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College was my biggest mistake

• danielrm26 14y ago
  I often wonder how many people who write these kinds of posts actually benefitted greatly from college in ways they don't understand. For example, most people who didn't go to college can't write a blog post like this one. In short, I think most people who can write great posts about how college didn't help them actually gained a lot of their most valuable (if intangible) skills from their college experience.
  • CubicleNinjas 14y ago
    Do you ever wonder how many assumptions you're making about those who've not completed college? I don't mean this in an insulting way, but I feel it should be noted that it is quite degrading. Your comment assumes: 1) This writer is not self-aware. They haven't taken stock of the full impact of college. 2) Other writers, who also write similar posts, are also not self-aware. This trend is not that college is in fact bad, but that many people who leave college fail at recognizing the true benefits. This is an epidemic. 3) That most people who don't attend college are unable to write well. 4) On top of the items above, that you feel you know more than this person about their own life. This all feels to me like hefty cognitive bias to me.
  • tkahn6 14y ago
    > For example, most people who didn't go to college can't write a blog post like yours. I'm fairly certain this has more to do with the average type of person that doesn't go to college rather than any causal link between Freshman Composition and good writing skills.
    • enjo 14y ago
      Do you really believe that a collegiate level composition class doesn't improve writing skills at least a little bit?
      • tkahn6 14y ago
        That's somewhat of a straw man. I have no doubt it improves writing skills at least a little bit on average. I contend that it doesn't make a difference in any absolute sense. I received AP credit and thus passed out of Freshman Composition so my experience is slightly different. In my AP class, everyone's writing skills improved but no one who was a bad writer became a good writer. If you ask any author the most effective way to become a better writer they'll tell you to read. Most people don't like to read and thus (I believe there is a causal link here) most people are bad writers. It takes much more than two semesters of Freshman Comp. to radically improve ones writing skills. Quality writing is something that you internalize over many years.
        • sopooneo 14y ago
          I more often hear they say to write. Though I'll concede reading a lot is also important.
        • Crake 14y ago
          Yeah, I agree with this. My English skills have always been top of the line (99% on standardized tests, 5s on APs, etc), and I fully accredit this to the fact that I have been reading CONSTANTLY since I was little. You have to develop an ability to hear the written word inside your head as your eyes move across the page--a lot of lower functioning people don't seem to have this, as indicated by the bizarre sentence constructions they vomit all over their word processor. A knack for sentence flow isn't practiced, it is absorbed. Want to be a good writer? You need a vocabulary to match. Those of us who acquired extensive vocabularies through osmosis can tell when a lesser person has whipped out the thesaurus in an attempt to sound "smart." (usually, the fancy words they try to insert just end up hilariously misused, since they don't understand the different shades of meaning attached to them. You can only get that through observation of the word in its natural setting.) As anecdata, I know someone with an English degree from our flagship state school who can't manage to comprehend the difference between "its" and "it's," "your" and "you're," and routinely mangles grammar in a manner absolutely horrifying even before you take into account the fact they studied English for OVER FOUR YEARS and still never managed to grasp the proper use of the possessive.
    • danielrm26 14y ago
      Possibly. But I have seen college itself (not just dedicated writing classes) help people write immeasurably. This is because writing is involved in most everything one does there. It's an extension of high school. Same concept.
      • bricestacey 14y ago
        My highschool courses were all graded on essays except the hard sciences. College is not the only place to learn to write. I also remember my 5th grade teacher telling me we all deserved As (for average instead of E for excellent) but that if anyone were to have an E it was me or this other girl. Writing is encouraged at all ages, not just college.
    • jmathai 14y ago
      Causation and correlation makes this entire topic grey. The truth is for 99% of people college is the best option for them. They'll get a job paying a decent salary, with a better work environment and the possibility of upward mobility if they so choose. Better than had they not gone to college. There's a small, no miniscule, fraction of people who are motivated enough that they can achieve the same or more without the institutional learning and degree. * I never finished college but benefited from my 3 years spent there.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • sunwooz 14y ago
    Are you saying that you can't learn to write without going to college?
    • danielrm26 14y ago
      You can learn everything you learn in college somewhere else. But it's nowhere near as easy.
      • sunwooz 14y ago
        I disagree with what you say, but a lot of people tend to agree with you. I'm assuming that most people haven't actually tried teaching themselves something to know what's more effective.
      • suresk 14y ago
        I would also argue that while learning stuff on your own is doable for most people, it is even more important to know what you need to learn and to stick with learning it, even if it doesn't seem immediately useful. This is one thing I think CS programs provide that is really, really hard for people to do on their own. As programs like Udacity and Coursera get bigger and more mature, I think this is one area where they can really add a lot of value: giving people a roadmap and an external way to gauge their progress.
  • ctide 14y ago
    It's true, going to college for a semester taught me that I never, ever want to write java for a living.
  • marknutter 14y ago
    Most college educated people I meet can't write half as well as the OP.
• taskstrike 14y ago
  More challenging colleges teach you far more than you can teach yourselves. A top 5 computer science school churns out a much more capable and knowledgeable computer science major who is both well versed in theory and knows how computers actually works down to the bytes. Kudos to the writer, his ability to hustle is strong. There is more than one kind of talent.
  • sillysaurus 14y ago
    I am well versed in theory and know how computers work down to the semiconductor level. (An aside: I am eternally grateful to Feynman for his wonderful book on that subject.) Incidentally, I dropped out of high school my Junior year after I landed a programming internship at a local game studio. I have a GED. I would say I'm capable of being put to work on any software project in any domain and in short order attain a high degree of productivity. I spend my days researching optics and color theory. I'm the process of building a graphics research lab in my basement, and my purpose in life is to one day write a program which generates images that appear so real and so detailed that the observer would be convinced they were captured by a digital camcorder, rather than output from a 3D renderer. Computers have been my life and passion for well over a decade. I'm 24.
    • ulyssesgrant 14y ago
      Like many people have said, this is very anecdotal. Not all drop outs are as motivated or as capable as you seem to be. At the same time, neither are all college graduates. However, graduating from a top 5 cs program will at least ensure that you have learned a good deal of information from a wide variety of topics in computer science.
      • sillysaurus 14y ago
        Graduating from a top 5 cs program will at least ensure that you have learned a good deal of information from a wide variety of topics in computer science. As will books: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/books/list.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/books/list.html It's been my experience that the most capable members of a team have all shared a passion for learning combined with open mind. The fact that the top schools tend to select for those traits have led people to conflate credentials with excellence.
• thmcmahon 14y ago
  The problem with this line of argument is that it is anecdotal. Yes, it’s great that this guy has gone on to earn a lot of money, but that result is not typical. This is the data from Australia: Over the working lifetime of a university graduate the financial gain generated from income is more than $1.5 million or 70 per cent more than those whose highest qualification is Year 12, even after taking into account the foregone earnings of students while they study. (http://www.youth.nsw.gov.au/__data/page/1165/whatpricetheclevercountry.pdf http://www.youth.nsw.gov.au/__data/page/1165/whatpricethecle...) Bruce Chapman, the designer of Australia's income contingent education loan system, found that the Return on Investment of higher education in Australia is between 10 and 6 per cent. (http://vital.new.voced.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/ngv:25834/SOURCE2 http://vital.new.voced.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download...)
