7 ms·

Fuck college education, start minding your own business instead

33 points by damir 18y ago

tom_rath 18y ago
As a undergraduate bonus, one might learn an additional verb/adjective/noun to use when expressing one's dissatisfaction.
Mystalic 18y ago
As I just posted on your blog: I'm sorry to be harsh, but you're completely off-base with this rant. "College Education is a Waste of Time" Just like anything else, it's how you utilize that education. I built relationships with VCs, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, media, and many people who have been helpful and will continue to be helpful later in life. I built a company while in college. I lived my life while in college. People can't help but hear me out because of my specific college affiliation and my accomplishments there. Everything's a waste of time if you don't know how to use it. "College education is just a piece of paper" No, it's not. It's a series of relationships, friendships, and knowledge that people can and do use. It's a door opener. VCs already know a lot about my qualifications when I walk into the room. The only person that can devalue that "piece of paper" is you. "What is there after college?" Whatever you want to do. I took the entrepreneurial path, not the "salary" path you generalize with. I'll end it there, but the point is, you have it completely wrong. Nothing's a waste of time if you build meaningful relationships, knowledge, and happiness during that time.
- lbrandy 18y ago
  College is more than just a networking opportunity. College exposes you to the vast world of ideas that you didn't know existed. It's a well established fact that the more incompetent someone is, the more confident they are in their own competence. This can be directly applied to knowledge. The more ignorant someone is, the more confident they are in their expertise. College is the place you go to that educates you enough to realize how little you know. How little you will ever know. A college education is what turns people from ignorant and arrogant into basically ignorant but humble and ready to learn some domain well enough to be truly considered an expert. It gives you a lifetime of ideas to explore in detail, when time permits. This includes both the ideas of your professional domain and its neighbors, but also the domains of the general public good (like economics). This post ignores the broader issue. It pretends the purpose of college is friggin vocational job training.. as in.. you decide when you are 18 what job you want, and then you train for that job, get that job, and work at it the rest of your life...
lbrandy 18y ago
Wow. Just wow. The purpose of college isn't vocational training. It never was. My college education is not, was not, and never will be "a piece of paper". That's just plain ignorance. The kind of ignorance that just might get cured by someone who cared enough to get a decent college education.
- okeumeni 18y ago
  I guess the surge of college dropout IT millionaire’s gets to the head of lot of people. Besides IT and arts in general I don’t know of any field where you can drop out of college and not end up cleaning dishes at local restaurant. College kids beware, education is the foundation of whatever you want to become in your adult life.
  - strlen 18y ago
    They're also drop-outs: not people who never went in the first place. Most dropped (and the typical success stories talk about dropping out of graduate school) out because they had something else to run to, not something to run from.
  - ahoyhere 18y ago
    The word "educate" comes from "educe," to pull forth. That's not how universities work any more. Anyway, you'd be surprised at how many successful people in all kinds of fields do not have a degree, or don't have a degree in the field they're in. They just don't make the news as often (cough except for Richard Branson cough). You're right that there's a selection bias, but you missed the other selection bias.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      The word "educate" comes from "educe," to pull forth. Also related is the word "eduction", as in "the eduction of relations and correlates", Charles Spearman's definition of acting intelligence (1927). http://www.google.com/search?q=eduction+relations+correlates+spearman http://www.google.com/search?q=eduction+relations+correlates...
- 18y ago
TweedHeads 18y ago
I agree. Don't waste time and money in college. Start your own business. But keep yourself learning all your life. Online, business and management skills. Offline, social skills, the power of word. New times we're living, adapt and evolve.
cianw2000 18y ago
Really? The things I learnt at university were priceless - even though it was economics it just gets your brain trained. And it's a signally device - you have a good degree from a good uni; people flock to you.
- likpok 18y ago
  Another thing: It's easier to get a good job/find good people at a good uni, because that's where the good people are. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. In addition to that whole "education" thing they have going there.
wheels 18y ago
