10 ms·

Dropping out - how does it affect you later in life?

21 points by dwong 14y ago

There's been a lot of talk about dropping out lately. However, one thing I've been seeing is people talking about how it sucks to be 30-40 and not have a degree and have to make excuses for it. I'm surprised at this. If you have 10-15 years of programming experience, why would anyone still care if you have a degree? To me, it would seem like it would matter less as you got older. Can anyone comment or provide insight? Thanks.

xtx23 14y ago
'cause if you aren't super successful or hardcore at it, you will reach a point of diminishing returns of things. Your peers in other professions will catch up to you in term of pay when you are 30~40. You will lose time to families, and trade that loss for more requirement for financial responsibilities. Also when it's 30~40 time, you end up facing who you really are, and some people'll have to accept the fact that they were probably better off with a degree. But truth be told, people second guess themselves all the time. The most important thing is still figuring out what you are truly passionate about, and go for it.
- nirvana 14y ago
  People who skip college start out financially ahead of those who get a degree-- they spend 4 years getting work experience and hopefully saving that money. One of the major things about compounding is that the more you save early on, the bigger the impact than saving the same amount later. So, you avoid-- what $200k?-- in college tuition cost and instead earn something like $200k over those four years, and if you're wise, you might save half or a quarter of that. And after 4 years you have 4 years of experience and could be a senior software developer while your peers who went to college would be still be entry level. So in the 5th year, I think you'll get a significantly better salary than a newly minted college graduate. At least that's my experience.
  - sharmanaetor 14y ago
    If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you. This means lower experience and probably lower pay as well. So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential. A person who graduates will easily catch up 6-8 years after graduating. There are, of course, exceptions to the scenario described above, but usually I think what's described by me is most likely to happen.
    - heretohelp 14y ago
      I dropped out directly into a job offer that got me off the ground in my first quarter of college. That was nearly six years ago, now I'm the CTO at my company. I think we can generally trust people to follow their gut on this, as to whether school or work is a better idea. I'd been programming since I was a kid and was overall a self-directed learner. For me, school was an immense waste of time. Books and MIT OpenCourseWare were a much better use of my time.
      - sharmanaetor 14y ago
        Like I said, there are always exceptions.
    - mattm 14y ago
      This could depend on the country. I highly doubt not having a degree would affect one in the US if they could deliver.
    - nirvana 14y ago
      Let me guess, you're in college? >If you don't have a college degree, it's highly unlikely that you will get into a reputed company, assuming any company is willing to hire you. That's just silly. I have worked for Microsoft and Amazon, and HP and lots of other reputable companies. Google was pursuing me like crazy for months until I finally told them in no uncertain terms that I had no interest in working there. >So this means you will spend about 4 years not working to your maximum potential. The first year or you're not at your maximum potential, but by the second you are and those capabilities grow by the third and fourth... meanwhile, college graduates are just having their first year in college being babied because they don't know how to be professional yet-- and you're the one managing them. >usually I think what's described by me is most likely to happen. It isn't, but there's a huge industry in college- and their tuitions are growing several times faster than inflation, and that industry is wholly dependent on people believing they have value, even while they hollow out their curriculum in order to support football and to keep a cadre of professors in the liberal arts employed. Hey, you go to MIT or CalTech, I'll respect that. You got to Podunk U, and I won't be prejudiced against you (The way you are prejudiced against those who didn't)... but someone who spent those four years building a startup, is going to have a leg up!
  - easp 14y ago
    Yes, that is your experience, and you seem very aggressive about offering it us as something more than what it is, an anecdote. I don't think skipping college is necessarily a bad choice for some people, including you, but you are exhibiting a common trait of people who've been reasonably successful irregardless of the fact that they ended their formal education early, which is that they aren't aware of the shortcoming of their understanding of the world. In your case, I'll point out that most people end up working for 30-40 years, an early lead can fade. Also, new grads from a good CS program can start well over $50k year these days, and many of them will have paid well-under full-price for tuition.
byoung2 14y ago
These days, companies seem to care more about work you've done and skills you can demonstrate and not what degree you have. I currently work with the most amazing UX engineer I've ever met and he has degrees in opera and theology. I am a senior software engineer and I have a degree in English. These are arguably only slightly better than having no degree at all when applying for tech jobs, but our bodies of work spoke for themselves.
- badkangaroo 14y ago
  opera? wow that "sounds" cool.
nirvana 14y ago
If you're an engineer, and you drop out and you work for 4-6 years, nobody is ever going to care, or probably know, that you don't have a degree. My personal experience was that I got a hell of a good job when looking for a summer job, and I just kept at it. I'm in my 40s now, and in my career, not having a degree has NEVER been the slightest problem. I was in such demand that I started limiting how many interviews I'd go to-- and I'd end up going to 5 interviews and getting 4 offers and a callback (on average.) More than once, a year or so into a job it might come up that I didn't have a degree and people would be surprised, but it was never a problem-- I never put on my resume that I had a degree, I never lied. If you're an engineer, and you have talent and 3-4 years of work history, there's no detriment to not having a degree. I don't know about MBAs, etc. I think a lot of people go to college and maybe they aren't' autodidacts or naturally talented and for them, they have to be trained to be programmers. I know that's not the case for me, its a talent and I am mostly self taught. But I think a lot of people with degrees develop a prejudice against those who don't have them. They don't want to think that they wasted those four years and all that money-- and for many of them, they probably didn't (certainly that's the case for any of them who couldn't program before college-- it wasn't a waste.) But for someone like me, it would have been-- since college CS courses were pretty much a joke compared to where my ability was. (I did go to college for a couple years, but studied Physics. Much more challenging, though the money is in programming.) So, no, I don't think anyone worth working for gives a damn if you have a degree, if you've got several years of programming experience. Also, working with someone just out of college (not a programmer) has led me to discover that college doesn't actually train you to be an employee-- the first 2-4 years out of college is when you really learn the skills to be a professional. College is not worthless, but it is not at all, the only route. For some people it would be a waste of money and time, and for others totally essential to being able to solve hard CS problems. Only you can know which one you are. It is certainly not a panacea. I personally would probably give a little more weight to someone who is self taught, but of course, I wouldn't discriminate someone with a degree. I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree-- engineering is about having the skills and the mind. Look for Attitude, mental Bandwidth and the ability to communicate. Those are what matter in hiring.
- CyberFonic 14y ago
nirvana 14y ago
When I dropped out it was for an "offer I couldn't refuse"- I went in looking for a summer job and got a hell of a gig. I was working (as peers) with several people who'd just graduated from college. None of those people have had the success in life that I have. Small sample size, of course, but they were more conventional people and are still working for companies, some tech companies, and are generally employees. They haven't taken the risks I have, and haven't had the failures I've had, but also haven't had the rewards either.
joshmlewis 14y ago
I'm one of the ones who decided not to go to college to begin with. I think I'm just a lucky person because I've had a lot of great opportunities the past year. It's now almost a year later from when I graduated high school. I got experience right out of high school with a big startup in DC. From there I struggled a little bit and found a little gig to last me a little while. Meanwhile I got to fly to San Francisco (which was my first flying experience) and do a StartupBus hackathon sponsored by Intel and won 2nd place. Money got really tight for awhile and then I got desperate and somehow (thanks to HN) an awesome job with a Harvard startup popped up and I've been doing that going on 6 months now. Meanwhile I got in the door of an awesome local development firm and have been doing projects with them on the side. On top of that I stumbled into a guy looking to build out an app he had in mind and for the past two months we've been working with that on the side and just got accepted into an incubator for the summer term (TechStars in my local city.) Now whether you drop out and never go back, or take a year off or whatever, I've gotten real world experience and have an excellent job and I'm just 18. I committed this time that I didn't go to college to doing what I love and learning all I can. That was my goal. And now it's paid off. I can't stress this enough. College gives you some connections (depending on the college) and a lot of book knowledge but I just said you know what I'm just going out there and doing it and it's worked well for me so far. I don't know how this will treat me 20 years from now, but I can say one thing, I'm happy doing what I'm doing and I try not to take that for granted.