  • shasta 14y ago
    The problem with such studies is that they don't demonstrate causation: does college make you successful or do most successful people just go to college?
  • nopassrecover 14y ago
    Right, but it seems more accurate to attribute the income discrepancy to the productivity of those people, rather than "oh you went to uni here's extra money". This means we need to decide if "people who are super-productive tend to go to uni at some point" or "uni produces super-productive people".
  • pitt1980 14y ago
    different viewpoint on ROI calculations: The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don’t graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let’s look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn’t go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn’t? If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I’d end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it’s the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread. There are other factors as well. I won’t be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of. So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-.... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par.... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle....
• RealGeek 14y ago
  I commend Steve's effort and hard work. I am a dropout; and we have recruited dropouts, engineering graduates, MBAs and students pursuing a degree distance a learning program at our startup. The best recruits were actually the distance learning students and dropouts by far. I always recommend young hackers to take a year or two off before going to college and figure out what they want to do. For most jobs in Internet, a University degree is hardly helpful. In fact, you can actually learn more by working at start for a year than you would learn in 4 years in college. An undergraduate programmer who can network his way to a job can get salary similar to graduates. The only challenge will be to network and demonstrate your skills because recruiters won't be selling you.
  • danielrm26 14y ago
    I think even great programmers who get solid on-the-job training doing a startup job will have major gaps as they progress. There is something to be said for learning fundamentals.
    • RealGeek 14y ago
      Is there anything we can't learn from Internet? Give a kid access to computer and Internet, and he will find his way out. This was experimented with kids in Indian slums, who never went to school and can not even read/write. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.html http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.htm...
      • dinkumthinkum 14y ago
        Oh poppycock. This was Carnegie's line, only it was about libraries. Without the Internet, libraries were there for everyone to use. How are kids that can't read going ... Oh come on, can we stop with this "The Internet solves all of our education problems" nonsense? I know it is, because this well educated populace doesn't exist and yet the Internet does. I submit to you that there is very little you need to use the Internet to learn and I also submit that by your reasoning about how easy it is for people to learn then if if they were to purchase physical books, all they would need would be the "canon" of Penguin Press books. But yet people have never done this en masse or even in any significant other than ... wait for it .. outliers. :) So, basically, the whole view is just one big unproven naked assertion.
• jmduke 14y ago
  Most articles and comments about higher education commit the gravest sin of thought: they assume what is right for one person (namely, the author) must be right for everyone. I'm enrolled in a public institution pursuing a double major, working two jobs because I'm also middle class. I have a good -- not great -- GPA, and I get to do amazing and interesting things every day; I got into programming after volunteering with a CS major -- I learned about HN, ironically, from my Finance professor. After drudging through a K-12 curricula which routinely belittled the entire point of academia, I get to be surrounded by people who are just as hungry and passionate and brilliant as I am (often, they're more so.) It's unequivocally been the best three years of my life. A lot of people are realizing college isn't a universal gateway to a better life, and that's good -- I don't particularly think it was meant to be one. I'm happy that the author made his way. "College was my biggest mistake?" I'm glad you got out, then. But it sure as hell isn't mine.
  • aik 14y ago
    I'm glad this has been said -- this is very true. I have two comments: >> "College was my biggest mistake?" ...it sure as hell isn't mine. How do you know it's not yours? Or rather, how can you be so sure? Firstly, opportunity cost is an impossible thing to calculate with certainty, especially when dealing with something so incredibly costly both in terms of time and money. If you find yourself reasonably discerning, and learning efficiently what you are out to learn, and enjoying it and life, then great, you're likely in a good place. "Double majoring", having an OK GPA, working two jobs and being middle class -- these all say absolutely nothing about whether you're making a mistake or not. >> I get to be surrounded by people who are just as hungry and passionate and brilliant as I am (often, they're more so.) Now that means a lot, and congrats for finding a place that has such an unusual but hugely beneficial atmosphere!
    • sp332 14y ago
      The job lead I got from my college advisor alone was worth the opportunity cost. And the humanities classes opened my mind up in ways wikipedia just can't dream of.
• bithive123 14y ago
  It seems like most of the people who complain about college received poor education or were not receptive to education in the first place. College isn't for everyone but there are a great number of us whose lives have been greatly enriched by our years at good liberal arts colleges. If you're evaluating college through the lens of some kind of personal business plan then it's not a clear win but if you care about the life of the mind there are few substitutes to studying with your peers under passionate dedicated professors. Whether or not someone should go to *IT or get a CS degree so that they can pursue a technical career is mostly a function of the person and their capacity to engage in self-directed learning.
  • technology 14y ago
    +1 I live in asia and I'm a dropout. And now after some years of reading great books I found on amazon and other courses from the teaching company, I regret gotten a bad education. In my country the quality of teachers is not very good, plus the teaching is not holistic. The books they use to teach is just plain bad. The people you hang out with or befriend also influence your attitude and worldview. I find here in my country bad schools and colleges have students with either bad attitude or worldview. They were not smart. Also I was also stuck in a kind of catch-22, I too had a bad worldview and lived in a bad neighborhood which further got worse when I tried to hang with not so smart people. How do you change yourself when your whole neighborhood and peer group have weird beliefs and worldview, its like hanging out with people from Afghanistan/Iraq or something. It is my firm belief that everyone should study philosophy or humanities. Just to learn critical thinking and "how to think" part of it, without it all the other STEM subjects(science, tech, engineering, math) just doesn't connect well. Checking the beliefs and assumptions you hold dear to yourself is very important. Systems thinking is very important. Every subject interconnected to each other. Plus the type of people you hang out with is very important.
• DIVx0 14y ago
  Going to college (as an adult) was by far the best thing I have ever done for myself. I already had a career and thought I knew it all but the experience of working on theory and mixing in with some seriously smart people really pushed me to places that I would never have gotten to on my own. Also I owe much of my current success to the relationships I formed during my time at university.
• technotony 14y ago
  If you want to hustle, create great internet products and live a creative free, independent life then college and it's massive debt may not be right for you. But if you want a lower risk, stable life with good long term prospects then college may not be such a bad idea. One of the things college (actually my masters degree) taught me is that the answer to most important questions is 'it depends'. There is no one size fits all approach to most big decisions in life - that I think is wonderful because it leads to such diversity.
• rmk2 14y ago
  The most interesting thing about this is the feedback loop. These kind of stories seem to strike a chord and in turn more people will post about this. Yet the discussion always goes along the same lines. The problem is that all of these are unavoidably anecdotal in nature and thus something that is basically impossible to discuss. Sure, it might have worked out for some and might not have worked out for others. The problem is that everyone has their own experience with this, which basically confirms or denies other anecdotal evidence. These posts pop on HN a lot, yet I find them useless. Sure it worked out (or didn't), but nobody is able to tell how things would have been if the poster had stayed in college (or in other cases, if he had left college). All these submissions seem to do is get the "anti-college" crowd on here happy, giving them more anecdotal evidence that really, see, all I ever said is right because that dude had a similar experience while at the same time bringing out everyone for whom college did do something to scream at those who disagrees. Repeat ad infinitum...
