7 ms·

College Is Much More Than a Means to a Higher Salary

32 points by koblenski 11y ago

tsotha 11y ago
While what he says is true, if you're taking on a lot of debt you have to consider whether you're going to be able to pay it off and how long that will take. "How much can I expect to make after graduation" was something people always considered, but the recent steep rise in tuition has made it more of an overriding question.
- learc83 11y ago
  They have an income based repayment plan where if you borrow over a certain amount you only have to pay 10% of your discretionary income (Income - 1.5 * Federal poverty level) for 20 years.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    Right. Which puts you comfortably into middle age before you retire your student loan debt. Which is absolutely crazy.
    - learc83 11y ago
      If you're stuck in a crappy job making $30k a year and you're single, that works out to about $100 a month--many people pay that much for their cell phone bill. I don't think that's particularly burdensome. If on the other hand you make you get a better paying job making $60k your payment will be about $350 a month, and you'll pay off the average student loan debt (close to $30k) in about 10 years.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    That's quite a burden, right up there with a mortgage. Back in the day I paid off my student loan debt in 3 years, then my wife's in one more year. And we went to Stanford. Things have gotten way out of whack.
    - learc83 11y ago
      >That's quite a burden, right up there with a mortgage. That's nowhere near a mortgage at the income levels where it makes sense. If you're stuck in a crappy job making $30k a year and you're single, it's about $100 a month. If you're making $60k and you're single, you could definitely pay off the average $30k loan in 3 or 4 years (assuming you live somewhere where 60k is a decent income). And If you're making $60k and you have a family of 3, you're payments are going to be about $250 per month. Obviously the cost of college has gone up a good bit. Mainly due to an increase in the number and cost of administrators and a decrease in state funding. However, it hasn't gone up nearly as much as it seems when you realize that most people aren't paying the sticker price after you factor in federal grants, state scholarships, and university scholarships. >And we went to Stanford Right now if you go to Stanford and your parents make less than $65k a year, you get a waiver for tuition and room and board. They also waive tuition for students whose parents make less than $125k a year.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        If you're making 30K you don't have a mortgage. 100$ a month for life is a significant fraction of your disposable income, and it never ends. ITs very much like a mortgage. Anyway, folks aren't bellyaching about $100 a month. Student loans are costing millions of Americans many times that for 20 years.
        learc83 11y ago
        >If you're making 30K you don't have a mortgage. True, but that's probably the case regardless of whether you have a $100 a month student loan payment. > 100$ a month for life is a significant fraction of your disposable income, and it never ends. It's not for life. If you haven't paid it off in 20 years, the rest is forgiven. >Anyway, folks aren't bellyaching about $100 a month. Student loans are costing millions of Americans many times that for 20 years. The income plan is for people on the lower side of the income scale. The standard plan is only 10 years. If you can afford that, you'll be done in 10 years. If you can't afford that, it's unlikely that you'll pay "many" times $100 a month for 20 years because what you pay is directly proportional to your income. And anyway, $100 a month for someone making $30k a year is basically an equivalent burden to $350 for someone making $60k. Sure there are exceptions--people who took out enormous sums of money to live on campus at an out of state school. The solution is to got to either go to a state school and don't live on campus, get scholarships, or go to a school with a large enough endowment to waive most of the cost.
joelgrus 11y ago
I personally never had the motivation to work hard in college. I always assumed this was a personal flaw. Years later, after I'd completed a large number of Coursera courses, I realized it was because college was boring. (edited to add) I should also note that the Coursera lectures themselves were pretty boring -- the innovation is that they provided slides and lecture notes so that I didn't have to sit through the lectures.
- koblenski 11y ago
  That's a good point. I couldn't stand the lectures in the few edX courses I took, but the slides and notes could be more beneficial. Although, I tend to prefer the better continuity of books when reading, and there are tons of great books out there. Of course, getting through books takes a lot of intrinsic motivation while Coursera or edX courses may provide the extra motivation that will help more people get through the whole course.
- bphogan 11y ago
  No, college isn't boring. Lectures are boring. And they're boring because they can't rely on students to read the textbook so they have to tell you what's in the textbook. The best teachers don't lecture. They facilitate discussion or present a problem and give you feedback while you work through it. You watch some videos outside of class and you come to class to be assessed. But that's hard work. Lecturing for an hour 3 times a week and giving a bubble-sheet test is easy for the teacher, and easy for the student.
  - nightski 11y ago
    Well, the other problem is similar to all schools. Students are at varying levels of competence. I finished many labs in 10 minutes which took the other students a full hour and a half simply because I already knew Java/C inside and out. Same with lectures where I was already familiar with the material.
