5 ms·

Of course. In other countries it's affordable and going to college becomes a no-brainer.

R0b0t1 5y ago
But is it easy to get in? Most English speaking Europeans you can talk to (barring the UK, etc) are in the above average category for their country. A lot of people may only speak their mothertongue or another European language that is not English.
capableweb 5y ago
I don't think it's a no-brainer. You spend a lot of time in college, and it would be interesting to see how much information/learnings you could ingest on your own time, compared to what they would give you in college. Many people (but probably not everyone) would be better off not going to college at all, and start learning/working on their own, especially if they have specific interests instead of not knowing what they want to do.
- oneplane 5y ago
  In college you are not 'given' information/learnings, you actually have to do the work and selection to 'get' that yourself. At least, that is how it works here (EU). If you don't pro-actively do this, you simply won't succeed (and from a ROI perspective that would be a bad one). The big difference between 'in' college and 'outside' or 'on your own' is context; the facilities, culture and exchange of ideas available to you in a college setting are very different from anything else. Especially when to take the sandbox element in to account.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    There are also many fields in which receiving “expert” feedback is a substantial part of the learning process.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      And on top of that there is the difference between studied subjects and experienced subjects. There is no golden 'do this, get everything' path. Going to college or university doesn't mean there is nothing you need to learn in a work context. Same goes the other way: only learning things at work means you probably get a lot less abstract underpinnings and overarching context (or you might get none at all) which reduces understanding of your surroundings significantly. The first iterations of school (in the first one or or two decades of life) are mostly "learning how to deal with people", "learning how to learn", "learning within a context" and after all that you get to "learn how to make use of what you have learned" in the real world. The earlier you stop, the fewer tools you'll have for the rest of your life. There would be two avenues that are somewhat distinctive: academia which blends school-type context into work-type context at some point, and there is vocational training which reduces school-type context earlier and eliminates it before you're even "out of school". Neither are 'bad' or 'good', just different paths.
- nelgaard 5y ago
  Depends on how you calculate it. If had become say a plumber instead of going to university, had lived as cheap as a student with a plumber salary and invested the surplus 100 percent in the stock marked that would be a lot of money now many years later. I prefer not to calculate it.
- itronitron 5y ago
  I agree. I feel like there should be a credentialing system where you can 'test into' knowledge for specific course loads and however the person (at their own pace) arrives at that knowledge is considered secondary to whether they pass the test. It's sensible to require one or two years of in-person study but requiring the whole 4 years seems like a potential waste of time due to the differences in maturity, social development, and focus among college aged students.
TylerLives 5y ago
I went to a college in a developing country and I regret it. I didn't lose money, but I wasted a lot of time and didn't really learn much (or rather, I did learn things during college, but not because of it). The lectures were unbearably boring and I didn't socialize much. More than anything, I hate the fact that I was too much of a coward to drop out once I realized how miserable I was doing all the fake and pointless work that was assigned to me. I forgot to say, I studied computer science.
hibikir 5y ago
You'd be surprised. Take Spain: College is very cheap, but in 2014, the median student that graduated was 27... and that was with a plain degree. This also didn't mean that most of their college degrees were on any topic that helped their job prospects. If you spend most of your 20s working hard on a course of study that doesn't lead to a career that pays much better than minimum wage, going to college sure isn't a no-brainer. This isn't purely a matter of motivation, but of the quality of their school, their interest in teaching, and setting sensible exams. My US college had plenty of Spanish engineering students which had gotten nowhere in their Spanish college, and were doing very well under the US system. Nothing like seeing engineers now at NASA that were unable to pass a single class in their first year in Madrid. Salaries can also be quite different across borders. Studying computer science in the US isn't cheap, but the jobs available right when you are done are not paying anywhere near the same as those of the Spanish developer. You see American companies opening software shops in the least developed parts of Europe, and a big part of it is that you might be getting up to 5 developers for the price of one. I emigrated because I knew that the Spanish college route was far more dubious than a pretty average US college, even paying for the whole thing. So a no-brainer? Hardly. And the life path that makes sense in 2010 might not make all that much sense in 2030. Just like someone that became a mining engineer, specializing in coal, had a very different career if he made his choice in the 1950s, vs doing the same in 2005.
mcguire 5y ago
Not really. Many of those countries have lower proportion of college degrees than the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...) If cost isn't an issue, I wonder what prevents more from getting degrees?