  • marknutter 14y ago
    I think these types of posts are becoming popular because we all grew up under the belief that college was the only way to become successful, and it's becoming increasingly clear that not only is that not true, it can be harmful in some cases. This is a big shift from the thinking of previous generations and probably amplified by the current looming student loan crisis and poor economy. Yes, college works for some and not for others, but only recently has the suggestion that maybe college isn't a golden ticket to success started to sound pretty reasonable.
    • re_todd 14y ago
      I think you have a good point. I grew up never hearing anything negative about college, only positive things. All the adults I knew, when I was young, who went to college had nice houses, cars, vacations, etc. Then me and some friends went to college, and many of us were not so fortunate. Bearing large debt that keeps us close to poverty, seeing people that have almost half our IQ, half our discipline, half our ethics making more money than us ... it was a shockingly rude awakening. And when people have such a shift in thinking, we are drawn to articles that try to explain and make sense of our shattered perceptions (kind of like a Phillip K. Dick novel).
• calciphus 14y ago
  College was actually exactly what this guy needed. He found his passion, discovered what did and did not work for him in terms of learning, and managed to enter the job market at a time where people with his level of experience and expertise could demand salary like what he has now. Offsetting a few years in either direction and he likely would have entered the job market at a very BAD time for people without college degrees. "I'm in the middle of college but like work a lot better, I'll finish someday" is very different than "I never went to college, and spent the last few years making ends meat. I programed at home, and I'm great. Give me $100k." Pretending those are the same is just intellectually dishonest. If he thinks college was his biggest mistake and he's doing really well after doing some college (and still trading on college acceptance/progress as part of his contract negotiation), well that's just a poor understanding of cause and effect.
  • RealGeek 14y ago
    > Years later, I started working at Twitpic. College didn’t even enter the conversation.
  • sunwooz 14y ago
    A lot of people assume that college is this magical place where people find their passions... People usually don't change too much and stick to their passions well past highschool/college(meaning that they would've come to a similar conclusion with or without college). Many people cite all these CEOs and CTOs who left college and did amazing things, but these people are merely finding out that they can't learn in a classroom setting(neither can i) and pursued a different path.
• chasing 14y ago
  Sorry -- I don't like these kinds of posts. They just incite the same sort of college-vs-no-college debate I've heard a million times. I think there's some kind of "hacker" pride that makes people act as if not attending college is "bucking the system" or circumventing some dumb thing the Man tells you that you have to do in order to succeed. It's not. One size doesn't fit all. If not going to college works better -- do that. If going to college works better -- do that. I did both, sort of: I went to college but studied literature and philosophy as an undergraduate while working tech jobs to pay the bills. I loved my classes but also self-taught myself the skills I used for work. And I got exposed to a lot of stuff that I never would have learned if I had just worked and not taken those classes. That worked for me. I'm not sure what we're supposed to get out of some single anecdotal experience that this guy didn't go to college and turned out okay. Except to say: I'm happy that's the case! Self-education rules. Also: Can we please stop acting like college has to cost $44k/yr. It doesn't. State schools. They rule. They're relatively cheap. If you're unsure about college then, yes, going $200k in debt over something you're not sure you want is dumb. Especially when there are cheaper options. Thank you. Drive safe.
  • gorloth 14y ago
    I completely agree with the sentiment about high college costs, the state school I went to cost ~44k for all four years, add in various scholarships (some of which I got as I'm pretty sure I was the only person to apply for them) and internships and I graduated college with no debt and more money than I started. Going to college does not necessitate taking on crushing debt, it just requires some extra legwork and picking a school that more fits your budget.
• hotshothenry 14y ago
  I feel like everything I read nowadays on this topic has had the tone of "don't go to college it's a waste of time" etc etc. While I agree it's definitely not for everybody, I don't agree with it being a waste of time or that nobody should go to school (even if you're not pursue a career a law/medicine/etc). I have self-taught myself everything I've learned in software engineering, beginning in middle school when I picked up a VB6 book. Then through high school/college with some C++, Delphi, and then eventually moving to the LAMP stack and beyond. Although even before getting into college I knew exactly what I wanted to do (I was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early in my high school years) and knew college wasn't going to do much in helping me achieve my dreams, I was still excited for those 4 years. I wanted to have that college experience rather than looking back years later in life and saying "man I wish I got to see what that was like." But more importantly than the experience of college, I wanted to learn things I knew I'd seldom get the chance to later on in life, such as philosophy, art, history, astronomy, finance, theology, etc. While many argue that you can learn those things on your own without having to go to college, and yes I agree anyone can order an eBook or go to your locally library and pick up a bunch of books on those various topics, but it won't be the same as getting taught by a professor who has spent a great part of their life learning, teaching, researching and working in those various fields. My goals in life have been not only to be a successful entrepreneur and a great engineer, but to also be a knowledgable man overall, one who is well versed in a number of topics. And while college won't give you all of that in 4 years, it'll definitely help you get started on your journey.
  • sunwooz 14y ago
    I believe that going to college is worth it if you're being selectively taught by the top 1%. The rest of the 99%? Forget about it-- you can learn more with an internet connection.
    • GFKjunior 14y ago
      Yes I came in to say something similar. I would of absolutely loved to attend MIT or Stanford but went a shoddy 3rd tier state school. All this talk about research opportunities and connections with renown professors does not apply to students in universities not in the top ~50. Modern universities are extended high schools with more parties and social events than actual studying. I think if you can get into a Carnegie Melon or Harvard then you should definitely attend, but there are over 2500 universities in the US. I, like many others, did not have any direction in high school and ended up attending a local state school where most of the professors were grad students more preoccupied with their own course load than with their students being able to understand the material.
• hnruss 14y ago
  $44k a year for tuition is ridiculous and entirely not worth it if your primary goal is to get a job that does not require a college degree. However, paying a reasonable amount for tuition with the goal of personal enrichment and/or getting a job that requires a college degree is certainly worth it. As a current college student and part-time developer, I feel like college was a great choice for me-- even though I could've landed a full-time programming job without it. Although the curriculum can be monotonous at times, just having the chance to talk and work with other computer science students on a daily basis has been enlightening. Yes, you can teach yourself programming-- but college can help (really!).
  • sunwooz 14y ago
    You can talk to smart people without having to go to college. If you live in the city, you can attend a number of meetups chock full of ridiculously smart people, some willing to teach you/work with you.
• patdennis 14y ago
  Success is sitting right infront of you. But if he'd finished college, he'd know that "infront" is two words! But in all honesty, I also dropped out of college and I agree with the sentiment of this post wholeheartedly. In fact, I might go a step further and say that the fear and uncertainty that came with not having a degree actually pushed me to hustle harder than I think I would've otherwise.