Ooh, this meme again! Now, everyone line up and form teams and repeat your arguments from last time! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115158 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115158 I think this one does win a prize for being the least articulate version of the three. ;-)
mdasen 18y ago
Part of the issue is that many places use a bachelor's degree as a screen for employees. As a token that gets you past one turnstile in the job hunt, it is worth a ton! It also takes a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has that instinct or motivation. I'm a big fan of ideas to change the way post-secondary education is done. Right now, it's expensive, time-consuming, and undertaken when you don't know what you want or need. However, right now HR people just love that BA and that BA puts you in a certain class (beyond work or money, but in terms of associates/friends). And people are willing to pay up for that. How do you get the HR industry to start valuing alternative modes of education and experience? Our universities have a reputation built over hundreds of years - if not for educating people, then for screening intelligence. It's a wonderful essay, I guess I'm just cautious and would want more social change around the issue before I felt comfortable following this path.
ideamonk 18y ago
College is a big lesson in time-management for me, these days i'm trying to figure out ways to maximize the time I spend on side projects and work besides managing good grades at college which eats 12 hrs a day. Its gradually leading me to a routined life where I plan each day and loads of sticky notes find their way on my wall :) hmm... what about learning to collaborate and organize events, we can't do that so easily, schools and colleges provide excellent opportunity for that! :)
mojuba 18y ago
Fuck business, go get some education and become a decent Homo Sapiens.
- alecco 18y ago
  A non-exclusive cheaper alternative: * Travel. * Read a *lot* (borrow books, use libraries, read online.) * Write some. * Make something happen be it for money or just to help someone else.
DarkShikari 18y ago
This seems like a classic troll blog--write an extremely inflammatory headline that vastly overgeneralizes the subject, knowing it will annoy a whole lot of people. It's a great way to get your blog posted on tons of social media sites and jack up your ad revenue (or, in this case, get more people to see your portfolio). Hacker News should be above falling for this sort of thing.
cosmo7 18y ago
Bad spelling and foul language. Is this a parody? Reminds me of "two years ago I couldn't even spell engineer, now I are one."
- jwesley 18y ago
  Yes, I can't resist saying that maybe with a college education you could spell rudimentary words like "business".
smydsmyd 18y ago
The guy programs in Ruby and says you don't need college. I see this a lot of Ruby people. They seem to hate all forms of education. It is like they couldn't take it so they have to rally against it. I'm not sure why it is mostly rubyists who seem to say this, maybe ruby was the easiest thing to get into when you just can't cut classroom learning.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
- krschultz 18y ago
  It makes you sound like a philistine. I enjoy learning things in college that have no value for my future career. I love talking to people with very different plans from mine who learn things that have nothing to do with engineering. Learning is a pursuit in and of itself that is extremely rewarding, and I would never give up my college years even if it does cost a lot.
dan_sim 18y ago
I'm totally opposed to that. You just can't burn steps like that. What do I learn in high school? Almost nothing. So, I should never go to high school and "start my own business" and make money. That's complete nonsense. There are plenty of things you can learn in college. If you know nothing about nothing, you'll have to start your business AND pay someone else to do the job because you can do nothing. This is starting with a handicap. And... college is fun! You don't have to be an adult as early in your life.
CalmQuiet 18y ago
Well college can expose you to good communication practices... For example: remembering to spellcheck or even to proofread -- the latter helping with the impression you make by adopting conventional presentations (like "business") rather than idiosyncratic ones (like "businness") -- with possible benefits for coding as well? ;)
lhorie 18y ago
I think the flaw in the argument is the author's generalization of anedoctal evidence as if everyone was the same. Medical schools is not pointless. Getting a degree because many employers require it (as opposed to being stuck in customer service roles) is not pointless. There are many ways that people can make the most out of their degree, and many ways to waste it as well. It's very easy to dismiss something as being useless, but ironically, entrepreneurship is about doing the exact opposite: finding and exploring value where others see it.
ideamonk 18y ago
