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Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but

Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little longer because of the time spent in HR, but ultimately he ended up with the same skill set I did between the 9 weeks of intensive study combined with on the job experience. Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college.

f6v 5y ago
> Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields Out of interest, what are other fields besides IT?
Frost1x 5y ago
>Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. While I agree with your core sentiment, my opinion is that this is a symptom of a cultural/societal problem and not one of the schools. Modern Universities are certainly ripe with problems (largely driven by adopting business structures), including generally poor quality courses and curriculum within them, but I think you've identified a larger societal problem we have. Why is it that broad education which is generally, at the very least in my opinion, clearly valuable yet so lowly valued in society? It's my opinion that we have institutional structures that, given a lack of opportunities, value specialized and specific knowledge over general knowledge. Meanwhile, if you have the capability to escape these institutional shackles, general knowledge becomes far more valuable. On the labor side, labor markets are all about jobs and specialized roles with efficient production from that role. On the capital side, you need more general knowledge to see, connect, and sieze opportunities. It seems to me that most lack enough genuine realizable opportunity where general knowledge becomes valuable (say, seeking entrepreneurship) and in such a set of constraints, it makes complete sense why people specialize and chase demand of specialization because it's their most optimal strategy for financial success. I work in R&D in startup-esk environments and my general knowledge is fairly well valued, however even here leadership sometimes fail to see how some book or article I read years ago, course I took, project I worked on years ago, etc. was critical to making the connection that made this research thing possible. They value the general subset of knowledge I have that made their thing possible (oh boy you know A, B, and C and those saved us!!!), never mind the hydrology work I've done, it's irrelevant (D, or so they think, even though I may draw on concepts from such domains opaquely) or perhaps hours of video gaming (E, which lead to a game theoretic intuition about approaching an underlying problem). That knowledge was only appreciated after the fact because it made someone a pile of money or positioned a large contract. I remember hating taking geology in college because "I'd never use it," then I did a lot of applied science and R&D in the fossil fuels industry and suddenly a lot of "silly" things I did in geology gave me a foundation to jump from and to build upon. That silly geology course made me boatloads of money in retrospect. Throughout my career I always like to look back when I have a problem and say "ah ha, I sure am glad I studied or read about X years ago, that's one less thing I need to internalize now to do this thing." I'm always surprised how much old general knowledge I draw upon for new problems and how valuable they truly are.
paulpauper 5y ago
It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college. The evidence suggests that bootcamp grads struggle at finding good jobs, and also bootcamps charge a lot up-front, whereas collages have more aid and other programs to defer payment.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  From what I can see, new graduates also struggle to find good jobs. And while they may require more upfront, the actual costs still pale in comparison to college tuition and fees. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a decent option when compared to going to college for 4 years, going tens of thousands of dollars into debt, all to get an education with a lot of material that is fairly irrelevant to a career, while not having much better job prospects, particularly after getting the first job in the field.
feoren 5y ago
It may seem right now like someone who did a 9-week bootcamp is in the same place as you, but the differences will start to show up after a few years. I have degrees in both CS and Math, and I often say that I got the most benefit from my CS degree in the first ~5 years of my career, and from my Math degree since then. The tech your buddy learned in bootcamp will get stale and he'll have to start over; meanwhile your deeper level of knowledge will help you contribute to the development of the next era of whatever you're working on. This is assuming other factors are roughly equal; of course if your buddy spends more time on self-learning than you, this might not come true.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  I graduated 10 years ago, and I don't feel like my degree benefits me much other than marginally in reputation. I learned more practical skills from free online classes and tutorials than I did from my entire university program, and I can think of maybe a handful of times I've thought about complexity analysis. But I've also entirely avoided whiteboard interviews, so perhaps myself and prospective employers have selected for my weakness in academic computer science concepts.

f6v 5y ago

> Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields Out of interest, what are other fields besides IT?

Frost1x 5y ago

>Meanwhile I got a broader education, but the majority of it isn't very relevant on a day to day basis, if ever. While I agree with your core sentiment, my opinion is that this is a symptom of a cultural/societal problem and not one of the schools. Modern Universities are certainly ripe with problems (largely driven by adopting business structures), including generally poor quality courses and curriculum within them, but I think you've identified a larger societal problem we have. Why is it that broad education which is generally, at the very least in my opinion, clearly valuable yet so lowly valued in society? It's my opinion that we have institutional structures that, given a lack of opportunities, value specialized and specific knowledge over general knowledge. Meanwhile, if you have the capability to escape these institutional shackles, general knowledge becomes far more valuable. On the labor side, labor markets are all about jobs and specialized roles with efficient production from that role. On the capital side, you need more general knowledge to see, connect, and sieze opportunities. It seems to me that most lack enough genuine realizable opportunity where general knowledge becomes valuable (say, seeking entrepreneurship) and in such a set of constraints, it makes complete sense why people specialize and chase demand of specialization because it's their most optimal strategy for financial success. I work in R&D in startup-esk environments and my general knowledge is fairly well valued, however even here leadership sometimes fail to see how some book or article I read years ago, course I took, project I worked on years ago, etc. was critical to making the connection that made this research thing possible. They value the general subset of knowledge I have that made their thing possible (oh boy you know A, B, and C and those saved us!!!), never mind the hydrology work I've done, it's irrelevant (D, or so they think, even though I may draw on concepts from such domains opaquely) or perhaps hours of video gaming (E, which lead to a game theoretic intuition about approaching an underlying problem). That knowledge was only appreciated after the fact because it made someone a pile of money or positioned a large contract. I remember hating taking geology in college because "I'd never use it," then I did a lot of applied science and R&D in the fossil fuels industry and suddenly a lot of "silly" things I did in geology gave me a foundation to jump from and to build upon. That silly geology course made me boatloads of money in retrospect. Throughout my career I always like to look back when I have a problem and say "ah ha, I sure am glad I studied or read about X years ago, that's one less thing I need to internalize now to do this thing." I'm always surprised how much old general knowledge I draw upon for new problems and how valuable they truly are.

paulpauper 5y ago

It's a single anecdote, but between online resources and alternative training programs, it seems harder to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on college. The evidence suggests that bootcamp grads struggle at finding good jobs, and also bootcamps charge a lot up-front, whereas collages have more aid and other programs to defer payment.

bart_spoon 5y ago
From what I can see, new graduates also struggle to find good jobs. And while they may require more upfront, the actual costs still pale in comparison to college tuition and fees. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a decent option when compared to going to college for 4 years, going tens of thousands of dollars into debt, all to get an education with a lot of material that is fairly irrelevant to a career, while not having much better job prospects, particularly after getting the first job in the field.

feoren 5y ago

It may seem right now like someone who did a 9-week bootcamp is in the same place as you, but the differences will start to show up after a few years. I have degrees in both CS and Math, and I often say that I got the most benefit from my CS degree in the first ~5 years of my career, and from my Math degree since then. The tech your buddy learned in bootcamp will get stale and he'll have to start over; meanwhile your deeper level of knowledge will help you contribute to the development of the next era of whatever you're working on. This is assuming other factors are roughly equal; of course if your buddy spends more time on self-learning than you, this might not come true.

pcthrowaway 5y ago
I graduated 10 years ago, and I don't feel like my degree benefits me much other than marginally in reputation. I learned more practical skills from free online classes and tutorials than I did from my entire university program, and I can think of maybe a handful of times I've thought about complexity analysis. But I've also entirely avoided whiteboard interviews, so perhaps myself and prospective employers have selected for my weakness in academic computer science concepts.