  • danielrm26 14y ago
    > In fact, I might go a step further and say that the fear and uncertainty that came with not having a degree actually pushed me to hustle harder than I think I would've otherwise. Stress caused by feeling behind is not a strong endorsement in my opinion.
    • patdennis 14y ago
      I'm glad it helped give me the motivation to push myself to get where I am today - and in the process learn how much that work and dedication could pay off in the long term. I have little doubt that, had things turned out otherwise, I'd be sitting at a desk working a safe little office job in my home town.
    • mattdeboard 14y ago
      How is this any different than going to college because you're afraid you won't be able to get a job without a degree?
• bradleyjg 14y ago
  It could be worse, you could have started law school circa 2006. 3 years completely wasted, vis-a-vis programming and arguably just about the whole tech universe, $150,000 in tuition. After that you get a degree that serves as an entrance to a profession that is extremely economically depressed, near universally reviled, and the few jobs there are have terrible working conditions and are filled with unhappy people. Live, learn, and try and pass on some hard won lessons.
  • jbronn 14y ago
    As someone who started law school in 2005, this hits close to home -- and is unfortunately true. Unless you were an engineer beforehand and went into IP law, probably the only field in the profession that's still hiring now. But then you'd end up writing patents, which sucks your soul and why I still work in tech at a startup now. This brings me to my new motto I tell those considering the profession: "law school is never the answer."
• suresk 14y ago
  Not getting a CS education was my biggest mistake. I got most of a Finance degree, then dropped out when I ran out of money and found out people would pay decent money to a relatively inexperienced programmer. I'm happy with the way things have turned out for me career-wise - I think I'm a pretty competent developer and have a decent income and good future prospects - but I feel like there are opportunities that I'm much less likely to be able to take advantage of because I've mostly learned things as I've needed them. Yes, I can (and am) independently learn everything you would in a CS program, but it is much more difficult, and the piece of paper is sometimes useful, too. Yes, plenty of folks get by without one, but I hope people don't get the idea that because they can teach themselves to throw together a website, they won't learn anything from a CS program - when I was 18, I had this idea that CS degrees taught outdated and relatively useless information, which I now believe to be false. Even beyond the core CS curriculum, there are a lot of benefits to attending college - I feel like I at least got some of those by completing most of a degree. It is certainly valid for some people to skip college, and that's fine, I just hope that all of this anti-college sentiment we've seen recently isn't just going to create another generation of people like me who regret thinking they didn't need the formal CS education.
  • marknutter 14y ago
    I'm fine with anti-college sentiment as long as it's not anti-learning sentiment. College and structured, traditional, classroom based learning works for some people and it slows others down. All of the material learn in a CS degree can't be learned independently outside of college. Any benefit college gives to a person is going to be subjective and highly anecdotal, like "professor interaction" or being around like-minded peers as though people can't learn from others without being at college. Often times, if those concepts are learned outside of college they are learned out of necessity and immediately applied, rather than pushed to the back of one's mind on the off chance they might come in handy sometime down the road. The OP's beef wasn't with college - it was with the false belief that college is the only way to become successful in life.
    • slurgfest 14y ago
      I don't know that anyone says it is the "only" way. The real claim is that college offers a significant advantage which it would be foolish to turn down. Hard to say how most High School students would be able to accurately gauge that college would be useless for them ahead of time, except if they already couldn't handle academics.
• scottjad 14y ago
  Classes didn’t hold my attention- I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class. If this were true then you would have spent four afternoons learning Calculus, Business, Communications, and Databases, and another four afternoons showing up for the finals, and you would have gotten a 3.0 instead of a 0.3.
  • marknutter 14y ago
    Provide those subjects could hold his/her attention, which is really the qualifier there. OP taught themselves rails and bootstrapped themselves into a $70k+ job in a matter of months. I'd say that took as much effort as passing a few introductory courses in your average public college.
    • dinkumthinkum 14y ago
      Yeah but that's probably just a purely theoretical concept; let's be honest. It's like saying "I could be Einstein or Newton if I just found physics interesting." It's just kind of self-serving. I don't think learning RoR to get a $60K job is that much effort. There are many "programmers" that make six figures that don't know anything ... and then this is like something is unique to our industry and may not hold for so long. I mean, good for him, no ill will, but let's be honest.
    • alphadogg 14y ago
      > taught themselves rails and bootstrapped themselves into a $70k+ job in a matter of months Anectodal evidence is just that: anecdotal. I'd rather have more data before claiming that it was college that was a mistake.
• sunwooz 14y ago
  I'm in the same boat as the OP: I've been in school for 3 years but everything I know comes from teaching myself. I dropped out and started teaching myself rails/html/css and I'm currently looking for a programming gig(hopefully in a startup). I agree with the OP's sentiment that you shouldn't go for a college degree unless you're looking to work in something that requires credibility(law, medical, etc) and I always tell Highschool graduates about the many options they can pursue without having to waste money paying for a diluted and meaningless education.
• CubicleNinjas 14y ago
  I think the comments in this thread would be most useful if everyone noted how much debt they had on leaving college. :) When you owe 80k to an institution there is quite a bit of incentive to believe in college's power. I think this pressure is a net positive though in a few ways, as it forces personal action and makes one double-check their decisions. I left school with no debt, but not a full degree. It allowed me to take risks with my first few jobs which ended up paying off in the long haul. Had I needed money to pay loans I don't believe I would have been so lucky.
• majorapps 14y ago
  "I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." This is a common statement from people who drop out of college - if this is the case, why did you fail?
• magicalist 14y ago
  Paying $44k a year to not go to any of your classes was indeed a big mistake. I could tell you another story about how I decided to take on a stupid amount of debt for school, but -- in the face of a lifetime of certain poverty -- the people I grew to know and the projects I actively pursued and worked hard on led me to a fulfilling life and a job that I love that covers my loans with ease. There is a point in this post somewhere: asking 18 year olds to decide whether or not taking on crushing debt to attend classes they aren't sure they want to take (or even which ones they should take) is not a great thing to bet our economy and our children on. I don't really have an answer for communicating to someone just leaving home that the amount of money they're paying isn't worth it, though. Several people said it to me, but it was so abstract to me it was easy not to care. In any case, anecdotes can give us guidance in our own lives (and crucially, they can provide us hope as we walk into an interview or open a late payment notice from sallie mae), but they're a pretty poor decision basis if we're aiming toward a societal optimum here.
  • warfangle 14y ago
    Should they have to acquire such burdening debt to come to this realization, though?
    • jtmcmc 14y ago
      No, perhaps if education was better subsidized in the US they wouldn't have to.
• dfc 14y ago
  I think this link started out as a post here on hn[1]. I'm not sure why the author insists on using $175k in debt as a strawman for the discussion. In the earlier thread on HN he stated that $100k, not $175k, was the actual debt figure he was confronted with. It is unfortunate because the discussion of higher-ed/debt is an important topic (I dropped out of law school for similar reasons) and the inflated debt figure needlessly cheapens the discussion. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332885
  • stevencorona 14y ago
    because I dropped out after two years. if i finished all four, it'd be way more.