Well... as far as my college is concerned, yeah it does eat up a big chunk (8am to 4:30 pm, on 3 days a week) of my 24 hrs, plus till 3 years of 4 year course I need to study chemistry and physics along with core subjects, and surprisingly environmental science too is pushed into CS here, 4 credits (highest) for env. science... and chemistry shares same 3 credits with other topics like OS and Algorithms. I wonder why my education system fails to see the importance of less load on students and giving us free time to experiment, self-learn and spend more time in understanding what is important for us. Plus a semester in my college has 5 tests, so every month we are really busy... its really hard managing time like this ! Imagine a student whose parents can't provide funds due to some reasons, how can he ever self finance or add some independence/comfort to his life! While my friends in foreign universities do find great part time opportunities and free time to work some side-projects, this kind of scenario is majorly lacking in India :( most of my classmates just concentrate on getting 9+ gpa,don't even care to look at whats going on in the world outside... since grading is competitive, this creates a pressure on one and all to be at a nice position compared to those who give 24x7 to mugging based syllabus and never ever dream to achieve any self earned practical experience which I believe to be the best form of learning. The case is not the same in premier institutes in India such as IITs, NITs and BITS. Getting to those colleges is achievable only after beating a huge crowd of super high IQ people. This can't be possible for everyone, anyways my point is the private institutes are really messing up with our lives as in case of my college due to outdated ideas and thoughts of people who run it. Major issues for my college are discipline which translates to - 1. no use of laptops in the hostel for first 2 years of college.... 2. Uniforms on 2 days a week. 3. ban on jeans and tshirt 4. no cellphones 5. no girls and guys hanging out 6. not getting treated like adults even when we are 20 years old... 7. many more like hostlers standing till 3am as punishment for making some noise on the last day of 2008 Now that really makes me think, my college is stopping me from getting rich and advancing in my own views! I could've learnt so much more if I was in a college that is run by people who are more broadminded and understand how education and knowledge are different and respect what Einstein said in "On Education" and aim for a better advanced society for future rather than creating huge crowd of people with zero creativity, experience and almost ditto common skills. The best some screwd up colleges can do for people like me is relax the timings and test, syllabus load and let me have some college/life/fun ratio. BUT COLLEGE EDUCATION IS NO WASTE OF TIME EVEN IF THESE STUPID ADD-ONS ARE ATTACHED TO THE ONE WHICH I GET :)
jfarmer 18y ago
Is there a word for when you improperly generalize your personal experience to the whole human race? My time at college was excellent for a number of reasons, and where I am today is a direct result of decisions I made while studying there.
ivanzhao 18y ago
apparently he doesn't know how to REALLY learn in college yet (but it's fairly tricky nowadays you have to admit)
strlen 18y ago
Life isn't about getting vocational training for money. At the least, an education (university or not) could teach you that there are ways to state your point beyond using "fuck" in the title of a blog post: if you're talking about "selling" yourself, you may start off by not being insulting. Second, if you're just talking about vocational training and job preparation, a college degree in some field and from some schools can show that you have the capacity for approaching a topic with mathematical rigour and know the fundamentals of Computer Science (as opposed to fashionable frameworks and APIs). There are many other ways to do that - but a college education also buys you a great deal of free time (something that hackers in college probably won't realize until they're done), exposure to smart people and new ideas; finally it's a chance to fulfill other intellectual curiosities (take courses in other sciences, history, philosophy, so forth). Third, starting your business does not conflict with going to college. More often than often than not, I've seen people who have never attended a university (as opposed to attended and dropped out when they had something more compelling) simply take full time jobs right away, usually in systems administration or web front-end development. Both of these are essential and great skills to have (especially in a start-up), but you can't build a product on that expertise alone: you can build a web design or systems administration consulting shop, but consulting won't (usually) bring you an exit.
jscn 18y ago
For a guy who is apparently so pro-business, it's instructive to see another post on his blog about how to pirate books (the post doesn't even involve an interesting technical aspect, it's just "google for a pdf"). Apparently he is of the opinion that people should pay him for the product of his business, but he doen't need to pay other business owners for their products. Perhaps a little education might have given him the critical thinking skills to see the problem with this position.
trapper 18y ago
Fuck all education. Start your own business instead of going to preschool
kuvkir 18y ago
the link doesn't work, redirects to kleko.si :((