- YuriNiyazov 14y ago
  I am actually really curious to know more details about what you do. For example: 1) Are you a developer? If so, do you ever find yourself missing the knowledge about low-level computer science? Let's say, how operating systems and filesystems are built under the covers, the internals of database systems, various algorithms that help solve problems quicker, etc. Do you see yourself working on problems that require this sort of knowledge in the future? 2) Are you a designer? If so, do you find yourself missing knowledge about various theories of UX that you wouldn't know even exist unless you'd learn them from a professor? I am not a designer, so I can't speak the vocabulary, but I am sure there's a significant amount of theoretical knowledge in the field that is not useful right away; so, I wonder, do you ever come to a point where you actually need that kind of knowledge? Thanks.
atarian 14y ago
I know some incredibly intelligent people who chose not to go to college after high school. But they ended up coming back in their 30's because they realized you needed a degree to move up the hierarchy. Unless you're dealing with a rapidly scaling venture (like Facebook or Microsoft) I would definitely advise staying in school to get that degree.
- crander 14y ago
  Example: I was hired at the end of the dot-com bubble into a technology mega-corporation at the age I should have just finished college. I dropped out of state after studying German and whatever to make money in the technology boom, and I did. Lots. For many years my career grew and I was at zero disadvantage to someone entering with a degree. In the bust, I was even at an advantage for awhile as I had key experience over anyone competing with me. Over time however it became evident the long term growth curve of my career had a lower slope than my college educated colleges. Soon enough I couldn't move up any more. In a deep, sit-down conversation with a respected manager I was told I would never make senior grade engineer without the degree. Now in a start-up or small shop maybe this wouldn't matter. In a Fortune 500 corp. it simply did. Now I'm in my 30's and back in school. At least I'm enjoying it this time :)
yusufnb 14y ago
If you are not smart enough, it would be smart to stay in school few more years and get the badge. It would be really dumb to be dumb and also not go to school. Not to say, smart people do stay in school, but I would think that's not for the badges.
- hitokirikensan 14y ago
  that's definitely true. It seems like all those who are doing well without a degree already had the motivation, intelligence, and "street-smarts" to do well. College does bring connections and such, but it also teaches you to be resourceful and force yourself to do things you don't want to do (like write essays when you're an engineering student). I was definitely a little kid after I graduate high school but after college, I was much more mature and responsible.
badkangaroo 14y ago
i dropped out after deciding that there was no way id be able to afford the debt that i would be going into after 4 years of college. I got a job as a artist working at a few different game companies then went to work on a movie for disney. i turned into a programmer about three years ago. making games was more fun than making movies, by far. Each new job position has been through referral by peers. been at this since atari in `93, I've never been asked about a college degree once. got a house, a cool little machine shop, 3d printer, in san francisco... not bad, not bad at all.
CyberFonic 14y ago
Given two equally competent candidates, the one with the degree is usually the one who gets picked. A person who has a degree but isn't passionate will often get passed over, except in the most bureaucratic of organizations. The problem with autodidacts is that many don't know what they don't know and keep re-inventing stuff. Going to university exposes you to people who are heaps smarter than you and hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly and be aware that you might not have all the answers.
- nirvana 14y ago
  The thing is, you take two people from the same graduating class and look at them four years later, one who went to college and the other who worked, and they won't be equally competent. One will be a new graduate and one will have 4 years experience. People will pick the experience (which is more valuable) every time. >The problem with autodidacts is that many don't know what they don't know and keep re-inventing stuff. That's kinda silly. Autodidacts know that they don't know a lot and they search it out. They expose themselves to a lot and they seek out the smart people-- much like Steve Jobs communicating with Jim Hewlett. They don't need a university to "expose" you to things. People talk about finding new stuff at university like its some shocking and unique trait. IF you've got a local university that has some good stuff- like a particularly good department- autodidact will often go there just to learn that thing because its good, not because they need it. >exposes you to people who are heaps smarter than you and hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly Go work for a good engineering team and you're surrounded by people who are heaps smarter than you, and very highly motivated to solve difficult problems. But I think the phrase "hopefully that provides motivation to learn stuff thoroughly" is very interesting. Autodidacts have the motivation to learn stuff thoroughly. I think most people don't. They need college to motivate them? There's nothing more motivating than building a business.
  - CyberFonic 14y ago
    You make several good points. In my experience the autodidacts you describe are the exceptional ones. I have come across far more self-taught developers who lack the breadth of knowledge and yet think they have all the answers. As for your comment about Steve Jobs, he is widely recognised as an exemplary outlier. Even so, Jobs was a visionary and an exceptional leader. But without the team of very capable and talented people he would not have achieved what they did as a team!
ziadbc 14y ago
You can take a break from college without dropping out. The best reasons/excuses don't sound like "maybe college isnt for me" and more like "Someone offered me a very time flexible paid internship that will allow me to start my own business on the side, and if I don't, then most likely I'll go back to school."
benkant 14y ago
Stay in school, it's not much time in the scheme of things.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
greapfr 14y ago
I don't know how much it matters 10-15 years down the line, but it can matter very much 2-3 years later. I know people (mostly front-end developers and designers) that have been totally fine without a degree, but I personally have had a terrible experience. My story: I dropped out of MIT to stay at my summer internship. However, the company tanked (this was at a finance company, summer of '08), and my team was pretty much disbanded, so I went looking for a new job. Luckily, one of my team members had just gone back to his old job where he was a manager, so he was able to vouch for my awesomeness and hire me (despite extreme reluctance -- I'd gotten told multiple times by both recruiters and other engineering folks that they wouldn't be able to hire me full-time). Unfortunately, the company turned out to be a terrible place to work, so I quit after a couple months. And from then on out, I had a really difficult time getting a job. People would say they had a company policy saying they couldn't hire drop outs, but they'd love me as an intern, or they'd tell me point-blank that I had great technical skills, but they were worried about my ability to "commit". After all, I was a fresh young kid with very few connections, so it'd always be some clueless recruiter deciding whether to pass on my resume or not. Maybe your experience will be different if you have better connections or if you're the type of person who can network well. Luckily, I have a great job now, but my experience was a big shock. I'd always thought that people in Silicon Valley didn't give a fuck about whether you had a degree or not, but this was definitely not true in my case.
- nostrademons 14y ago
  I think the problem for you was not that you dropped out, but that you dropped out and then had two very short stints at employers. Hence the worries about your ability to commit. When you see a dropout followed by 4 years at the same company where he assumed several levels of new responsibility, the work experience cancels out the lack of an education: he's already proved that he can commit to a task and do well at it. When you see a dropout followed by two jobs of a couple months each, it screams "dilettante": it says that as soon as you get bored with something and the honeymoon period ends, you go looking for something else. Nobody wants to hire the latter type of person. People look at your whole resume for patterns, not just each individual section in isolation. Dropping out can be either good or bad - it depends on what you do afterwards.
- 14y ago
emmapersky 14y ago
For any non-american who might, at any point in their future, think about moving to the US for work, a degree is virtually essential. The standard work based visa requirements include an equivalent to a 4 year US Bachelors degree (eg. 3 years in the UK), or 4 years of relevant experience for every missing year of college, i.e. 16 years! I advocate staying in school anyway, but this is something to consider.