    • dfc 14y ago
      You: "Luckily, I left after my 2nd year and only walked away with $50k in student loans." Me: "Why did two years cost $50k but four years costs $175k? (2/4 != 50/175)" You: "No one really pays sticker price for college. I had some grants, financial aid, and (like someone else mentioned), the co-op program helped pay for some of my tuition." Me: "If nobody pays sticker price for college why did you use the sticker price when discussing how much debt you chose not to accept?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332885
• heretohelp 14y ago
  He has a story very similar to mine, but I don't really use my personal anecdotes to give other people advice. And yeah, that first job where I started making decent money after years of minimum wage? Just like winning the powerball. I'm very happy and grateful for what I have, but I'm even more grateful I joined a startup of such great people.
• njharman 14y ago
  Yup. Go 1-2 years, take as many higher level classes as you can, meet people, begin to learn world != high school, hustle for that first job. It also helps if economy isn't in shitter like it has been for many years.
• therandomguy 14y ago
  "I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class"... depends on what you consider "learning". Of course you don't need to go to any class to learn Rails and get a pay check. To learn hundred other life skills you need to go to class. You are equating "success" with size of pay check. That might not be the measure for many.
• maeon3 14y ago
  I'd like to see some of the code that this guy has written. He said he can learn more in an afternoon than a whole class? HA! He's confidant I'll grant him that. But also a deceiver. But perhaps the good kind of deceiver. Press him to cut some code, and in an instant will get some other poor programmer to do it for him. There are plenty of good rule-following programmers out there to purchase... For a salary. I respect people like this because without them, there would be no companies to work for. Someone has to get pissed off with the way things are, and go out and BUILD something great. But he doesn't come across as a rule following person. We need their charisma and confidence, but without someone to cut the code and do the job, it will be like the cure for cancer, constant vaporware. The substance of venture capitalist's nightmares. We need people like him, but we have to understand he isn't the generative force in the world, he's the scrappy leader. Hopefully his defiant vision for the world is good. Else he'll get his big bubble popped and end up looking for a job without a degree. And I don't wish that on any passionate-for-learning people.
• egillie 14y ago
  Of course "find your passion and the rest will follow" works great if your passion is for something that has a great market salary. What if your passion is sculpturing, or gardening?
• css771 14y ago
  OP, you are my inspiration from now on. I'm in a very similar situation. And you've just given me some hope. And thanks for that. I'll strive to teach myself more stuff.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I'm so tired of these articles from people that didn't even make it in college who are so proud to proclaim what a waste college is. Or that having skills means getting a job. I knew rails and linux and a half a dozen other things and had built a product for a client before graduating highschool. I also lived in the middle of no-where in the Midwest.
• ek 14y ago
  I am currently receiving an education in computer science with the intent to pursue a Ph.D. following graduation. I grow somewhat tired of all this anti-college talk - at the bike shop a while back, the worker asked what I was majoring in, I told him CS, and he asked if getting a college degree was really worth it, as if he thought it wasn't. Yes, it's worth it if what you plan to do is go to grad school or enter academia. It's worth it because it's the only feasible way to do this. It's worth it because my current presence on a university campus gives me opportunities for research and for invaluable interactions with faculty and fellow students. I understand that the backlash is mostly driven by the observation that increasingly, people are pursuing expensive college degrees only to end up working at Starbucks, simply because they have been made to believe that it is in some way "the thing to do". But college is still worth it and a good idea for a great many types of people, not the least of which are programmers (as distinct from computer scientists). An education in CS is almost certainly one of the best things someone who hopes to be a programmer can obtain.
  • dinkumthinkum 14y ago
    Why do Google, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, etc keep coming over to universities if it's so outdated and useless. Why aren't they out on Tumblr or photo sharing sites trying to work on problems and recruit? They could save a lot of money on these plane trips by just looking at blogs! Don't they know any better? :)
    • fruchtose 14y ago
      Haven't you heard? All of these companies are dead/dying/about to be obsolete. Of course they recruit at universities!
    • glenra 14y ago
      Um, Google often recruits by posting puzzles on billboards or in magazines and by running contests and by paying headhunters. I mean, I'm sure they go to universities too, but they certainly don't recruit exclusively there.
    • viraptor 14y ago
• scoith 14y ago
  Lol! "I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." Really genius? "Calculus B: F" Any it says repeated! Why didn't you take five afternoons and graduate then? It is a well-known fact that becoming a "high-level" web programmer doesn't require brains or a degree. Now this post makes it clear that, even such people who miserably fail to get a degree can write PHP programs and Javascript.
  • UK-AL 14y ago
    Yeah thats the thing. There's so much more to cs than learning rails or whatever. Learning the fundamentals of cs theory, machine learning so forth, make you a better developer indirectly. Yet a lot of this stuff is not covered in detail on web, sure there plenty of web tutorials, but a lot are superficial, following a "how to" format for HTML Php etc. Only now with edx and coursea are decent courses coming out.
    • crander 14y ago
      Accountability is what school offers you. You are forced to work the homework problems and then you really learn. You can do this on your own but without the social motivation it is much less likely. Udacity, etc. are solving this problem for online education now in CS.
• FaceKicker 14y ago
  Not that this is a particularly insightful point, but I keep wondering, why does it never come up in these discussions that college is FUN? Regardless of its financial value or lack thereof, it really is an experience like no other.
  • Crake 14y ago
    Probably because many colleges cost like 200K nowadays. Fun's justifiable maybe when you're graduating with, I don't know, 0-10K in debt, but at 200K you've really gotta question whether or not it's worth it. A lot of people have their four years of fun and then end up slaving away as indentured servants to Sallie Mae for the rest of their lives.
    • FaceKicker 14y ago
      It really doesn't need to cost that much though. I wouldn't be surprised if every state in the US has a public school that costs less than a quarter of that. (and obviously college is much cheaper in every other country). To clarify, I wasn't saying I thought that was the sole benefit of college - just one that never seems to get mentioned.
      • Crake 14y ago
        In my state it's about $80,000 for all four years. (including tuition & room and board--but not including where you live during the summer)
• ipince 14y ago
  "I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former. Don't do this. You think you're gaining respect or credibility, but in actuality you're losing it.
  • gwern 14y ago
    > This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former. He says it was RIT or Rochester Institute of Technology. I went there (although it was a much better value for me, since I was in NTID, the deaf sub-college, so I basically got half off tuition); and now that I check, we actually overlapped. It's a pretty good school for tech, but the quarter system is/was brutal for people who weren't very conscientious because you get very little chance for recovery once you screw up. The Rochester winter probably didn't help. Retention rates weren't too good, and people like him demonstrate why.
  • labcomputer 14y ago
    It's the former. RIT is a pretty good school for science, technology and visual arts (Kodak and Xerox donated stupid amounts of money over the years). Like any college, you get out what you put in. It also has its fair share of over-confident freshmen. You know the type: always the smartest person in the room all throughout high school. When they actually have to do work to keep up, they "lose interest." Sometimes they don't even understand what they don't understand, and start to think they can teach themselves as much in an afternoon as a course covers in a quarter. As they say in the computer departments, "If you can't hack it, pack it." Someone has to design those boxes for Apple. None of this is to say that university is the one (or even best, or even a good) way for a specific individual to start his/her career. But college-bound kids could do much worse than RIT. I went there for a few years, so take what I say with the appropriate amount of salt.