But is it easy to get in? Most English speaking Europeans you can talk to (barring the UK, etc) are in the above average category for their country. A lot of people may only speak their mothertongue or another European language that is not English.

capableweb 5y ago

I don't think it's a no-brainer. You spend a lot of time in college, and it would be interesting to see how much information/learnings you could ingest on your own time, compared to what they would give you in college. Many people (but probably not everyone) would be better off not going to college at all, and start learning/working on their own, especially if they have specific interests instead of not knowing what they want to do.

oneplane 5y ago
In college you are not 'given' information/learnings, you actually have to do the work and selection to 'get' that yourself. At least, that is how it works here (EU). If you don't pro-actively do this, you simply won't succeed (and from a ROI perspective that would be a bad one). The big difference between 'in' college and 'outside' or 'on your own' is context; the facilities, culture and exchange of ideas available to you in a college setting are very different from anything else. Especially when to take the sandbox element in to account.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  There are also many fields in which receiving “expert” feedback is a substantial part of the learning process.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    And on top of that there is the difference between studied subjects and experienced subjects. There is no golden 'do this, get everything' path. Going to college or university doesn't mean there is nothing you need to learn in a work context. Same goes the other way: only learning things at work means you probably get a lot less abstract underpinnings and overarching context (or you might get none at all) which reduces understanding of your surroundings significantly. The first iterations of school (in the first one or or two decades of life) are mostly "learning how to deal with people", "learning how to learn", "learning within a context" and after all that you get to "learn how to make use of what you have learned" in the real world. The earlier you stop, the fewer tools you'll have for the rest of your life. There would be two avenues that are somewhat distinctive: academia which blends school-type context into work-type context at some point, and there is vocational training which reduces school-type context earlier and eliminates it before you're even "out of school". Neither are 'bad' or 'good', just different paths.
nelgaard 5y ago
Depends on how you calculate it. If had become say a plumber instead of going to university, had lived as cheap as a student with a plumber salary and invested the surplus 100 percent in the stock marked that would be a lot of money now many years later. I prefer not to calculate it.
itronitron 5y ago
I agree. I feel like there should be a credentialing system where you can 'test into' knowledge for specific course loads and however the person (at their own pace) arrives at that knowledge is considered secondary to whether they pass the test. It's sensible to require one or two years of in-person study but requiring the whole 4 years seems like a potential waste of time due to the differences in maturity, social development, and focus among college aged students.

TylerLives 5y ago

I went to a college in a developing country and I regret it. I didn't lose money, but I wasted a lot of time and didn't really learn much (or rather, I did learn things during college, but not because of it). The lectures were unbearably boring and I didn't socialize much. More than anything, I hate the fact that I was too much of a coward to drop out once I realized how miserable I was doing all the fake and pointless work that was assigned to me. I forgot to say, I studied computer science.

hibikir 5y ago

You'd be surprised. Take Spain: College is very cheap, but in 2014, the median student that graduated was 27... and that was with a plain degree. This also didn't mean that most of their college degrees were on any topic that helped their job prospects. If you spend most of your 20s working hard on a course of study that doesn't lead to a career that pays much better than minimum wage, going to college sure isn't a no-brainer. This isn't purely a matter of motivation, but of the quality of their school, their interest in teaching, and setting sensible exams. My US college had plenty of Spanish engineering students which had gotten nowhere in their Spanish college, and were doing very well under the US system. Nothing like seeing engineers now at NASA that were unable to pass a single class in their first year in Madrid. Salaries can also be quite different across borders. Studying computer science in the US isn't cheap, but the jobs available right when you are done are not paying anywhere near the same as those of the Spanish developer. You see American companies opening software shops in the least developed parts of Europe, and a big part of it is that you might be getting up to 5 developers for the price of one. I emigrated because I knew that the Spanish college route was far more dubious than a pretty average US college, even paying for the whole thing. So a no-brainer? Hardly. And the life path that makes sense in 2010 might not make all that much sense in 2030. Just like someone that became a mining engineer, specializing in coal, had a very different career if he made his choice in the 1950s, vs doing the same in 2005.

mcguire 5y ago

Not really. Many of those countries have lower proportion of college degrees than the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...) If cost isn't an issue, I wonder what prevents more from getting degrees?