3 ms·

I think a more interesting question is, how has the ROI of college changed over the past 40 years? The cost has gone up much faster than inflation. The number

by MCRed 12y ago

I think a more interesting question is, how has the ROI of college changed over the past 40 years? The cost has gone up much faster than inflation. The number of people going to college has also risen dramatically. This means there are a lot more college educated peers competing with you in the workplace. This means that the college degree is not as rare, and thus has lower scarcity value. Finally, I think it's quite possible the quality of the education has declined significantly in the past 40 years. When I was in college, almost 30 years ago, I was appalled at how the university focused and spent so much of its money on a losing football team (in a zero sum situation where the other schools were always going to be abel to massively outspend it and had larger pools of students to recruit from) ... and in the decline in the education. I remember sitting in a class and learning about how universities were started by tradesman who banded together and hired experts to teach them, and I thought "Man, I wish I could go to a school like that". Since then I've seen nothing but an increase in these efforts... I've see the quality of a CS degree (based on the people who I interview for jobs who have them) decline. So the formula is: More Cost, Less Value, Lower Quality = Lower ROI. If things don't turn around, at some point College will be a losing proposition. Of course, this presumes that the education colleges give can be obtained elsewhere. Which brings up another point MOOCs, and online access to open source frameworks have really changed things in the past 30 years. 30 years ago we were buying our compilers (CodeWarrior for life!) now they and our frameworks are open source and well documented. The books are cheaper-- $40 to Oreilley rather than $120 to the campus book store (or are my prices out of date?) You can learn more modern technologies better than going to college and spending 4 years on Java and C++. Then there's the MooCs. you can learn CS fundamentals by video, along with people all around the world. I think we're close to that tipping point.

hacknat 12y ago
Agreed. One thing people usually don't take into account when they talk about current College ROI is the opportunity cost. Especially at non-first tier private schools the opportunity cost must be considerable.
nickysielicki 12y ago
One criticism I have of education systems is that they structurally encourage only superficially studying content. Let's take my compilers class as an example. I go to a 75 minute lecture 2 times a week and I do about 4 hours of homework a week. I do this over 18 weeks. That's only roughly 120 hours of study over the course of a semester. That's only as many hours as most full time employees work every 3 weeks! And the sad thing is, I imagine if I spent 3 weeks reading a compiler book, reading though the source of lex and yacc, and implementing some kind of basic compiler using them, I'd be a much better programmer than what we're doing-- implementing a C compiler for MIPS in java, using a shitty lex library and only implenting the parts the professor thinks is important. This brings me to another point. Programmers are necessarily autodidacts because shit changes incredibly fast. You can't be a one trick pony. So if we're pushing kids through these incredibly formulaic methods of learning, what are we really preparing them for? A life of being an enterprise code monkey? The student who taught themselves anything, even if they are missing a few core details, are more equipped to fix those gaps in their understandings. I did a hackathon a couple weeks ago that had a sort of business spin on it. There was this group of 4 guys that made a college choosing application based off your GPA, as a desktop java application with a GUI that had background images and looked like an early 2000s keygen program. The thing is, I have absolutely no doubt that these guys are good students and they'll probably find an alright job out of school. But all they know is java development. I think that students that want to be more than that probably shouldn't go to school. Here's a question to you: if I handed you a résumé, without a bachelor's degree, but instead included my github profile and a list of books I've read cover to cover and some open source contributions, am I going to get the salary I am worth?
- MAGZine 12y ago
  > This brings me to another point. Programmers are necessarily autodidacts because shit changes incredibly fast. You can't be a one trick pony. So if we're pushing kids through these incredibly formulaic methods of learning, what are we really preparing them for? A life of being an enterprise code monkey? The student who taught themselves anything, even if they are missing a few core details, are more equipped to fix those gaps in their understandings. depends where you go and what their objective is. some schools focus on teaching real-world tools. which is great for getting a job, but less useful because there are completely new tools every few years. other places focus on the theory of it all so when you see "new" things, you already have the knowledge to understand the basics. chances are your professor is cherry-picking the parts to implement because while you could fully implement all parts, the learning probably bleeds off quickly. Also, based on your calculations, assuming you take a full course-load (5 courses), 3 weeks * 5 = 15 weeks = ~3.5 months, which is roughly a semester. sure, you could get an education without a school. nothing stopping you. but, ultimately, people put a value on the piece of paper, the connections can be valuable, and school does a good job of educating/exposing you to a lot of things in a fair amount of rigor in a decent amount of time. 0.02
FLUX-YOU 12y ago
You still need some sort of equivalency in the mind of the people doing the hiring before the MooCs move in -- something to get them past the mindset that only people who go to college can perform the job. Businesses also need to stop auto filtering people who don't have a degree, and that's something that you'd actually have to fight for to get removed, meaning most hiring managers won't be arsed to take up that fight. Most sane places will realize that actual code is more indicative of skill than the degree (this is before you've met the person), and we thankfully have free tools to accomplish that goal. It would be fine if college were something optional and there could be a carefree debate. The degree in America is quickly turning into something that is required for decent employment, but can give you a very difficult financial situation for a long time if the reward doesn't meet the cost.