    - bphogan 11y ago
      The question is why were you in the class if you already knew the material? People like you should be able to get credit for what you already know if you can demonstrate it. Unless of course you're just looking for a GPA and need the easy grade. If the school just made you sit there because reasons, well, yes, that's a huge problem. A problem which is being rectified all over the US.
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sonabinu 11y ago
How much are you willing to push yourself? Will you try multiple ways of solving something till you really understand it? Motivation is key. Some find it years after college, some find it while in college. Some find it without any college!
1971genocide 11y ago
Nonsense. The best knowledge that I have retained over my educational "career" has been self taught. College partially helped dictate the direction but why should I be paying 100,000 grands for just directions ? The best learning also happens when you are not stressed out due to "shame, external pressure". Or in my case financial and parental pressure. I remember reading studies done recently that found out that students are more stressed out than people locked up in prison. How is this fair ? Khan Academy's lectures on cryptography, physics and chemistry helped me through high school and college more than any other source. To the author of the blogpost : Stop whining about having to listen to young people's doubt about college when you have no clue what society is putting them through.
- bsilvereagle 11y ago
  > I remember reading studies done recently that found out that students are more stressed out than people locked up in prison. I'm curious which prisons were used in the study. High security? White collar? Food and shelter are provided for inmates. Students, on the other hand, have to make tuition payments, rent payments, figure out where every meal is coming from, work in groups for grades, deal with exams, ever changing project requirements, etc.
- learc83 11y ago
  >but why should I be paying 100,000 grands for just directions You don't have to spend anywhere near 100k for college, and the vast majority of people don't. The average in state tuition and fees at a public university is $9,139. Some kind of assistance is available to most people--the Pell Grant is income based and many states have Scholarships. Georgia (where I went to school) has the hope scholarship that covers around 90% of tuition and fees for high school students with a B average and close to 100% for students with a 3.7. In addition almost everyone qualifies for student loans. And if you take out more than $30k or so (I forget the exact amount) you can qualify for income based repayment where you pay back only 10% of your discretionary income (Income - 1.5 * Federal poverty level) for 20 years.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
maehwasu 11y ago
1. List (very real) benefits of going to college. 2. Repeatedly refuse to engage in any sort of analysis of whether those benefits were justified by their cost by using phrases like "I can't even put a price on those experiences." 3. Claim that college is worth every penny. "College is just a means to a higher salary" is a strawman. The real question is whether the other things it brings are worth tying yourself down in heavy debt for most of your working life. Also, if a big reason to go to college is motivation you can't find anywhere else, how completely f*ed will you be when you enter the real world heavily in debt and unable to learn new things without paying an institution thousands of dollars per month to motivate you?
- pmorici 11y ago
  "tying yourself down in heavy debt for most of your working life" Considering the typical adult entering the workforce today is going to have a career on the order of 40-50 years until retirement I don't think the typical 10 year repayment period of a typical college loan qualifies as 'most' of your working life.
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  > "College is just a means to a higher salary" is a straw man. I've always wondered about this. Does having a degree lead to higher salary? Or is it that the types of people who go to collage and get degrees are more naturally inclined (for whatever reasons) to get paid more? It seems like a pretty 'basic' and fundamental question, so I'm sure there's been studies/research on it before.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    My buddy Tom and I went to the same college at the same time. I graduated; he didn't. We've worked at 7 different companies together over 20 years, at essentially the same level. Sometimes I get hired and get him in; sometimes the opposite. But I have to admit my graduate credentials get me the interview sometimes, and that's what gets us in. So not having a college degree can be a bar to entry. A very real problem.
  - downandout 11y ago
maehwasu 11y ago
1. List (very real) benefits of going to college. 2. Repeatedly refuse to engage in any sort of analysis of whether those benefits were justified by their cost by using phrases like "I can't even put a price on those experiences." 3. Claim that college is worth every penny. "College is just a means to a higher salary" is a strawman. The real question is whether the other things it brings are worth tying yourself down in heavy debt for most of your working life. Also, if a big reason to go to college is motivation you can't find anywhere else, how completely f*ed will you be when you enter the real world heavily in debt and unable to learn new things without paying an institution thousands of dollars per month to motivate you?