- nirvana 14y ago
  This is a good point. Government jobs are very arbitrary this way (mainly because government is embedded in the college industry.) But its a filter often applied when looking at immigrants. Its a shame, really, because someone with a decades experience in software development wanting to move to your country should be welcomed with open arms (and also should be the zero experience farm worker, because frankly, people build an economy when they go somewhere to work.)
givan 14y ago
I was never asked for a degree or any kind of paper on interviews, all that mattered was my portfolio and my tech blog, experience is more valuable. Also the time gained helped me learn way faster what I was really interested in, web development. Most of my colleagues with degrees are now taxi drivers or have a regular job because even if they had a degree they lacked experience that was far more important for the employers than any kind of paper. I had very high paid jobs and now I'm working on my own startup, in the IT world where information is very accessible and is very easy to learn without needing a middle man, you can have a very big advantage by using the time lost in college in a more productive way. Learn on your own or by internship, experience matters the most and every year of experience matters, don't lose any.
pan69 14y ago
The problem is that the difference between two engineers, one with 10 years experience and the other with 5 years experience, is huge. However, once you get over a certain threshold, say 15 years, it doesn't really matter that much any more. E.g. the difference between someone with 15 years experience and someone with 20 years experience isn't that important anymore. In fact, I'd rather be hiring someone with 15 years experience AND a degree than someone with 20 years experience without a degree. [Disclaimer: I do not have a degree :)]
danielrpa 14y ago
It depends on how competitive your local market is. If there is a huge demand for people in your area and you have the skills, you can get away with not having a degree. If demand for your skill is soft and there are a bunch of other people with degrees competing with you for a job, it's extremely common that companies will use degrees as an initial triage criterion. In this case, you can be very hurt by not having a degree. I'm usually involved in hiring decisions for my company, a major player in the software industry, and I don't think lack of degree is a deal breaker - but it's a red flag for sure.
jones1618 14y ago
While you are in your prime "coding years", it doesn't matter. The problem with dropping out won't hit you until you hit the middle age inflection point: Go into management or career change or jump to a start up. Your competition that started with a B.S. at the same age or even a few years later probably didn't stand still and now have Master's degrees or MBAs. That's what you'd be up against. With the slow job market, not only are many 20-somethings hanging out in graduate school but many (if not most) immigrants enter the market with offshore B.S. and U.S. Master degrees. So, my advice to drop-outs is: Build your experience and bankroll for a couple of years then settle into a job where you can finish your degree part-time. Then, when you hit the middle-age transition, you can go for the 2-year MBA to stay competitive.
- nirvana 14y ago
  If they got Masters or MBAs then they are even further behind and have even more to unlearn before they can be productive. Those people are earning less and are 4-6 years behind you on the advancement curve. The slope of that curve depends on your ability and dedication, not a piece of paper.
  - jones1618 14y ago
    The problem is that the world isn't a perfect meritocracy. There's no objective way for someone who is in the position to give you a raise or a job can know precisely where you are on your ability and dedication curve. That's why "those people who are earning less" who happen to also have MS/MBA pieces of paper will look like a better deal. Also, those future bosses may see your extra 4-6 years as potential bad habits, entitlement and cynicism that you'd have to unlearn to be productive for them. I'm not saying it is fair or inevitable but it wouldn't hurt to arm yourself against degree-ism and agism any way that you can.
nissimk 14y ago
I can't tell you whether staying in school right now is a good idea for you or not, but maybe my story will give you an interesting case study. I went to Columbia straight out of high school in 1994. My birthday is in October so when i started i was 17. In my first year i had to take a lot of required courses that i wasn't that interested in and my grades were not very good. My dad liked to complain to me about the cost of my school and although he never bothered me about my low scores, i felt pretty bad about it. Meanwhile, i met this guy while i was in high school and his father was ceo of an old software company in new York so he got me a job there for the summer, and i continued working part time while in university as well. I was testing a windows app that was written by a team of 10 developers. My performance at work was much better than at school, so I found it more rewarding. As it turns out, the automated testing software we were using was a hot technology and someone told me i could get a consulting gig at ge capital if i dropped out. So i made the decision to do that after completing only 3 semesters. My mother was pretty upset , but my father didn't really mind too much. Unfortunately, that consulting gig was canceled pretty soon after i started but i had made some contacts and i got a real programming job at a different ge company. This was 1995 and i was 19. I continued contract software development at a bunch of big and small companies for the next few years with few issues about having dropped out. In 2000 i left a secure contract at Goldman Sachs to try a startup on my own. When that didn't work out, it was the depth of the NYC job market downturn in 2001 and it took me 4 or 5 months to find a job. Having been a contractor and business owner i was not eligible for unemployment. I don't know if having a degree during that time would have helped me get a job faster, but i did hear about it from recruiters and think about it a lot during that time. My next job turned out to be with good people so i switched to full time and they paid for me to go back to school at night and i got a degree from the CUNY ba program in 2005. I haven't been out of work since then but mostly that's because i lucked out being at a mortgage company that failed right at the begining of the crisis in 07 and my next shop has been very successful in weathering the downturn. I see a lot of comments here about how if you know what you're doing and you're a good software engineer then you will always have an easy time finding work. This is just not true. When supply of software engineers outstrips demand in the market where you are looking for work it becomes difficult to get a job. It is during these times that you may have trouble since you don't have a degree. Also, if you get to a point where you want to advance beyond software development into a business side or management role, you may have trouble based on your lack of credentials. The other point to understand that is directly related to your question is that as you get older you demand a higher salary. This makes it harder to get work. There are fewer jobs for people at the higher salary levels so again, your credentials may come into play more when you're 10 - 15 years in, seeking new work and asking to be paid significantly more than someone with 5 years experience.
SatvikBeri 14y ago
You typically don't notice the advantages/disadvantages of having a degree from a good college. It's very silent, much like racial privilege. Very few jobs will openly reject you for not having a degree, but if you have a degree from a good school people recommend you more, and tend to assume you're smarter. They're more likely to value your opinion, more likely to brag about having you on their team. A lot of companies, even on the West Coast, will automatically grant you an interview for having a degree from a good school, or automatically deny you an interview for not having a degree. You gain access to a massive network-eg, if you contact someone from your same school, odds are high that they will take time out to talk to you. And so on. This is probably less relevant for programming than it is for other professions, but in my observations it's a huge difference.
- nirvana 14y ago
  It is true there are a class of companies, bumpkin type companies like insurance companies, for instance, who hire engineers who care a great deal about degrees. There are also bumpkin bosses who think wouldn't interview someone who doesn't have a degree. You know what? Those same companies and bosses are so caught up in their prejudice that when they see my resume, they never notice I don't have a degree! They still hire me. The idea you need a "degree from a good college" is silliness. Here's the thing. Kids aren't ready for the realities of the world. So a 12 year old who brings you their drawing-- even if its crappy- you're going to tell them its great. All thru out their lives you want to encourage them to do well, so you tell them to get good grades so that they can go to a good college and then to get good grades at their college so they can get a good job. That first year out of school, how you do in college does affect what kind of jobs you get offered. But college has not taught you to be a professional. College is the last of the nurseries. When you get your job, you're in the real world. Colleges let you live in dorms and let you make more mistakes but it is still a coddling environment. When you're in college you have no idea-- because this is your life and its been your life your whole life-- what the difference is between college and the real world. Everything you're saying there is the assumption of an unspoken privilege. I'm telling you that privilege doesn't exist in the real world. IF you hustle and can sell yourself and have good skills, these things are far more deterministic of how far you go and what you earn than having a degree, let alone what college you went to for that degree.