  • luu 14y ago
    This thread is full of people who think this is impossible, but it's not. I pretty much did that when I was in school, and I had about a 60% chance of an A and a 30% chance of a B, according to my GPA. I wasn't quite as quick as the poster -- the total amount of effort I put into a course probably amounted to 2-3 days of work, including time spent in classes and exams. But, I knew people who were easily an order of magnitude more productive than I was; for them, it would have been an afternoon of work. If you read quickly, you can finish reading a textbook in an afternoon. The extra time I burned was the time it took to work through enough exercises to convince myself that I really got the material. For some really easy classes, I only had to do one exercise per section to convince myself that I knew it, so it ended up being just one afternoon. There are plenty of people who are smarter than I am, who could do every class that way. I don't know if the writer of the original article is one of those people, but it doesn't sound implausible to me. Just for reference, I went to Wisconsin, which is approximately as rigorous as RIT, and I double majored in math and computer engineering, which are both comparable to CS. But, I graduated in three years and my tuition was a few thousand a year, so the total was was easily covered by an engineering internship. At a place like Wisconsin, you might as well stick around and get the degree -- after all, it's only a month or two of total effort, and you can easily make enough to cover the degree from doing internships, or working as an RA on campus or even at Starbucks. If the price tag were $44k a year, I probably would have dropped out, too.
• factorialboy 14y ago
  The real moral of the story: make most of the NOW. You didn't do that in college, and failed. You did that afterwards, and succeeded.
• dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  Oh come on. I just feel like this is another in a series of "let's indict education" posts. I take issue with everything in here. $44,000 a year for tuition, why? Why did you choose that school if you had no intention of studying? You can teach yourself more in an afternoon than in a 10-week class? Really, let's prove it. I want to see it. You made basically all Fs but yet you can teach yourself more in an afternoon ... because you're better than others or something? You happen to have chosen a field in which it is very easy to make a modest income, $60K, without actually having very much knowledge (not saying you didn't have x knowledge). I mean, sure anyone that is not slobbering on themselves can probably follow a RoR YouTube and make a blog engine and then know enough to convince someone to pay them >$50K. I don't know how long this is going to last though. But this is not much a real recipe for success in my opinion. The idea that everyone can just teach themselves everything and that no one is actually learning any content in college, at best they are just learning "life skills" is just completely ridiculous. I don't know, not to make another anecdote and I don't have hard data, but I have probably "self-taught" a lot more subjects than most that claim actually have and I wouldn't say I didn't learn any content from CS in college, not even close. In fact, I don't know any PhDs that would say they didn't learn any content (not just this life skills stuff) in college; I think it is just a fanciful notion and probably makes people feel better about themselves: "I'm Srinivasa Ramanujan, I don't need college to teach me anything."
  • chmike 14y ago
    The autor is clearly talking of his own experience. He is not generalizing and trying to convince everybody to drop out of college. My experience is that after 5 years of professionnal activity college is not relevant anymore as long as one kept learning and gaining experience. It is what you've done and accomplished that will make the difference and get you closer to success. Beside 44k$/year + interests is far too expensive for what cellege gives you. I fully agree with the OP. This puts you in the rat race from the start. It will be very hard to get out of it. That's not a path to success. The idea that a college degre is a step closer to success is plain wrong.
    • dinkumthinkum 14y ago
• will_work4tears 14y ago
  The only thing I feel I got from college is meeting my wife. Oh, well that and 85k in debt. I did graduate, with a 3.0, but the sentiment is the same. College hasn't done anything for my career so far. That said, the whole "I can learn more in one afternoon vs a semester" is just dribble. Total BS. And turns me off to the whole message, sorry.
• amirmansour 14y ago
  Sounds like one lazy and irresponsible student to me. It's great that you made it. More power to you for that. But why did you waste your money if you were not gonna do the work? Doesn't matter how scared you were from your parents. You dropped out and then decided to grow up. I'm a guy that does NOT believe college is for everyone.
• gruseom 14y ago
  The article seems to suppose that the purpose of education is a job. The purpose of education is not a job.
• jval 14y ago
  This article is awesome. If people don't want it to be advice, then don't take it as advice. It's just another anecdote to put inside your little book of anecdotes. The thing is, the OP is targeting his advice at people who are in similar situations to him - people who know that university is moving too slowly, is too expensive, and not right for them. His advice clearly isn't prescriptive to everyone. It is worth noting his circumstances. He may not have had the opportunity to attend a university that stimulated him. Attending a State College may have been cheaper, but even worse from a quality perspective. Nobody knows. Point is, instead of judging the guy, why don't you read the piece for what it is - a story about how, for some people (and an increasing number of people at that), college is their biggest mistake. And you will notice that the title reads 'College is my biggest mistake' - not necessarily yours. ps Statistics about populations of people who don't graduate are useless, as it clearly includes all sorts of idiots, drug addicts and fools who are on the wrong side of the bell curve. Show me statistics on people who drop out of degrees two years in to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities vs the graduating population and I might pay attention.
• DigitalSea 14y ago
  As someone who failed every aspect of my education in high school with exception for music, English and the boringly easy to pass computer classes this resonates with me so much. I had always shared an interest in computers and electronics as a kid, but never went to college or undertook any secondary education whatsoever. I went from having nothing to living comfortably and I'm still in my early 20's without a college education and don't plan on getting one. I work alongside people who spent 4 to 6 years studying to work where they are now and it feels nice knowing I didn't have to get in large amounts of debt to get to the same place as they did. You definitely need to be able to sell yourself though. Every employer I've ever worked with has been impressed when I tell what got me into development was building a gaming clan website for a Tony Hawks Underground 2 game clan and I kept learning from then on. This has inspired me to share my story which I'll write a blog post about shortly as well.
• benthumb 14y ago
  Mac OS X: Avadis Tevanian - B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University Python: Guido van Rossum - masters degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam Ruby on Rails: David Heinemeier Hansson - bachelor's degree in Computer Science Ruby: Yukihiro Matsumoto - He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba Linux: Linus Torvalds - master's degree in computer science from NODES research group SpaceX: Elon Musk - From the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he received an undergraduate degree in Economics, and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics. ...I could go on
• chimmy 14y ago
  steve jobs, bill gates and mark zuckerberg dropped out and became successful. if i drop out, i would become too.
• kyberias 14y ago
  It's kinda sad that you have to pay that much for an education. In other countries, for example in Scandinavia, higher education is free (with the cost of higher taxes of course). Although, some people in IT still choose to skip it. It shows.
• bazookaBen 14y ago
  it's all a question of : did you learn the right thing, or meet the right people. i did both outside of college, while attending it. So it's not my biggest mistake.