33 points by damir 18y ago

As a undergraduate bonus, one might learn an additional verb/adjective/noun to use when expressing one's dissatisfaction.

Mystalic 18y ago

As I just posted on your blog: I'm sorry to be harsh, but you're completely off-base with this rant. "College Education is a Waste of Time" Just like anything else, it's how you utilize that education. I built relationships with VCs, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, media, and many people who have been helpful and will continue to be helpful later in life. I built a company while in college. I lived my life while in college. People can't help but hear me out because of my specific college affiliation and my accomplishments there. Everything's a waste of time if you don't know how to use it. "College education is just a piece of paper" No, it's not. It's a series of relationships, friendships, and knowledge that people can and do use. It's a door opener. VCs already know a lot about my qualifications when I walk into the room. The only person that can devalue that "piece of paper" is you. "What is there after college?" Whatever you want to do. I took the entrepreneurial path, not the "salary" path you generalize with. I'll end it there, but the point is, you have it completely wrong. Nothing's a waste of time if you build meaningful relationships, knowledge, and happiness during that time.

lbrandy 18y ago
College is more than just a networking opportunity. College exposes you to the vast world of ideas that you didn't know existed. It's a well established fact that the more incompetent someone is, the more confident they are in their own competence. This can be directly applied to knowledge. The more ignorant someone is, the more confident they are in their expertise. College is the place you go to that educates you enough to realize how little you know. How little you will ever know. A college education is what turns people from ignorant and arrogant into basically ignorant but humble and ready to learn some domain well enough to be truly considered an expert. It gives you a lifetime of ideas to explore in detail, when time permits. This includes both the ideas of your professional domain and its neighbors, but also the domains of the general public good (like economics). This post ignores the broader issue. It pretends the purpose of college is friggin vocational job training.. as in.. you decide when you are 18 what job you want, and then you train for that job, get that job, and work at it the rest of your life...

lbrandy 18y ago

Wow. Just wow. The purpose of college isn't vocational training. It never was. My college education is not, was not, and never will be "a piece of paper". That's just plain ignorance. The kind of ignorance that just might get cured by someone who cared enough to get a decent college education.

okeumeni 18y ago
I guess the surge of college dropout IT millionaire’s gets to the head of lot of people. Besides IT and arts in general I don’t know of any field where you can drop out of college and not end up cleaning dishes at local restaurant. College kids beware, education is the foundation of whatever you want to become in your adult life.
- strlen 18y ago
  They're also drop-outs: not people who never went in the first place. Most dropped (and the typical success stories talk about dropping out of graduate school) out because they had something else to run to, not something to run from.
- ahoyhere 18y ago
  The word "educate" comes from "educe," to pull forth. That's not how universities work any more. Anyway, you'd be surprised at how many successful people in all kinds of fields do not have a degree, or don't have a degree in the field they're in. They just don't make the news as often (cough except for Richard Branson cough). You're right that there's a selection bias, but you missed the other selection bias.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    The word "educate" comes from "educe," to pull forth. Also related is the word "eduction", as in "the eduction of relations and correlates", Charles Spearman's definition of acting intelligence (1927). http://www.google.com/search?q=eduction+relations+correlates+spearman http://www.google.com/search?q=eduction+relations+correlates...
18y ago

TweedHeads 18y ago

I agree. Don't waste time and money in college. Start your own business. But keep yourself learning all your life. Online, business and management skills. Offline, social skills, the power of word. New times we're living, adapt and evolve.

cianw2000 18y ago

Really? The things I learnt at university were priceless - even though it was economics it just gets your brain trained. And it's a signally device - you have a good degree from a good uni; people flock to you.

likpok 18y ago
Another thing: It's easier to get a good job/find good people at a good uni, because that's where the good people are. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. In addition to that whole "education" thing they have going there.