DanBC 14y ago
A company advertises a job. They'll list some criteria in the advert. They'll have a minimum wage secretary opening all the applications, and any that don't meet the minimum requirements go straight into the "reject" pile. Unless you have a name of someone else inside the company to get over that initial hurdle.
- nirvana 14y ago
  This has never been the case in my experience. Maybe this is the case for entry level jobs. Resumes go to recruiters who don't bother to look for the degree and are much more interested in the work experience, who forward you to a hiring manager.
keiferski 14y ago
A big thing that no one has mentioned: if you ever want to work in a field outside of tech, you'll probably need a degree. I don't know about your personal situation, but I sure as hell didn't know how I wanted to spend the rest of my work life doing at 18 (and I still don't 4 years later.) Not going to college would have only stunted my growth and left me staring down the same potential paths. College forces you to be exposed to the world in ways that a typical job can't. The question shouldn't be: to go or not to go to college? It should be "when?". Taking a year off to travel or volunteer is an excellent idea; going to work for some random startup isn't. EDIT: some more thoughts: - programming as we know it today may not exist in 20 years. The 100k+ salaries and limitless job openings won't last forever, and you may be stuck with nothing but work experience in a field that's changed significantly. - college isn't that difficult. I'm not sure what schools you can get into (or are planning on getting into) but unless it's Stanford, MIT, or Ivy League (or other top 20 schools), you'll probably be able to build a startup on the side. If you can get into a top 20 school, go, no questions asked. A little startup isn't worth screwing up that experience.
- nirvana 14y ago
  >you'll probably need a degree You may be right, but I see the phrase above as code for "college graduates discriminate against people without degrees". Notice you didn't say "You'll need the skills a degree gives you". The reality is, you can get skills in a variety of ways. Most people who switch careers don't do thinks they have no skills in, they find a better use for the skills they do have. I don't see how college forces you to be exposed to the world, as in college you're just continuing the insular educational perspective of high school. Sure, its a little broader, but its still the ivory tower perspective. Going out and getting a job and being responsible for your monthly rent is the splash of cold water.... and also exposes you to all kinds of people you won't meet on a college campus full of students and professors. I agree with you on the year off to travel, but working for a random startup for that year would be hugely rewarding as well. >programming as we know it today may not exist in 20 years. If the way we know it today it doesn't exist in 20 years then you'll be no worse off than the college graduate who now has a useless degree and 16 years of experience. >A little startup isn't worth screwing up that experience. Until you've started a business, you don't really know what business is really like. A "little startup" is the experience, if you want to be an entrepreneur. Doing on one the side in college is fine if you want to have it go both ways. Its only the first job out of college where they care about your grades.
nirvana 14y ago
Another point: Degree inflation. College has become so prominent and watered down that almost everyone has a degree, and thus having a degree itself has a lot less meaning than it did in the past. This does mean there are more half educated prejudiced people who might discriminate against you because you don't have a degree, but that works as a filter to keep you out of organizations that are destructive to your life.
rodw 14y ago
Possibly I'm an old fart about this (though I'm not really that old) but I'd discourage anyone from dropping out absent remarkable circumstances. Here's the thing: Personally, as an employer, hiring manager and co-worker not having a degree in and of itself doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Specifically, I've hired people with professional-level jobs--the kind you usually "need" a degree for--with little regard for whether or not they have a degree. Sometimes I've hired (or promoted or given a raise to, or, for that matter, laid off) the person with a degree. Sometimes I've hired/promoted/fired the one without a degree. But here's what I've seen: If you're _very_ successful, it doesn't matter at all. But you need a truly remarkable accomplishment to reach that state. Otherwise it _will_ hurt you, at least with _some_ people, at least _some_ of the time. In particular, it will hurt you with: - HR departments when they are deciding whether or not you meet the base requirements of the position, or what pay you should receive. - You direct managers as they fight with HR about things like requirements and pay (or if they choose to fight for these things) at both hiring-time and promotion or annual-review time. - Supervisors and middle/upper management as they consider which employees are likely retention/flight risks, and which are not. (and therefore which are likely to get perks as an incentive for staying and which are not-likely to get those perks, because they at least a little more "trapped" in their position). I have seen all three of these things happen more than once. I've seen really good and smart and (largely) productive people get shafted over the long haul: not because of any one major decision that didn't go their way but because of a series of little ones over a period of years--decisions where they were disadvantaged, however slightly, but not having a degree. These issues come up for at least the first 15-20 years of one's career, in my experience. Having a degree, if nothing else, demonstrates a certain amount of "stick-to-it-iveness". I'd guess that most people forced to make a a hiring or investment decision would at least pause to consider why candidate dwong didn't complete a degree program. Unless (a) the thing you dropped out to do is pretty obvious and (b) in retrospect that was pretty obviously a smart decision,or (c) you've done something in the interim that overwhelms these other questions then many people when faced with hiring/investment decisions are going to at least pause and consider whether you have sufficient drive/commitment/ability to overcome obstacles over the long haul. You may be more or less likely to run into people that care about the degree in some fields, but you'll run into a least some of them in every field. You may be able to accomplish something remarkable enough that no one cares about the degree question at all, but "I founded this web-based start-up. We did OK." isn't remarkable enough. You may be able to build a career for yourself (as an employee or an entrepreneur) where the opinions of the people that care don't matter, but bear in mind that until you reach of point of literally independent wealth everyone has a "customer" of some kind that they'll need to keep happy--a boss, an investor, a board, a patron, a client, etc. I'd think really hard about whether the thing you are dropping out of a degree program for is truly worth it. It's not the end of the world. It doesn't even really close any doors for you. But it does make some doors a littler harder to open (and some a lot harder to open). Is doing your alternative to college right now and possibly limiting your options for the next 10-20 years worth more to you than delaying your alternative for a year or two and finishing school first? That's not a rhetorical question--I honestly don't know what the answer is for you. But I don't believe the people who say it simply doesn't matter at all. There really are some negative repercussions of that decision (just as there are negative repercussions to the decision to stay in school as well). You just need to figure out if the good outweighs the bad. I'd also think really hard about whether "dropping out" and "not dropping out" are the only two options. Can you take a sabbatical/leave-of-absence/year-off/semester-abroad? Can you moonlight on whatever you'd otherwise be doing? Can you do school part-time? Switch to a different school? Switch programs? Find a program more in line with you passions? Go all-in and finish school faster? (There is also value in the college experience and liberal arts education, but I'll leave that argument for another day.) As practical matter, it really is _generally_ a bad idea to simply drop out entirely. If you were my friend or my kid, I'd strongly encourage you to demonstrate problem solving skills and find a way--however non-traditional that way might be--to make it work instead.
zbruhnke 14y ago
