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This is just silly. I started reading this article with a couple biases in mind: I can't ever remember reading anything by Wadhwa and thinking anything other th
by byrneseyeview 15y ago
This is just silly. I started reading this article with a couple biases in mind: I can't ever remember reading anything by Wadhwa and thinking anything other than "That is the conventional wisdom, yes," and Thiel is correct that college is a bubble (http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/higher-education-the-next-big-bad-bubble/ http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/higher-education-the-next-bi...)
But Wadhwa's advice is just ludicrous. If it's 2005, and you claim that housing is a bubble, the proper response isn't "Go put your money where your mouth is: start manufacturing mobile homes, or tents, or something." It's a non-sequitur: people are overpaying for education because they treat it as an asset: if you double the sticker price, buyers react by assuming that they're buying twice as much of it.
The right responses to a bubble: short it, or at least structure your life so you're not dependent on it. In real estate, that means renting rather than buying; in higher ed, that means dropping out and investing your efforts into tasks that better measure your underlying talents, and don't cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It's just a weird defense of the status quo: nowhere does Wadhwa ask questions like: have we overestimated how many people should go to college? Are we even willing to tell people that they'd be happier (and society would be better off) if they became electricians or plumbers? It seems like Thiel's framework is flexible enough to imagine a country where 50% of the population earns a masters, or where only 5% pursue a BA. Whereas Wadhwa's framework is robust enough to imagine a swing of half a standard deviation away from whatever the status quo is.
Full disclosure: it's a little early to tell, but I'm fairly successful; I dropped out of college my freshman year.
- fleitz 15y agoCongrats on running against the herd. If you keep running against it you'll be wildly successful. I went to college for a semester after I already had a job programming, dropped out after that semester. The only decent thing about college was that I met a fair number of people willing to pay me to learn what they paid to learn. (eg. do their homework) Due to good luck with the real estate bubble and getting paid to program instead of paying to learn it I posit that the personal cost of my degree would be around $400,000. $200,000 in lost wages $150,000 in lost in tax free capital gains $40,000 - $50,000 for the degree I don't need someone else to give me a piece of paper that says I'm 'educated' I'd rather take the dollar fifty in late fees at the library. I can read myself, I don't need to pay a professor $200,000 a year to read me a book.
- adbge 15y agoHow did you find your first job?
- fleitz 15y agoMy first ever job was assembling lawn mowers at a local shop at 14, before that I was selling software downloaded from select BBSes. From there I went into making pizzas and finally stacking boxes in a cold storage warehouse. Most of that stuff was from pounding the pavement looking for work. My first technical job was doing dial-up tech support I found that job over IRC. Who knew typing +++ATH0 into mIRC could get you a job? From there I worked tech support for the local cable company, and then wrote them some scheduling software in my spare time. After that they had me program instead of answer the phone. I subscribe to the garbage man theory of value, do the jobs no one else wants to do but are essential to society. Avoid any job that seems glamouros it usually pays like crap.
- palish 15y ago> I subscribe to the garbage man theory of value, do the jobs no one else wants to do but are essential to society. Avoid any job that seems glamouros it usually pays like crap. As a (former?) game developer, I can say this is spot-on.
- fleitz 15y agoSpot on if you write A* for a game company woopty do, if you write A* for a delivery company you just saved them millions.
- xenophanes 15y agoI quit college. It was boring. I got my first programming job from a reader of my blog (www.curi.us), because he saw I was very smart. Low pay (low for programming, but better than waiting tables or whatever) but I learned a lot and, with that knowledge, got a great subsequent job. If you're good at stuff, opportunities exist. If you're not, but you're motivated, you can learn more, faster, cheaper, outside of school.