wheels 18y ago

Ooh, this meme again! Now, everyone line up and form teams and repeat your arguments from last time! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115158 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=115158 I think this one does win a prize for being the least articulate version of the three. ;-)

mdasen 18y ago

Part of the issue is that many places use a bachelor's degree as a screen for employees. As a token that gets you past one turnstile in the job hunt, it is worth a ton! It also takes a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has that instinct or motivation. I'm a big fan of ideas to change the way post-secondary education is done. Right now, it's expensive, time-consuming, and undertaken when you don't know what you want or need. However, right now HR people just love that BA and that BA puts you in a certain class (beyond work or money, but in terms of associates/friends). And people are willing to pay up for that. How do you get the HR industry to start valuing alternative modes of education and experience? Our universities have a reputation built over hundreds of years - if not for educating people, then for screening intelligence. It's a wonderful essay, I guess I'm just cautious and would want more social change around the issue before I felt comfortable following this path.

ideamonk 18y ago

College is a big lesson in time-management for me, these days i'm trying to figure out ways to maximize the time I spend on side projects and work besides managing good grades at college which eats 12 hrs a day. Its gradually leading me to a routined life where I plan each day and loads of sticky notes find their way on my wall :) hmm... what about learning to collaborate and organize events, we can't do that so easily, schools and colleges provide excellent opportunity for that! :)

mojuba 18y ago

Fuck business, go get some education and become a decent Homo Sapiens.

alecco 18y ago
A non-exclusive cheaper alternative: * Travel. * Read a *lot* (borrow books, use libraries, read online.) * Write some. * Make something happen be it for money or just to help someone else.

DarkShikari 18y ago

This seems like a classic troll blog--write an extremely inflammatory headline that vastly overgeneralizes the subject, knowing it will annoy a whole lot of people. It's a great way to get your blog posted on tons of social media sites and jack up your ad revenue (or, in this case, get more people to see your portfolio). Hacker News should be above falling for this sort of thing.

cosmo7 18y ago

Bad spelling and foul language. Is this a parody? Reminds me of "two years ago I couldn't even spell engineer, now I are one."

jwesley 18y ago
Yes, I can't resist saying that maybe with a college education you could spell rudimentary words like "business".

smydsmyd 18y ago

The guy programs in Ruby and says you don't need college. I see this a lot of Ruby people. They seem to hate all forms of education. It is like they couldn't take it so they have to rally against it. I'm not sure why it is mostly rubyists who seem to say this, maybe ruby was the easiest thing to get into when you just can't cut classroom learning.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

krschultz 18y ago
It makes you sound like a philistine. I enjoy learning things in college that have no value for my future career. I love talking to people with very different plans from mine who learn things that have nothing to do with engineering. Learning is a pursuit in and of itself that is extremely rewarding, and I would never give up my college years even if it does cost a lot.

dan_sim 18y ago

I'm totally opposed to that. You just can't burn steps like that. What do I learn in high school? Almost nothing. So, I should never go to high school and "start my own business" and make money. That's complete nonsense. There are plenty of things you can learn in college. If you know nothing about nothing, you'll have to start your business AND pay someone else to do the job because you can do nothing. This is starting with a handicap. And... college is fun! You don't have to be an adult as early in your life.

CalmQuiet 18y ago

Well college can expose you to good communication practices... For example: remembering to spellcheck or even to proofread -- the latter helping with the impression you make by adopting conventional presentations (like "business") rather than idiosyncratic ones (like "businness") -- with possible benefits for coding as well? ;)

lhorie 18y ago

I think the flaw in the argument is the author's generalization of anedoctal evidence as if everyone was the same. Medical schools is not pointless. Getting a degree because many employers require it (as opposed to being stuck in customer service roles) is not pointless. There are many ways that people can make the most out of their degree, and many ways to waste it as well. It's very easy to dismiss something as being useless, but ironically, entrepreneurship is about doing the exact opposite: finding and exploring value where others see it.