I'm not to 30 or 40 yet so I may not be your target audience here but I can comment on how it has affected me thus far and what I usually tell people about making this choice when it comes down to it. I dropped out at 20 as a Junior in college. I had scholarships to school and every reason to stay but I was already working long hours on a business I had started as a Freshman and had no intention of slowing down. We were growing, by my nineteenth birthday we had 13 employees and by my 20th I got my first acquistion offer. I decided to take one of those offers and as a condition of it had to consult for the company I had just sold to for a while(turned out to only be 8 months). So I made the decision to drop out and pursue this opportunity. There are days when I regret leaving school for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I never really got to be a kid or act like my fellow classmates, however NONE of the reasons I regretted it has to do with not being about to find work I like or chase my dreams. I recently went through the Winter 2012 YCombinator class(and subsequently left the company as well) Then was picked up by a well known company in the ruby community almost instantly and have continued to be able to find work at levels which I cannot handle. I run a boutique consulting firm and have for quite a while. I usually do one or two projects a year that amount to anywhere from &125k-$300k. I almost always turn a few projects a year down and rarely do I ever get bored or have nothing to work on. I think the major difference between the people disappointed they dropped out and the ones that aren't is motivation. It does not matter how bad you want something you still have to work for it. The people who sit with their hands on their asses and complain they did not get things handed to them get no sympathy from me. I grew up the absolute epitome of middle class and have fought my way out of there. I make no apologies for my mistakes and I rarely give up on anything. I think its fair to say most peoples successes or failures lie solely on themselves. EDIT: I noticed I never said my age(I'm 25) and also when friends of mine or people who know my story ask me about dropping out or say they are considering it, I almost always tell them DON'T DO IT! I think there is a place and a special set of circumstances for dropping out, but its not for everyone and certainly not everyone who goes that path is as fortunate as I am, much less as fortunate as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
- anotherthrow 14y ago
  > I think its fair to say most peoples successes or failures lie solely on themselves. If that were true, wouldn't you expect economic and social mobility to be much higher?
gte910h 14y ago
Changing careers makes your lack of a degree an issue. It can lock you in places, make large companies and governments unable to hire you (even as part of an acquisition).
nirvana 14y ago
Notice how the advocates of college are not selling the education you get from it and the skills so much as trying to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt in you? This actually works as a filter- those who think for themselves will not fall for this and will end up leading companies and being very successful. Those who are highly influenced and controlled by the opinions of others, however, will worry about this, and will go to college because its the "right thing to do" and will live long careers at safe companies getting their annual bump, thinking they're doing a lot better than those irresponsible people who dropped out. They'll spend their lives sucking down the daily humiliation of dealing with an idiot boss, because once you've got 5, 10 years with a company, why throw away your pension over working for an idiot? They'll be people who work for others. So the real question is-- are you someone who is going to make something of yourself? Or are you going to want the safety of working for other people, where the outcome of your life was determined by someone else? Sure its scary. Notice all the FUD being put forward here. I can tell you the reality s this-- a few years of work experience and nobody cares whether you went to college or not. Employers know that college is not the same as experience and is far less valuable. IF you listen to others, they are always going to advise the mainstream "safe" route. This is why they don't achieve real success in life. I've seen this often: -- The mainstream choice is college, but you lose 4 years of career experience and instead of making money you spend it. The financial outcome is negative, but most people do it anyway. -- Most people put their money in index funds or mutual funds and make mediocre returns because they believe they can't beat the market (but spend $50 on books) and 5 hours a year on it, and you can far beat the market. (The idea that it is even hard is silly-- but most people are convinced of it and so they tell other people that they can't' do it, or point to studies that show that, in aggregate, the result of people investing in the market is market returns (minus commissions) which conclude that they underperform the market. Well, of course, you're taking the actual market (the people in aggregate) comparing it to the market and then subtracting commissions, how can that not underperform?) -- They buy houses in a bubble and then blame the banks when their mortgage is underwater. (I knew there would be a bubble in 2001, because of an article on mises.org ... because of economics.) "But you never lose money buying a house". -- They live their lives in their house, limiting themselves to employers within a reasonable commute...when they could be traveling the world, and visiting a dozen countries a year. I'm doing that, and running a startup and our cost of living is less than the average household income in the USA. Yet for american to travel they think they have to run up a credit card debt that takes them a decade to pay off. This is the real question- are you going to make something of yourself, or are you going to accept what life gives you if you just doing what everyone else does? Would you rather be a self made failure than a coasting weak "success"?
molesy 14y ago
Lots of great responses here but I wanted to add mine since this is something all of us non-degree'ers reflect on a lot. There's the first insight - it comes up a lot over the years. I didn't exactly drop out but I got a summer job between high school and my first semester and by the first day of classes I'd agreed to move across the country with the company that'd hired me. That was about fifteen years ago. I've accumulated a few college credits here and there since then and even took a full course load of (online, community college) classes for a semester, definitely nowhere near a degree though. I've been everything from a low-level developer to an upper middle manager (as well as a co-founder) at small startups, mid-range enterprises and one Fortune 50 and what I've figured out at this point is that my lack of a degree can and will hold me back at times, but it frames my experience and motivations in ways that help me explain and even justify who I am in the world. (Nobody special - but it's my choice!) The biggest negative impact, as many people have mentioned here, is the HR/Bschool-driven hiring process that virtually any established company has. Your resume will be algorithmically removed from generic candidate-pool searches. Your salary range will be capped lower than other people's. You may be offered a position, you may even work at a position for a goodly amount of time, and at some point your lack of "credentials" may cost you salary or even your position, either by way of an acquirer opting not to hire you on, or your position being eliminated and the only remaining positions requiring credentials you do not have. So you're working harder to find jobs, getting paid less once you find them, you have no alumni network to milk, and if you know how to market these facts (to yourself as well as others) you've got a pretty good story about your dedication to your career, or your family, or whatever it was and is that keeps you from pursuing a degree. That's how I comfort myself at least. My story is a pretty easy sell generally as far as interview discussions go - I ran a consulting company in high school that was by no means wildly successful but kept me busy when I wanted to be, the startup I took that summer job with seemed like a fun laid back place to get a little more experience before school started, and things just naturally took off for the company... that eventually was acquired, its acquirer went bankrupt, got bought a few more times, and its husk is still around somewhere. I was one of the first people laid off when the bankruptcy was announced. I was one of the youngest employees, I didn't contribute as much as my (slightly) older, (slightly) more experienced, (slightly) more tenured teammates. It was a good decision, whether that's what lead to it or not - both for me and for the company. The people I worked with there are amazing, they've gone on to do amazing things since then, and not a day goes by I'm not grateful for having gotten to work with them. Mad props to jeffiel, thuddwhir, beans and that whole crew for being my "college" experience. The good news? I feel that way about every single team I've worked with since then. I've worked with amazing people, all of whom I chose to work for because I liked them and what they were doing, not because I felt like I needed the job or that it was the right career move. At some level they all took a chance on me no matter whether I came to them as an a bright-eyed kid or a battle-hardened street fighter. I'm always conscious of that, and I feel it serves me well in making the kind of connections that suit me personally. The really good news though? No matter what you tell yourself it's never too late to go back and get a degree. The value may diminish over the years but at any point along the road, even if you have to go completely bankrupt and shed a lot of the responsibility you become used to, you can go back to school and leap back into the workforce if you choose. Or better yet.. Not jump back into the workforce! There's really nothing better in life than making your own success without a care in the world for what other people think of you, your credentials, your history, whatever. Your success is ultimately your own to make. If a degree gives you the kick-start you need, great. If not - school will be there if you ever want it.
deleted 14y ago
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srconstantin 14y ago
I don't have personal experience on this, but my take is that leaving school is a risk. Exceptional people can sometimes take career risks and win. The rest of us should avoid them.
dwong 14y ago
Thanks for all the responses. Most of the responses that support going to college seem to argue based on the value of a degree, instead of the education and skills. It seems that most of us agree that the education, skills, and networking can be found elsewhere. But there's also a decent consensus on the value of a degree. nirvana, thanks for your input. I'll definitely consider your viewpoints and whether the piece of paper is worth it.