• smsm42 14y ago
  In my experience, I almost never look into "education" part of the CV when interviewing. I do ask questions which are taught in decent CS courses, but I couldn't care less, if the answer is right, about where it came from. Degree is just a piece of paper, it is knowledge and skills that matter. I have a CS degree and I think it gave me a lot and helped a lot in my professional advancement. However, this way of learning is not for everybody, and I do see how somebody could have acquired the same knowledge and skills without any formal framework. I probably could not - and I know that if I join any formal framework, even free no-commitment one like Coursera - I learn much more effectively than if I just try to do it by myself. But for many people it is the opposite, and these people can be and often are more successful than I am. So formal education is very useful - for some. For some it is not, so I completely understand why OP thinks it was his biggest mistake and I think he has made the right decision for him. I'd suggest him to try some free education though - like Coursera or many other major colleges have now free online course. You don't get the degree, but you do get the knowledge, and that's IMHO much more valuable. OTOH, the formal degree may also be usable for some big companies and some other things (e.g. immigration, for those that want to live in different country than they were born in) - but one can do without it too.
• greesil 14y ago
  College rocked! I dorked out with some really smart people, learned a fuckton, got laid somehow, and after paying teh dues got a fabulous job. At the time, state school didn't cost so much, so no debt! Blah dee blah, good for you no-college man.
• agibsonccc 14y ago
  There is always an opportunity cost. I did a startup over last summer and dropped out to focus on it, and I have learned exponentially more since being out. I still advocate an education, because I wouldn't have had the base to learn on my own after that. Being a self funded scientist rather than a student has been more more interesting/beneficial. I still learn every day (business and tech side..)
• tsahyt 14y ago
  As a European I find that the sheer amount of money required to get higher education in the US is absolutely crazy. In most (if not all) of Europe, universities are paid from tax payers money and are basically free for all who have the necessary qualification to attend them. That shows though. I have the impression that you can make rather decent money in the US without ever going to college but there's not a glimpse of hope for you to do that in Europe. Without at least a minor in something you'll top out at about 2.5k€/month (that's an annual salary of abour 35000$) being employed anywhere. So, all in all, you're expected to go to university. Oh and btw, going to university was in fact a great idea for me, personally.
• silves89 14y ago
  The value of a university education does not principally lie in how much money you can make afterwards. Many people go to university to learn, to build a philosophy for life, to meet and engage with other engaged people. But I paid orders of magnitude less so maybe that gives me the freedom to be more contemplative.
• lallysingh 14y ago
  Good God man. I wasn't born in the US, but came over young. The whole college evaluation, application, and selection process was one giant set of mysteries to me. Yet, this is all about exactly those questions. At least I feel better, apparently I could've done a lot worse. Cost - debt or opportunity cost of cash. Treat it as exactly that, a risk you're taking for some expected gain. A high-ranked, expensive school is only worth it if you're going to get something out of it. Your ability to withstand debt (or cash burned) is runway you can use for other things. I'm sorry this guy spent a mercedes benz on stuff he didn't want. But he shouldn't have spent a mercedes benz. My highest undergrad tuition over 4 years was $4k (after fees) per semester. Without a strong interest in a particular field that the school's well-known for, I don't see why it's worth it. And if you're not sure, there's always grad school. People tend to look only at the school of your last degree. Specialization - I can't understand how people choose majors without looking hard at the ease of getting a job in the field, the effort spent in the degree, how much they like the topic, and the amount you can expect to make. Somehow it turned into a "what's your calling?" question, which is an asshole question to ask anyone, much less some poor 18 year old coming out of 12 years of highly homogenizing k-12. Frankly, if I had supreme fascist control over a school, departments with poor (say, <85% after 3 months of searching) hiring likelihood should charge double tuition, and require field-specific talent auditions like a good music school to get in. Waivers if it's a second degree, or a written letter of intent to go to law school after. Finally, what happened to trade school? Les time, higher per-class-hour relevance to the primary goal, and it's a job you can explain to your friends. My CS dept had a 90% drop rate over 4 years (300 freshman, 30 graduating seniors). A lot of those kids would've been happier in trade school, instead of hopping over to business (or business IT). Paid at least as well, and with less debt.
• phmagic 14y ago
  I'm less likely to use twitpic now from the tone of this article.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• pinaceae 14y ago
  just goes to show how over-inflated salaries for programmers are. it is not rocket science anymore. actual rocket science though? good luck without an actual education. and i sure hope as hell that this mindset doesn't reach the medical field. studying to be a surgeon? i taught myself...yeah, sure...
• codeonfire 14y ago
  I really wish people the best in their careers. As far as attending college, I know the things that you don't and won't and that is good enough for me.
• akoncius 14y ago
  i both agree and disagree. if IT sector wouldn't be so hungry for developers, author of this article would be called at minimum insane when he asked 100k salary. and it isn't some constant thing. i think that if now would be bubble burst in IT sector, this author would continue to work for 10$ per hour. i agree with main idea, that college should not be mandatory thing in everybody's life - all job market should be in balance : somebody must work lower-level work, somebody has to do programming, managing, financing. if everybody would be with Professor-level education, who would clean toilets in restaurants?
• junto 14y ago
  For me personally, college wasn't about academic learning. It was about personal growth and making a lot of mistakes (and learning from them). Before university I programmed for the love of coding. My four years at university ripped the programming soul out of me. A year after university I regained that love again and started learning on the job as an apprentice programmer. Everything since then has been learnt off my own back, via the internet, or from my peers and work colleagues. Education, especially learning how to develop software applications, is not taught well in traditional "red-brick" British universities. That may well have changed since my days some 20 years ago, but back then it was all theoretical lectures and very little practice. I was not inspired by anyone nor aspired to become anything better during those four years (from an academic perspective). Don't get me wrong, university isn't a place where you get you should expect to be hand held through your studies. Personal drive is absolutely required. College isn't high school where you get hassled for your home work submissions. However, good mentors and inspirational tutors would have made the whole thing much more attractive. That aside, there is one thing I have learnt that I would happily pass on; it is to never assume someone that didn't go to college isn't as smart as you are. I work with several very smart people. Regarding two in particular, one went to Oxford and the other didn't go to university at all. Both amaze me every day with their abilities to tackle hard technical problems.
• leoedin 14y ago
  I studied aerospace engineering at college. I think it was great. When faced with a large amount of work to do, it's easy to dismiss it. It's not so easy to actually do it. When I realised that (unlike high school) I actually had to do work to pass (and letting down extended family by failing wasn't really an option), I managed to work out how to apply myself to things that I didn't necessarily enjoy. Interestingly, when you actually apply yourself to a course what once seemed like a pile of uninteresting work to slog through starts to become interesting. I've had plenty of courses that I wouldn't have learnt about myself. It's not until you force yourself to spend a semester studying something that you realise just how useful it can be in other areas of your life. It was only really the last two years of my degree that I went from sort-of enjoying it to truly enjoying it. Sometimes there's a bit of a slog to get through before you can do interesting things. Engineering degrees (and probably computer science degrees) are like that. You have to learn the (often dull) basics before you learn the interesting things. The author makes the mistake of assuming that their experience (one year of OK performance followed by a year of not going to classes) is indicative of the college experience. That's not necessarily true. Beyond academics, I got so much out of college in many ways. The ability to spend a year studying in another country, the wide range of people I met, the opportunities that I had to work with lots of people on interesting projects. College isn't just about going to classes and doing exams. My degree didn't cost nearly as much as the authors one would have. I don't think I would have paid $40,000/year for my degree. However, there's plenty of options that don't cost that much that offer the same (or similar) teaching experience. I completely agree that college isn't for everyone, but I don't think the author really addresses why. What the article really says is that they didn't apply themselves very well to hard topics that they weren't interested in. Unfortunately not everything is instantly fun.
