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 ac

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.