zf00002 11y ago
Author doesn't get into it, but the quote at the top from a HN comment briefly touches on why I went back to college. I just graduated at 41 years old. There's not a clean, easy single reason why. But it involves some bits of pride and shame. I'm the oldest of all the grandkids in the extended family and had been the only one who hadn't earned a degree. Lost one of my grandmas a few years ago and I wanted to make sure my other one could see me get there. Also I wanted to do it just to prove to myself I could finish something I started over 20 years ago. Money ain't everything.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  That's like my story. I dropped out of CS degree and spent 20 years working on some great self motivated projects, I've had CGI videos on Mtv including one for a #1 charted band (not the song I did), taken a company from $250k turnover paper based business to $1m+ by computerising, started an ISP. But when I reflect: "no degree" always rankled, especially when I was hanging out with MIT grads at conferences. It definitely opened doors to them that were closed to me. I have heard "I could get you a semester of research in my lab if you had a degree". So here I am at 46 doing a BSc and am lining up my doctorate. Dr SixSigma has a good ring to it.
xacaxulu 11y ago
And in many cases, it isn't even a means to a higher salary. Often it's a means to a lifetime of debt.
rdudekul 11y ago
Author is making biased observations, probably based on his experience. Parental pressure, peer pressure, shame are all wrong reasons for going to college to get a degree. The lectures I watched on Khan Academy, Coursera or EdX beat almost all lectures I attended at college. For me there isn't a "big difference between watching a video online and actually being there". Many times I learned more from watching Youtube videos than attending lectures at universities/colleges. Hands-on learning courses on codecademy or codeschool are much better than in-person corporate trainings I attended, that companies I worked with spent thousands of dollars on.
- tjl 11y ago
  Most of the Coursera and EdX lectures are actually college lectures, just put online. I know as a TA, it can be hard to answer some questions via e-mail, so I'm assuming it would be difficult to do in a web forum as well. I once spent several e-mails trying to explain something to a student and after failing, asked them to come to my office and explained it in five minutes in a way they understood. So, while there might not be the difference for a lecture, it's the things around the course that can make the experience better. I know Khan Academy has some problems (at least in the past) with some of its material. One example is discussed in, http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/khan/ http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/khan/ I can verify what he's saying is correct as I used to be involved in teaching the same material. I first learnt C++ in an in-person corporate training session and it was excellent. I think it all depends.
learc83 11y ago
I've seen this debate from both sides. I worked as a self taught programmer for about 7 years before I went back to college. College forced me to learn the all the (seemingly) boring parts of Computer Science that I'd skipped over while teaching myself. Some people have the discipline and drive to spend time proving that an algorithm is O(n^2) or that a grammar isn't regular--most do not. My CS degree filled in so many holes in my background that I didn't even know I had, and most of the other self taught programmers I've worked with weren't too different from me. Many times this is the difference between spending a week banging your head against a wall, and taking 10 minutes to realize your particular problem was solved 50 years ago.
- deleted 11y ago
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StillBored 11y ago
Frankly, I think 15 years out from school the most important thing I got was the 1 line on my resume that says `BS Computer Engineering`. Everything else I either have forgotten because it wasn't applicable to my daily life, or was basic enough that a few months in the "real world" would have either taught it to me, or I have since moved far beyond. But, that one line keeps the door open when I need to look for jobs. I have an ex-coworker with similar skills, experience, etc. And when looking for positions I get about 2x-3x as many callbacks as he does. HR departments seem to throw his resume away, and the only thing we can think is that it must be the lack of degree.
- louthy 11y ago
  You have the raw end of the deal, not him. If an HR person can't make a judgement on whether a candidate is good or not other than by their qualifications (or they're actively marking the individual down when they have the experience but not the piece of paper), then the chances of the other employees at the company being chosen poorly is high. If he got no interviews whatsoever, then it'd be a cause for concern. But it seems to me he's got a more optimal list of possible future employers.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Not quite fair. HR people have a huge number of applicants. They need something to winnow down the field. They could choose white males, or blue-eyed females, or athletes, or anything really. And still have a pretty good cross-section of candidates, some with skills. So they choose college degree, for (somewhat) defensible reasons. And they interview those that pass the filter, and choose 'good fits'. Which is what they'd have done if they had used any filter at all.
adrianscott 11y ago
It's not a binary decision of college or "no-college"... It's a matter of considering the "space" of portfolios of other experiences you could assemble for potentially greater value (including non-financial value) at lower expense.
conradev 11y ago
> If someone doesn't have the motivation to get through college classes, it's unlikely that they'll have the motivation to learn on their own with online videos and exercises. If you don't have the motivation to learn something, then I posit that you haven't framed the topic in the right way. I like this quote from Feynman: > "I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough." The only way I'm going to put in the effort to learn something (really learn it, not just pass the class) is if I find it interesting in some way. I'm sure that awesome professors are great at framing topics in the right way, but I can also see myself doing that. For example, 3D graphics. There can be a lot of tedious math and programming involved, but if you can master it, you have the ultimate ability to visualize anything you can think of.
bphogan 11y ago
This article focuses a lot on lectures. And lectures are dying. Modern teaching methods are trying to phase them out, as the Internet is really good at giving you information. The educator's role is now a facilitator. "Guide on the side, not sage on the stage", or so it's been said. And that's how it has to be - that's the only way a college can compete. Because the online lectures you see are just captures of regular lectures. You don't need to go somewhere and pay money to watch someone talk. The value the professor adds is in assessing your work. And if classtime can be used to do that, or classtime can be used to let you practice, then there's the advantage.