hedgie 14y ago

"I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree-- engineering is about having the skills and the mind." there are certain areas of software engineering where a real understanding of the subject takes years of focused study. for example, understanding encryption requires graduate level math courses to even read some of the standards produced or understand how the algorithms work. i have never seen this happen outside of school simply due to the time restrictions of having a job preventing the full-time study necessary to reach that level of mathematical sophistication. there are other areas where similar training is necessary and pretty much exclusive to schools (think financial software engineering for traders, for whom they generally hire grad students with extremely specialized knowledge). most software engineers don't need this sort of training. but there are areas like encryption where i'm 99% certain the only training left in the world that can make you a competent professional is schooling. software engineering is an odd exception to the rule that most jobs require credentials. you can just make the product at home and that speaks for itself, where as no one will let you risk blowing millions on dumb marketing unless you have something to say you're semi-competent. self-trained software engineers are usually incredible and some of the best employees. but there are areas of software engineering where self-training is impossible that are absolutely necessary when creating certain products. lastly, if you looked at my degrees, you would ignore the fact i first learned basic in middle school on an apple IIc+.

DanBC 14y ago
> there are certain areas of software engineering where a real understanding of the subject takes years of focused study. for example, understanding encryption requires graduate level math courses to even read some of the standards produced or understand how the algorithms work. i have never seen this happen outside of school simply due to the time restrictions of having a job preventing the full-time study necessary to reach that level of mathematical sophistication I agree with you. But there are some places where that study can happen without a degree. Clifford Cocks, for example, was recruited by GCHQ before he finished his degree. I accept this is an edge case example.
- hedgie 14y ago
  he had graduate level training in number theory at oxford, which is the basis of public key encryption and the algorithm he invented. it's not an edge case, it supports that you can't skip graduate level training and do this work.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Ah, yes. I made a mistake. I thought he'd been recruited from Cambridge before he finished his degree.
nirvana 14y ago
>there are certain areas of software engineering where a real understanding of the subject takes years of focused study. Not many, and people who go into these areas spend those years doing that concentrated study as part of their job. The distributed systems work I did years ago for a startup made me one of 12 people in the world with that level of understanding at the time... now years later when distributed systems are "all the rage" every kid coming out of college thinks they know what they're doing but doesn't actually understand it. >i'm 99% certain the only training left in the world You're completely wrong. College doesn't even get close to teaching the state of the art. Graduate level can get close to the state of the art in a very narrow area, when you're working on your PhD, and sometimes this is highly relevant to the profession but often it isn't. >software engineering is an odd exception to the rule that most jobs require credentials. Most jobs require credentials for the same reason that most hats haze initiates, and once initiated those very same people are eager to engage in the hazing. It has nothing to do with ability, it is simply a mark of having an experience. The reality is, if you jump into a startup and spend those four years building a business, you'll have far more knowledge than you would get obtaining that credential. >but there are areas of software engineering where self-training is impossible that are absolutely necessary when creating certain products. I've hear this lots of times but never really any good examples. And in my experience, people with college degrees do not have the level of knowledge and expertise that I did, at the same time in my career. (e.g.: 4 years in.) Worse, I think this is getting worse, as college CS programs seem to be becoming less effective over the years. And the really state of the art stuff- you don't get in college anyway as an undergrad and if you're a graduate student you're reading the same things that people doing it on the job are reading.
- hedgie 14y ago
  "You're completely wrong. College doesn't even get close to teaching the state of the art." encryption is basically pure math. if you don't have a solid understanding of graduate level math you can't even follow the state of the art. knowing how encryption is broken takes EVEN MORE, with advanced statistical methods being added to the mix. "state of the art" encryption is really decades (or century) old mathematical problems. shit like padding is new, but the core of the algorithm has been studied for years by mathematicians - the fact they haven't solved it in that long a time is why we even use it for encryption "And the really state of the art stuff- you don't get in college anyway as an undergrad and if you're a graduate student you're reading the same things that people doing it on the job are reading." wrong. you can't even read the mathematical definitions of some encryption algorithms without graduate level courses. i work with people who are "experts" in the area and have been doing it for 20 years with an engi background. due to never learning the math i have to translate for them and i'm horrified at the shit they end up doing. they don't know why or how the algorithms work so they end up picking the wrong ones for the wrong reasons or implementing them in insecure ways. anything that relies on pure math this much (like algorithms for stock trading) isn't something you learn on the job.

rodw 14y ago

"If you're an engineer, and you drop out and you work for 4-6 years, nobody is ever going to care, or probably know, that you don't have a degree." That's simply not true. Your co-workers and colleagues may not know or care. Your boss and her boss may not know or care. (Although to be candid I suspect more of them both know and are at least a little influenced by it than you seem to think.) But if you're working in a large enough organization (and "large enough" is getting smaller all the time), at the very least someone in the HR department is going to both know and care. You may not qualify for a given job or promotion. You may not get paid as much as you otherwise would. You stand a moderately good chance of being caught if you try to lie about it. (Background checks-as-a-service are out there and getting cheaper just like everything else.)