• evilissimo 14y ago
  I actually have never been in college nor in 'high school'. I have attended a secondary school in germany and continued with being chef. Later I started learning to program on my own, because computers have been always fascinating to me, especially writing software. By the age of 24 I applied for a free lance job. The company I have been working for has employed me after two months and let go all other freelancers :D Now 6 years later I am team leader in the development department of AVG Technologies. However now going to RedHat to pursue new paths :) I can second that it is not really necessary to have a degree in computer science, maths or physics or anything to get a job. If you are good and you show passion you might get a job easier than you might think :-) A little advice to Recruiters/HR people: Stop filtering out people based on their degrees, you're missing out on good opportunities by doing so.
• wccrawford 14y ago
  I ended up paying $23k for a piece of paper that I'm pretty sure hasn't done me any good. I learned a little, but not much, and I could have learned it on my own anyhow. Most of it I already knew. Yet I'm still not willing to say I wasted that time and money. There's still some chance that it'll turn out to be really valuable, and getting through the system helped with some of my issues with valuation of my own abilities. When I eventually got a job, they didn't care about my paperwork. In fact, my resume was worse than the other candidate's, and they said so. What got me the job was the BrainBench tests they put me through. Without those, I would not have gotten that first job. (Actually, it was the second, but the first was rather non-traditional and before college.) Anyhow, I think the value of these anecdotes is to let people know that there are alternatives to traditional education. It's not right for everyone, or even most people, but you shouldn't feel railroaded into it. If you have the skills to do the job already, you should consider just going and getting a job, instead.
• adamgb 14y ago
  Just because you fail at something doesn't mean you didn't learn or gain something from it. Failing college could be the reason why he is so successful.
• jetti 14y ago
  Like most things, you get what you put into college. If you aren't going into it with the idea that you want to be there, chances are you won't come away with as positive an outlook as somebody who did want to be there. With that in mind, I think the title should be "Don't spend money on things you don't want to do" but then, I guess nobody would click on the link...
• hessenwolf 14y ago
  It is possible to get by without documentation backing up your experience, but having an education doesn't close doors, and not having an education will close some doors. Yes, fine, many times, in the right market, with the right skill set, you can rely on high demand and great ability to sell yourself, but my college education means that I can change country and get a cushy job at whim, even in a totally shitty economy, with very little effort (but the education took a lot of effort).
• krschultz 14y ago
  If you could teach yourself in an afternoon what was covered in a 10 week class, then you probably wouldn't have failed out. The same points I make on every post like this. 1) College isn't for everyone. 2) The 'I'm so smart that college was a waste of time' people should have just gotten a scholarship and not paid for college. 5 out of the 5 schools I officially applied to offered me scholarships. All were in the top 50 schools for my chosen major (originally, aerospace engineering). If you are smart enough that college is a waste of time, then you are also smart enough to not have to pay for college. 3) Don't extrapolate the computer science major to others. There are better books, tutorials, and online communities for hacking than seemingly any other profession. Try to find the "O'Reilly Press" of aerospace engineering pumping out 100 books a year on every imaginable topic - it just isn't happening. Same for StackOverflow, HN, etc. 4) Don't extrapolate the software engineering profession to others. It's normal for non-CS majors to be getting software engineering jobs. I personally graduated with a mechanical engineering major and CS minor. I'm now working in software engineering. The company I just left (where I worked as a mechanical engineer) would never, ever, hire a computer science major to fill a mechanical engineering job. The only three possible majors other than ME that they would hire are math, physics, or aerospace engineering. 5) If you don't do well, college is a waste of time & money.
  • sunwooz 14y ago
    He didn't fail out because he's an idiot, he failed out because the classes were mind-numbingly boring.
• lectrick 14y ago
  It might not be for everyone, but a college with courses like "World of Business" and "Data Base Concepts" is laughable as all hell anyway. At least go to a real college.
• Knighty 14y ago
  There's something of a survivor bias to this story. That is to say, there are probably a lot more people who drop out of college and don't amount to very much. Those guys don't tend to shout from the rooftops very much. Which should mean applying his approach, to college, for our own situations it might not necessarily be wise. Having said that, there are probably quite a lot of successful people who didn't amount to much in college. And I think being a free-thinking, rebel, hustler doesn't necessarily make a good student but might very well make a good captain of business. But how cool would it be to have/be both? But he's right, if it's not for you it doesn't necessarily mean you've failed.
• ZanderEarth32 14y ago
  I am astounded at the cost of college, just some 10 years after I started school. My first semester at a decent State university cost me something like $900. I even had a scholarship for enough to cover that semester from doing well on some standardized test. By the time I finished school a few years later It was about $1700 a semester (maybe not exactly, but close to double). I can't imagine paying $44k for a bachelors degree in any subject. If that $44k only covers tuition, not books or cost of living, it is insane. Why is going to a community college for the first one or two years of your higher education experience never promoted? It gives you a chance to see if you'll enjoy that 'college experience', you'll get to sit in a wide range of classes or relatively little money and if you want to continue you can then transfer out. I didn't take this path, but if I had to do it again I would.
• alexconway 14y ago
  Does anyone know if this blog is a Tumblr? I just like the layout. Thanks.
• knova 14y ago
  You people had to spend 100k+ on a college education to learn "humanities" and how to be social?!? You don't think you would have "grown as a person" if you hadn't gone to college?! This.is.horrifying. If you do anything Please do one of the following: Talk to a real life person, visit a library, read a book about something other than vampires, and most importantly- GET OUT AND SEE THE WORLD! The author is challenging you to take a good look at your path in life and make the best choice for YOU. He's not saying all of us degree carrying people are idiots. He even acknowledges that plenty of careers need a degree. Maybe some of you SHOULD stay in school...
• deleted 14y ago
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• SonicSoul 14y ago
  US college education is increasingly demanded even for middle class jobs. new generations will have a tougher time landing decent gigs as even the manufacturing jobs become more and more complex. while software engineering is something that can be learned by reading a book and hacking away at home until one can get through a jr programmer interview, or maybe even pick up programming on your own to a higher degree, not everyone can learn this way, and not lots of jobs will require formal training. i don't like when this is painted in black and white colors .. i.e. "college education is a waste of time and money" or.. "college education is a must" .. but i do think it will be in higher demand as more jobs become high tech, and we can't all be Steve Corona smart :)