social capital which allows anyone to spend 4 years on abstract "betterment" is tied to college. The safety nets keeping you on course to graduate aren't there. It's theoretically possible, easy even. In practice, this level of determined heterodoxy is a 1-in-a-thousand thing. Very unlikely to be chosen and very unlikely to bee seen through by a 20-year old. People operate within structure. We are orders of magnitude less independent than we imagine.
- ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
  I don’t think 20 year olds avoid this path because they lack your insight, it’s probably more that most people can’t get $200k from their parents to start a business.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I think they mostly do lack that insight, but it's not their fault. They've been taught from a very young age what the "right" path to adulthood is. It's hard to overcome that programming, especially since (US) K-12 schools aren't exactly about teaching creative, independent thought. People who come away from K-12 schools with that kind of thing usually arrived at it outside school. (Also I think the parent meant that the 20-year-old would take $50k from their parents, not $200k. But agree that $50k is likely out of reach for most people in that situation as well.)
- kelnos 6y ago
  Yup, agreed. I figure most parents don't even have the $50k lying around to give their new HS graduate (they'd get it for college through loans and grants). Good luck getting a small business loan as an 18-year-old with no business experience. Savings vehicles for education like a 529 plan certainly won't let you take that money out to start a business. Life works this way because life works this way. Social structures exist to reinforce the status quo, and these are only changed incrementally, over a long period of time. Potential college-goers who want to jump the queue and do something radical right now, even if it's a much better thing, are going to have a hard time unless they have well-off parents who are willing to take a shot on them.
kritiko 6y ago
College takes a lot of the administrative burden off of that stuff - offering student groups funding, space to meet, administrative support, systems to adjudicate disputes, etc. If you think about yourself at 18... how likely would you have been to seek out social clubs, conferences, or hobby groups on your own?
zdragnar 6y ago
Since education loans are legally protected from bankruptcy, good luck getting the school of hard knocks financed. It is, I think, a great idea if you are self motivated, but butts up against current reality.

cellular 6y ago

Dang! That is something I had not considered before! I think that would be a great strategy! Spending the money on hobby groups, conferences etc could be put on a resume! Now thinking of all kinds of options that would give better experience...it seems driving to these might be the bottleneck. But surely there are ones that can subject a student to different opinion/people etc without needing to commute. Heck even a good internship could replace dorm life, and would actually PAY the student.

netcan 6y ago

Theory and practice. In theory, you could take your college costs and spend them more wisely elsewhere. Internet age gurus like Peter Thiel, Seth Godin & others have been advocating this for 20 years. Want to learn business? Take $50k out of the $200k price tag of a fancy college and start a business with a few similarly minded people. Pay a seasoned business person to advise you. After 4 years, you will know much more about business. Same for software engineering, etc. Same for side-effects like networking horizon expansion and everything. In practice, all that money (whether parental savings to student loans) is tied up with college. The social capital which allows anyone to spend 4 years on abstract "betterment" is tied to college. The safety nets keeping you on course to graduate aren't there. It's theoretically possible, easy even. In practice, this level of determined heterodoxy is a 1-in-a-thousand thing. Very unlikely to be chosen and very unlikely to bee seen through by a 20-year old. People operate within structure. We are orders of magnitude less independent than we imagine.

ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
I don’t think 20 year olds avoid this path because they lack your insight, it’s probably more that most people can’t get $200k from their parents to start a business.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I think they mostly do lack that insight, but it's not their fault. They've been taught from a very young age what the "right" path to adulthood is. It's hard to overcome that programming, especially since (US) K-12 schools aren't exactly about teaching creative, independent thought. People who come away from K-12 schools with that kind of thing usually arrived at it outside school. (Also I think the parent meant that the 20-year-old would take $50k from their parents, not $200k. But agree that $50k is likely out of reach for most people in that situation as well.)
kelnos 6y ago
Yup, agreed. I figure most parents don't even have the $50k lying around to give their new HS graduate (they'd get it for college through loans and grants). Good luck getting a small business loan as an 18-year-old with no business experience. Savings vehicles for education like a 529 plan certainly won't let you take that money out to start a business. Life works this way because life works this way. Social structures exist to reinforce the status quo, and these are only changed incrementally, over a long period of time. Potential college-goers who want to jump the queue and do something radical right now, even if it's a much better thing, are going to have a hard time unless they have well-off parents who are willing to take a shot on them.

kritiko 6y ago

College takes a lot of the administrative burden off of that stuff - offering student groups funding, space to meet, administrative support, systems to adjudicate disputes, etc. If you think about yourself at 18... how likely would you have been to seek out social clubs, conferences, or hobby groups on your own?

zdragnar 6y ago

Since education loans are legally protected from bankruptcy, good luck getting the school of hard knocks financed. It is, I think, a great idea if you are self motivated, but butts up against current reality.