by MCRed 12y ago

hacknat 12y ago

Agreed. One thing people usually don't take into account when they talk about current College ROI is the opportunity cost. Especially at non-first tier private schools the opportunity cost must be considerable.

nickysielicki 12y ago

One criticism I have of education systems is that they structurally encourage only superficially studying content. Let's take my compilers class as an example. I go to a 75 minute lecture 2 times a week and I do about 4 hours of homework a week. I do this over 18 weeks. That's only roughly 120 hours of study over the course of a semester. That's only as many hours as most full time employees work every 3 weeks! And the sad thing is, I imagine if I spent 3 weeks reading a compiler book, reading though the source of lex and yacc, and implementing some kind of basic compiler using them, I'd be a much better programmer than what we're doing-- implementing a C compiler for MIPS in java, using a shitty lex library and only implenting the parts the professor thinks is important. This brings me to another point. Programmers are necessarily autodidacts because shit changes incredibly fast. You can't be a one trick pony. So if we're pushing kids through these incredibly formulaic methods of learning, what are we really preparing them for? A life of being an enterprise code monkey? The student who taught themselves anything, even if they are missing a few core details, are more equipped to fix those gaps in their understandings. I did a hackathon a couple weeks ago that had a sort of business spin on it. There was this group of 4 guys that made a college choosing application based off your GPA, as a desktop java application with a GUI that had background images and looked like an early 2000s keygen program. The thing is, I have absolutely no doubt that these guys are good students and they'll probably find an alright job out of school. But all they know is java development. I think that students that want to be more than that probably shouldn't go to school. Here's a question to you: if I handed you a résumé, without a bachelor's degree, but instead included my github profile and a list of books I've read cover to cover and some open source contributions, am I going to get the salary I am worth?

MAGZine 12y ago
> This brings me to another point. Programmers are necessarily autodidacts because shit changes incredibly fast. You can't be a one trick pony. So if we're pushing kids through these incredibly formulaic methods of learning, what are we really preparing them for? A life of being an enterprise code monkey? The student who taught themselves anything, even if they are missing a few core details, are more equipped to fix those gaps in their understandings. depends where you go and what their objective is. some schools focus on teaching real-world tools. which is great for getting a job, but less useful because there are completely new tools every few years. other places focus on the theory of it all so when you see "new" things, you already have the knowledge to understand the basics. chances are your professor is cherry-picking the parts to implement because while you could fully implement all parts, the learning probably bleeds off quickly. Also, based on your calculations, assuming you take a full course-load (5 courses), 3 weeks * 5 = 15 weeks = ~3.5 months, which is roughly a semester. sure, you could get an education without a school. nothing stopping you. but, ultimately, people put a value on the piece of paper, the connections can be valuable, and school does a good job of educating/exposing you to a lot of things in a fair amount of rigor in a decent amount of time. 0.02

FLUX-YOU 12y ago

You still need some sort of equivalency in the mind of the people doing the hiring before the MooCs move in -- something to get them past the mindset that only people who go to college can perform the job. Businesses also need to stop auto filtering people who don't have a degree, and that's something that you'd actually have to fight for to get removed, meaning most hiring managers won't be arsed to take up that fight. Most sane places will realize that actual code is more indicative of skill than the degree (this is before you've met the person), and we thankfully have free tools to accomplish that goal. It would be fine if college were something optional and there could be a carefree debate. The degree in America is quickly turning into something that is required for decent employment, but can give you a very difficult financial situation for a long time if the reward doesn't meet the cost.