nirvana 14y ago
You're just spreading FUD. And it simply isn't true. I'm not projecting here, I've done this very thing. I know. I've worked for several organizations with more than 10,000 employees. I was not being silently discriminated against because I was rising faster than my peers almost all the time. The market forces companies to do this because if they don't treat their employees well- particularly their employees with ability- then these employees will go somewhere that does. Frankly, there's no reason to lie either. Having a college degree shows a certain timidity and inability to think for oneself, to me anyway. I'll cut someone slack for it when hiring because at that age you don't necessarily need to be that certain about yourself.
- rodw 14y ago
  You're not seriously asserting that "nobody is ever going to care, or probably know, that you don't have a degree", are you? Literally nobody? Because the "FUD" I'm spreading is simply stating that somebody, somewhere, will both know and care. Your sample size of one doesn't change anything. Without looking it up directly, I'm very sure that if you compared the earning power, net wealth, or pretty much any financial metric you care to name of "people with a 4-year degree" to "people that dropped out of a 4-year degree program and never earned a degree" you'll find that _on_average_, dropping out negatively impacts your earning potential. That's not to say that that outcome is driven by an actual difference in ability or intelligence or drive or merit or what have you, nor that the outcome for people that drop out of college with the intention of creating a web startup is necessarily the same as the outcome for everyone else. Like any statistic, that doesn't predict the outcome for any particular individual. You can drop out of college and become Steve Jobs or you can drop out of college and become an actor waiting tables in a NYC restaurant still waiting to be "discovered" at the age of 40. But in aggregate, those that earn a college degree do better (by some measures of "better") than those that do not. To state that it simply doesn't matter whether or not you have a college degree contradicts the data.

paulhauggis 14y ago

You don't see a problem that your one piece of anecdotal evidence isn't proof of it working like this everywhere? "I'm in my 40s now, and in my career, not having a degree has NEVER been the slightest problem. " I know plenty of people where it has been a problem. If I'm looking at two potential job candidates with exact same experience but one has a college degree and the other doesn't, guess which one I'm going to hire? "I think a lot of people go to college and maybe they aren't' autodidacts or naturally talented and for them, they have to be trained to be programmers. " nice. So you are lumping in people that go to college as less talented than you. You have no proof of this. I went to college and got a degree. I've also been living and breathing code since I was 10. Most developers that I know that didn't go to college know don't know many of the theories behind algorithms and data types. Very few, for example, built their own compiler using their own simple language. Outside of academia, this has no practical application (unless you are building your own language) and most people are too busy with work or their own personal projects to work on something like this. "But I think a lot of people with degrees develop a prejudice against those who don't have them." Kind of like you develop a prejudice against people that have them? "since college CS courses were pretty much a joke compared to where my ability was. (I did go to college for a couple years, but studied Physics. Much more challenging, though the money is in programming.)" Right. You were too smart to finish college. "Also, working with someone just out of college (not a programmer) has led me to discover that college doesn't actually train you to be an employee-- the first 2-4 years out of college is when you really learn the skills to be a professional." College isn't a trade school. Also, this is why we have internships. Most people have already worked at a few large companies by their Senior year. "I personally would probably give a little more weight to someone who is self taught, but of course" Because you are prejudice against someone with a degree. It's obvious throughout all of your rants. " I think its wrong of people who do discriminate against those who don't have a degree" You are just as bad with your discrimination.

nirvana 14y ago
>If so, do you ever find yourself missing the knowledge about low-level computer science? Let's say, how operating systems and filesystems are built under the covers, the internals of database systems, various algorithms that help solve problems quicker, etc. You seem to be assuming that someone who hasn't gotten a college degree doesn't have this knowledge. I've spent a fair bit of time over the past 4 years reading hacker news. I'd say the demographic of the hacker news commentator is generally a few years out of college. At that age, I knew more about how operating systems and filesystems worked, the internals of databases, and had a bigger collection of algorithms to draw on than the average hacker news commentator does. I'm sure there are a lot of people who get CS degrees who never programmed a computer before college, and so, for them it is like a profession that they chose, and all their knowledge comes from college. For them, it probably seems baffling that someone right out of high school might get a CS job because they wouldn't know anything, right? This isn't the case for hackers. Hackers started hacking as soon as they were told what software (or hardware) was and that there was some mechanism that made it work. Designers don't learn about UX in school (I don't think, maybe I'm wrong). Part of the reason college doesn't do so well is its serving some imagined "noble" ideal of what people should learn, rather than teaching practical knowledge.
- YuriNiyazov 14y ago
  What I am assuming is that someone who doesn't have a college degree has this knowledge in bits and pieces, accumulated randomly over the years. I don't mean to imply that knowledge accumulated in that way is insufficient in order to be a balls-out startup founder, or have a very high-paying job as a software engineer. I left high school having a lot of programming experience already under my belt, and by then I've read quite a few CS books (the two "programming pearls", and the two "turing omnibus" books), and since then I've met quite a few people like myself, so a large part of what you are saying resonates with me. However, I would argue that every so often there are problems that one encounters in software engineering for which a haphazard, practical education is insufficient, and only a very rigorous, "from the ground-up" education will do. For example, the sort of position that is nowadays advertised as a "data scientist", which is a very complex conglomerate of advanced mathematics and computer science. I've never met someone who is a self-educated, no-college-degree data scientist, or audio-video-photo compression expert, or a computational finance guy. I will readily admit my limited sample, and I would be happy if you proved me wrong. Still - what concerns me is that the general view is that formal education is a waste, and what is consistently left aside is that there are many things that one can do for which a haphazard education is simply not enough.

