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And if I didn't want to take $26k debt what then? I wouldn't have the option of having my parents pitch in, they never were able to save money for college. $26k

And if I didn't want to take $26k debt what then? I wouldn't have the option of having my parents pitch in, they never were able to save money for college. $26k is still a lot of money for a young person, I went straight into the workforce without college, I'm 21 now and while most people my age are in debt, I have a nice little bit saved in my bank account.

eropple 14y ago
> And if I didn't want to take $26k debt what then? If you want to trade anecdotes: I'm 25 and have been out of college for about two and a half years. I spent two years at TripAdvisor and now oversee mobile development at a funded startup that actually, unlike certain TechCrunch favorites, has a thing called a "revenue model". I have about $3K left on my student loans which I haven't paid back because the interest rates aren't high enough to bug me; I would rather have enough in easily liquified assets to take a year off on a whim. I went into college a "pretty good" programmer. I came out a better hacker due to side projects and a better thinker because of the stuff college, both inside of CS and out, threw at me. I recommend it to pretty much everyone going into software development because without it you literally don't know what you're missing. College opens doors. It sounds trite, but it's true: it forces you to broaden your horizons in ways you may not have considered, it encourages you to build social connections among people not like you (which, sure, you might do, but let's be honest, most hackers don't), and, if you go somewhere with a decent CS background, puts a pretty handy layer of formalism on top of what a decent developer knows intuitively. It's the stuff "outside the lines" that I feel makes college so valuable. You sound like you're doing well for yourself, and congratulations! That's not an easy road. But I'd say that while the 0.1% probability outcome for college and no-college is about the same, I'd also suggest that delta at most other points tilts very hard towards college, even factoring in opportunity costs.

eropple 14y ago

> And if I didn't want to take $26k debt what then? If you want to trade anecdotes: I'm 25 and have been out of college for about two and a half years. I spent two years at TripAdvisor and now oversee mobile development at a funded startup that actually, unlike certain TechCrunch favorites, has a thing called a "revenue model". I have about $3K left on my student loans which I haven't paid back because the interest rates aren't high enough to bug me; I would rather have enough in easily liquified assets to take a year off on a whim. I went into college a "pretty good" programmer. I came out a better hacker due to side projects and a better thinker because of the stuff college, both inside of CS and out, threw at me. I recommend it to pretty much everyone going into software development because without it you literally don't know what you're missing. College opens doors. It sounds trite, but it's true: it forces you to broaden your horizons in ways you may not have considered, it encourages you to build social connections among people not like you (which, sure, you might do, but let's be honest, most hackers don't), and, if you go somewhere with a decent CS background, puts a pretty handy layer of formalism on top of what a decent developer knows intuitively. It's the stuff "outside the lines" that I feel makes college so valuable. You sound like you're doing well for yourself, and congratulations! That's not an easy road. But I'd say that while the 0.1% probability outcome for college and no-college is about the same, I'd also suggest that delta at most other points tilts very hard towards college, even factoring in opportunity costs.