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The greatest things I got as a direct result of my time at an undergraduate university are my relationships, specifically my wife and daughter. It just occurre

The greatest things I got as a direct result of my time at an undergraduate university are my relationships, specifically my wife and daughter. It just occurred to me how nonsensical a similar title would be: "Too many families are a waste of money". Maybe it's ok to not consider what we are calling "education" a purely financial investment.

btrautsc 13y ago
This is the reality for so many that is conveniently ignored by many posts such as this. My major (finance) has almost nothing to do with my day to day work. But I became best friends with my cofounder our freshman year, met his high school friend and our third cofounder my sophomore year, met my wife my senior year, and utilized our university network to hire our 4th cofounder & CTO after graduation. I've done two startups with the first two cofounders and by tapping into my wife's network found our first angel investors. Majors and degrees are important (I'd be in a different position if I'd gone through with the switch to engineering sophomore year), but I met my wife in my final finance credit senior year. I'll take the relationships - along with a semi-practical degree. [that is if you insist on going to school - definitely not for everyone or necessary]
- pitt1980 13y ago
  problem is you're being charged for those relationships, in most cases at a relatively exorbant rate its not obvious what the replacement value of those relationships are but you can probably meet and matain relationships with people without paying tuition dollars to do so in different words: "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife" so is seems like a stretch to really give the college (full? much?) credit for those relationships
  - bluedino 13y ago
    >> "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife" It sure helps. Where else in your life are you going to be surrounded by thousands of other young people that you can date, or classes full of like-minded individuals who you might start a business with?
    - pitt1980 13y ago
      there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt similarly there are many many social organizations you can meet young people to date, there are also establishments that sell food and beverages where young people tend to congregate 2-3 nights a week if all that fails, there are websites that let you contact people for both purposes (albeit the signal to noise for those might be poor) college is obviously convient for both purposes, but its a mistake, both on a societal level and a personal level, to give college monopoly pricing power if that's what you're in the market for
      - pitt1980 13y ago
        you know what, if you're going to downvote something (especially something on point), make a reply and state your point of contention that's how real discussions are supposed to happen
      - barry-cotter 13y ago
        there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt How many of them have entrance standards as stringent as the Ivy League? The hardest part isn't what you do while you're there, it's getting in. And how else are parents going to pay for their children to spend so much time around the best class of plausible mates they can find for their children?
        pitt1980 13y ago
        serious question - what is the value of stringent entrance requirements so far has it applies to your personal network? is it so that you don't have to spend resources maintaining a network with those that don't meet them? for what its worth, any professional and hobbyist club with close proximity to a prestigous school will probably put you in contact with a number of people in that school you don't have to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford wherever, to meet/ socialize with students from that school you probably have to be doing something of interest, to make yourself an attractive socialization member from the other side of that equation, but that probably true (though obviously to a lesser extent) even if your a student of one of those schools
  - btrautsc 13y ago
    these are all fair points if not slightly pedantic... obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values). like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spend 4 years of life and many thousands of dollars if you are not gaining any type of skill, earning a value-add level of expertise in a field, or great general skill set improvements. It had a significant impact on me, although most of the skills I learned there were improvements on traits/ skills I already possessed. I would whole heartedly agree that coursework can be dramatically optimized to better prepare students for a variety of careers [which I think will be the future case as trade schools, crash course programming schools and various workshops appear, and colleges continue to get pushback from those who have not been snapped up into the workforce] but as bluedino mentioned, university life allows for a fairly unique set of circumstances: most young people, densely populated by people in relatively similar circumstances, rapidly maturing as people, learning a wide variety of new/ interesting things. >> for me from 18-22 this experience held quite a bit of value.

btrautsc 13y ago

This is the reality for so many that is conveniently ignored by many posts such as this. My major (finance) has almost nothing to do with my day to day work. But I became best friends with my cofounder our freshman year, met his high school friend and our third cofounder my sophomore year, met my wife my senior year, and utilized our university network to hire our 4th cofounder & CTO after graduation. I've done two startups with the first two cofounders and by tapping into my wife's network found our first angel investors. Majors and degrees are important (I'd be in a different position if I'd gone through with the switch to engineering sophomore year), but I met my wife in my final finance credit senior year. I'll take the relationships - along with a semi-practical degree. [that is if you insist on going to school - definitely not for everyone or necessary]

pitt1980 13y ago
problem is you're being charged for those relationships, in most cases at a relatively exorbant rate its not obvious what the replacement value of those relationships are but you can probably meet and matain relationships with people without paying tuition dollars to do so in different words: "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife" so is seems like a stretch to really give the college (full? much?) credit for those relationships
- bluedino 13y ago
  >> "I met a great cofounder and wife at college" doesn't seem to logically follow to "you have to go to college to meet a great cofounder and wife" It sure helps. Where else in your life are you going to be surrounded by thousands of other young people that you can date, or classes full of like-minded individuals who you might start a business with?
  - pitt1980 13y ago
    there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt similarly there are many many social organizations you can meet young people to date, there are also establishments that sell food and beverages where young people tend to congregate 2-3 nights a week if all that fails, there are websites that let you contact people for both purposes (albeit the signal to noise for those might be poor) college is obviously convient for both purposes, but its a mistake, both on a societal level and a personal level, to give college monopoly pricing power if that's what you're in the market for
    - pitt1980 13y ago
      you know what, if you're going to downvote something (especially something on point), make a reply and state your point of contention that's how real discussions are supposed to happen
    - barry-cotter 13y ago
      there many many professional and hobbyist clubs where you can meet like mind individuals that won't require you to spend the 10+ years in debt How many of them have entrance standards as stringent as the Ivy League? The hardest part isn't what you do while you're there, it's getting in. And how else are parents going to pay for their children to spend so much time around the best class of plausible mates they can find for their children?
      - pitt1980 13y ago
        serious question - what is the value of stringent entrance requirements so far has it applies to your personal network? is it so that you don't have to spend resources maintaining a network with those that don't meet them? for what its worth, any professional and hobbyist club with close proximity to a prestigous school will probably put you in contact with a number of people in that school you don't have to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford wherever, to meet/ socialize with students from that school you probably have to be doing something of interest, to make yourself an attractive socialization member from the other side of that equation, but that probably true (though obviously to a lesser extent) even if your a student of one of those schools
- btrautsc 13y ago
  these are all fair points if not slightly pedantic... obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values). like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spend 4 years of life and many thousands of dollars if you are not gaining any type of skill, earning a value-add level of expertise in a field, or great general skill set improvements. It had a significant impact on me, although most of the skills I learned there were improvements on traits/ skills I already possessed. I would whole heartedly agree that coursework can be dramatically optimized to better prepare students for a variety of careers [which I think will be the future case as trade schools, crash course programming schools and various workshops appear, and colleges continue to get pushback from those who have not been snapped up into the workforce] but as bluedino mentioned, university life allows for a fairly unique set of circumstances: most young people, densely populated by people in relatively similar circumstances, rapidly maturing as people, learning a wide variety of new/ interesting things. >> for me from 18-22 this experience held quite a bit of value.