ideamonk 18y ago

Well... as far as my college is concerned, yeah it does eat up a big chunk (8am to 4:30 pm, on 3 days a week) of my 24 hrs, plus till 3 years of 4 year course I need to study chemistry and physics along with core subjects, and surprisingly environmental science too is pushed into CS here, 4 credits (highest) for env. science... and chemistry shares same 3 credits with other topics like OS and Algorithms. I wonder why my education system fails to see the importance of less load on students and giving us free time to experiment, self-learn and spend more time in understanding what is important for us. Plus a semester in my college has 5 tests, so every month we are really busy... its really hard managing time like this ! Imagine a student whose parents can't provide funds due to some reasons, how can he ever self finance or add some independence/comfort to his life! While my friends in foreign universities do find great part time opportunities and free time to work some side-projects, this kind of scenario is majorly lacking in India :( most of my classmates just concentrate on getting 9+ gpa,don't even care to look at whats going on in the world outside... since grading is competitive, this creates a pressure on one and all to be at a nice position compared to those who give 24x7 to mugging based syllabus and never ever dream to achieve any self earned practical experience which I believe to be the best form of learning. The case is not the same in premier institutes in India such as IITs, NITs and BITS. Getting to those colleges is achievable only after beating a huge crowd of super high IQ people. This can't be possible for everyone, anyways my point is the private institutes are really messing up with our lives as in case of my college due to outdated ideas and thoughts of people who run it. Major issues for my college are discipline which translates to - 1. no use of laptops in the hostel for first 2 years of college.... 2. Uniforms on 2 days a week. 3. ban on jeans and tshirt 4. no cellphones 5. no girls and guys hanging out 6. not getting treated like adults even when we are 20 years old... 7. many more like hostlers standing till 3am as punishment for making some noise on the last day of 2008 Now that really makes me think, my college is stopping me from getting rich and advancing in my own views! I could've learnt so much more if I was in a college that is run by people who are more broadminded and understand how education and knowledge are different and respect what Einstein said in "On Education" and aim for a better advanced society for future rather than creating huge crowd of people with zero creativity, experience and almost ditto common skills. The best some screwd up colleges can do for people like me is relax the timings and test, syllabus load and let me have some college/life/fun ratio. BUT COLLEGE EDUCATION IS NO WASTE OF TIME EVEN IF THESE STUPID ADD-ONS ARE ATTACHED TO THE ONE WHICH I GET :)

jfarmer 18y ago

Is there a word for when you improperly generalize your personal experience to the whole human race? My time at college was excellent for a number of reasons, and where I am today is a direct result of decisions I made while studying there.

ivanzhao 18y ago

apparently he doesn't know how to REALLY learn in college yet (but it's fairly tricky nowadays you have to admit)

strlen 18y ago

Life isn't about getting vocational training for money. At the least, an education (university or not) could teach you that there are ways to state your point beyond using "fuck" in the title of a blog post: if you're talking about "selling" yourself, you may start off by not being insulting. Second, if you're just talking about vocational training and job preparation, a college degree in some field and from some schools can show that you have the capacity for approaching a topic with mathematical rigour and know the fundamentals of Computer Science (as opposed to fashionable frameworks and APIs). There are many other ways to do that - but a college education also buys you a great deal of free time (something that hackers in college probably won't realize until they're done), exposure to smart people and new ideas; finally it's a chance to fulfill other intellectual curiosities (take courses in other sciences, history, philosophy, so forth). Third, starting your business does not conflict with going to college. More often than often than not, I've seen people who have never attended a university (as opposed to attended and dropped out when they had something more compelling) simply take full time jobs right away, usually in systems administration or web front-end development. Both of these are essential and great skills to have (especially in a start-up), but you can't build a product on that expertise alone: you can build a web design or systems administration consulting shop, but consulting won't (usually) bring you an exit.

jscn 18y ago

For a guy who is apparently so pro-business, it's instructive to see another post on his blog about how to pirate books (the post doesn't even involve an interesting technical aspect, it's just "google for a pdf"). Apparently he is of the opinion that people should pay him for the product of his business, but he doen't need to pay other business owners for their products. Perhaps a little education might have given him the critical thinking skills to see the problem with this position.

trapper 18y ago

Fuck all education. Start your own business instead of going to preschool

kuvkir 18y ago

the link doesn't work, redirects to kleko.si :((