keiferski 14y ago
1. I don't make the hiring decisions at most companies. Fact is, at most companies outside of the HN-SV-tech startup world, a degree shows that you're competent, and you're facing an uphill battle without one. 2. College exposes you to subjects that you normally wouldn't be exposed to. Being an engineer is a respectable profession, but if you've never actually tried other subjects, how could you know if it's the right career for you? Or for that matter, how would you be exposed to some of the best things in life, like literature and art? Sure, you could just go to the library, but quite frankly, most people don't know what they don't know. College isn't going to make you into a Renaissance man, but a few years of courses in various subjects will help you develop into a more well-rounded person. 3. I agree that outside-the-classroom experience is essential, but working at a random startup company isn't going to expose you to anything except running a business and the narrow niche it occupies. Great stuff for learning about entrepreneurship, but useless when it comes to basically anything else. You aren't going to learn about humanism or the philosophy of science at your web 2.0 app startup. 4. You'd have a degree, which shows a baseline of competence and is required for advancement in many companies. 5. Starting a business is better than working at a little startup, in my opinion. And there's no reason why you can't do one or both while in school. 6. Not arguing with you about grades, but that's missing the point. College shouldn't be about getting good grades, it should be about broadening your experience of life. If you spent 4 years locked in a room studying engineering, then yes, you'd be better off not going.
- nirvana 14y ago
  1. This has not been my experience. I've sent my resume to these kinds of companies "non tech" companies, at various periods and have had no trouble getting gigs with them (I was consulting at the time.) 2. This is pure prejudice. It may be true for many people, but it is not universally true. Some people go to college having no idea what they want to be. That was me and I studied physics but it quickly became clear that software was what I cared about (originally I thought it had been electronics.) It wasn't the exposure to physics that made it clear I wanted to do software. Plus the terrible "exposure" of college to Economics, Sociology, Philosophy, and History turned me off of those subjects for a few years... then later, I started reading up on them, and have become more proficient in 2 of them on my own than I would have been if I'd majored in them in college. College doesn't make you more well rounded. You can sleep thru all those classes. Its not like you can't order all the literature you want from amazon.com, or see great paintings at museums or on the internet. What it does is force you to spend time on things that are outside your subject area-- and that would be valuable if college delivered anything useful about them, but it doesn't. Those classes are a full employment program for liberal arts graduates. 3. I think you're speaking from a lack of experience here- because if you'd ever started and grown a business, you'd know it has an impact on many aspects of your life. For instance, my deep love of history and economics were as a result of starting and growing a tech business. Economics is important to business, for obvious reasons, history less so. Further, your response shows a form of anti-intellectualism that is the real crime of colleges. They actually teach people not to think, in a way, but to believe. The anti-business perspective is a real shame, because its actually anti-life. (It was my study of philosophy that helped me understand that.) 4. A degree shows nothing, and is not required. You only think a degree is required for advancement because you've not been working in the real world. What determines advancement is performance usually, though often politics and the external state of the company with regards to your area of it (Eg: having a good year or not.) Nobody remembers you don't have a degree. 5. Starting a business is better than being an employee of a little startup, which is better than going to college. But yes, you can do either while going to college, though you're trading off the amount of education you'll get in favor of spending time at college. 6. People who need their life experiences broadened by college aren't really going to get it in college. Oh, wait, you're talking about partying, right? At any rate, I think you've got a false dichotomy going here. Whether you are broad minded and well rounded is determined whether you are curious about things and follow up on that curiosity, not being forced to sit thru some really low level "education" in subjects you're not interested in. It comes from pursuing your interests without regard for which subject matter they lead you to.

nirvana 14y ago
>"I founded this web-based start-up. We did OK." isn't remarkable enough. There is no "remarkable enough" hurdle. Anyone who has real world experience has demonstrated far more ability than a degree shows. At best a degree shows some potential theoretical knowledge that someone who didn't go to school might lack. But you started a business that did ok? That is two orders of magnitude more difficult and compelling than an undergraduate degree. >But you need a truly remarkable accomplishment to reach that state. No you don't. The reality is this- once you have a couple years experience on your resume, all any employer (worth a damn) cares about is that experience. Because they know college is really irrelevant to your performance as an employee. You spend 2 years writing Rails Apps and you're applying for a rails position, they're going to talk to you about rails apps, not which frat you pledged. IF you're applying for a C++ position, then they're going to want to know about your C++ knowledge, and that rails app experience shows professional work at a place that kept you around. Those 2 years of work experience (what you could have by the time your friends are sophomores) is far more valuable than 4 years of college, to a prospective employer. >HR departments when they are deciding whether or not you meet the base requirements of the position, or what pay you should receive. Dealt with many of these over decades, was never an issue. In fact, since most of the jobs I applied to in my career involved sending my resume to recruiters or HR departments and others clueless about engineering, you'd think that there being no degree on my resume would have been a factor. But it never was. I always- from the early 1990s to the late 2000s when I stopped deigning to work for others-- had far more interest than I could even interview at. They don't even notice you don't have a degree if you've got a couple years of experience. Maybe at government they have rules that require a degree to get a raise but you don't want to work for incompetent organizations like that anyway. This is the reality: Screeners DON'T EVEN NOTICE YOU DON'T HAVE A DEGREE. You could call them up and say "does one need a college degree for this job?" and they'd naturally say "yes" because they wasted 4 years and 4 tones of money getting one. I always sent my resumes to jobs without regard to whether they required a degree or not. They didn't care. They just put that degree requirement there to screen out the people with no experience. Many times now they put "or equivalent experience." The market reality is this-- four years of employment experience is more valuable than a 4 year degree. >Supervisors and middle/upper management as they consider which employees are likely retention/flight risks This is silly. This is just a prejudice. Hey your first year out of college I had 3 years of employment, obviously showing more time on a job than you had, so obviously less of a "flight risk". Plus if you did think someone might leave, that wouldn't be a reason to not give them a raise, that would be a reason to INCENTIVIZE them to stay! >I've seen really good and smart and (largely) productive people get shafted over the long haul... These issues come up for at least the first 15-20 years of one's career, in my experience. If you do happen to be at a stupid company that discriminates against employees in this fashion, rather than promotes based on performance and ability, then it is fairly easy to get a much better salary by switching to another company. And this is only a factor the first couple years out anyway. >Having a degree, if nothing else, demonstrates a certain amount of "stick-to-itiveness". No, it demonstrates conventional thinking. Four years of actual work experience demonstrates the same commitment, but also far more professionalism and useful training than a degree. >I'd guess that most people forced to make a a hiring or investment decision would at least pause to consider why candidate dwong didn't complete a degree program. You'd guess wrong. They care more about what you've done in the real world. Work experience is far more compelling than the college bubble. >There is also value in the college experience and liberal arts education Its a negative value in my experience. College graduates seem to be more likely to believe without thinking about things, to be unable to accept evidence to the contrary and to be more susceptible to ideology. Its like they are taught to reject science.

keiferski 14y ago
Woah man, you've really got some deep problem with college - you've written half a book on this page. Step out of the black-and-white world where college = follower and dropout = leader. It's perfectly possible to go to college and not be a "coasting weak success." For many people, college is a good experience. An experience worth 100k in debt? Probably not, but that's an extreme example. Maybe college wasn't for you. But it sure seems like you've got a massive chip on your shoulder, especially with lines like "having a college degree shows a certain timidity and inability to think for oneself, to me anyway."
- nirvana 14y ago
  http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem Part of the reason I have written at such length is that the quality of the arguments for the other position are so very, very poor. And oft repeated.
  - anotherthrow 14y ago
    Sorry, but a pet peeve of mine is people claiming 'that's a fallacy' on the internet, without much grip on the kind of reasoning or underlying argumentative structures are work. Suppose I have good reason to believe you are unreliable in your testimony. If so, it's perfectly reasonable for me to assign low credence to your claims. The other guy was basically suggesting we have a good reason to believe you are unreliable, as they were suggesting the effort you've gone to is indicative of a motivation that would make you biased, and therefore unreliable. The correct response is not to engage in claims of fallacies, but to provide further reasons to believe your claims the audience can accept, or suggest you have other motivations. You've gone for the latter option here, but I have to say your option is not as it stands very persuasive. This is not to say your claims are false. But it is to say that more work is needed to make then suasive.
  - paulhauggis 14y ago
    Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make what the poster said an "ad hominem". He made comments based on what you said, not assumptions about your character. If you love college and want everyone to go, then I guess he is wrong.