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smokeyj 11y ago
Diamonds maintain their value thru strict control of the supply enabling them to serve as a symbol of status. Processes that threaten the control of artificial scarcity represent an existential threat to the value of the diamond industry and diamond holders. Draw parallels at your own will.
mkbrody 11y ago
As someone who dropped out of college and had to cope with the consequences, I often think if college is worth it for the typical use-case in HN discussions: an ambitious & hard-working American citizen < 24. While there's plenty of edge-cases in that definition (esp. the orders of magnitude over-represented college dropout billionaire), indubitably I think it is worth it for the vast majority of people for these two reasons: 1) The majority of society (aka the people who work in HR) still thinks it's important. Being the guinea pig (or crusader) isn't fun. While people like Peter Thiel, who graduated from Stanford 2x, pontificate about the outdatedness of education, note that before becoming a billionaire he leveraged his education to earn serious money and experience in respected careers that unanimously goto college graduates: finance & law. This gave him the financial foundation & creditability to invest in Max Levchin and ultimately run PayPal. The same opportunities are not offered in our society to people who graduate from top 10 universities vs drop out from the average American university. The latter will have to prove themselves 5x more to compete for the same opportunities - whether it is jobs, capital, co-founders, or even dating. Theres nearly no statistically likely argument where dropping out leads to better outcomes for the typical HN user over the long run across almost any metric. 2) Wait till you want to change careers or move into senior management to earn more money. Want an MBA so you can double your salary for the next 25 years? Want to become a teacher or a professor? How about a lawyer. Great, now take a bunch of classes with 18 y.o. know-it-alls and earn zero money for 4 extra years of undergrad tacked onto grad school when your opportunity cost is literally $500k (just for undergrad). I fought the good fight, and the lesson is it's generals and politicians who win wars, not soldiers.

32 points by koblenski 11y ago

While what he says is true, if you're taking on a lot of debt you have to consider whether you're going to be able to pay it off and how long that will take. "How much can I expect to make after graduation" was something people always considered, but the recent steep rise in tuition has made it more of an overriding question.

learc83 11y ago
They have an income based repayment plan where if you borrow over a certain amount you only have to pay 10% of your discretionary income (Income - 1.5 * Federal poverty level) for 20 years.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Right. Which puts you comfortably into middle age before you retire your student loan debt. Which is absolutely crazy.
  - learc83 11y ago
    If you're stuck in a crappy job making $30k a year and you're single, that works out to about $100 a month--many people pay that much for their cell phone bill. I don't think that's particularly burdensome. If on the other hand you make you get a better paying job making $60k your payment will be about $350 a month, and you'll pay off the average student loan debt (close to $30k) in about 10 years.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  That's quite a burden, right up there with a mortgage. Back in the day I paid off my student loan debt in 3 years, then my wife's in one more year. And we went to Stanford. Things have gotten way out of whack.
  - learc83 11y ago
    >That's quite a burden, right up there with a mortgage. That's nowhere near a mortgage at the income levels where it makes sense. If you're stuck in a crappy job making $30k a year and you're single, it's about $100 a month. If you're making $60k and you're single, you could definitely pay off the average $30k loan in 3 or 4 years (assuming you live somewhere where 60k is a decent income). And If you're making $60k and you have a family of 3, you're payments are going to be about $250 per month. Obviously the cost of college has gone up a good bit. Mainly due to an increase in the number and cost of administrators and a decrease in state funding. However, it hasn't gone up nearly as much as it seems when you realize that most people aren't paying the sticker price after you factor in federal grants, state scholarships, and university scholarships. >And we went to Stanford Right now if you go to Stanford and your parents make less than $65k a year, you get a waiver for tuition and room and board. They also waive tuition for students whose parents make less than $125k a year.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      If you're making 30K you don't have a mortgage. 100$ a month for life is a significant fraction of your disposable income, and it never ends. ITs very much like a mortgage. Anyway, folks aren't bellyaching about $100 a month. Student loans are costing millions of Americans many times that for 20 years.
      - learc83 11y ago
        >If you're making 30K you don't have a mortgage. True, but that's probably the case regardless of whether you have a $100 a month student loan payment. > 100$ a month for life is a significant fraction of your disposable income, and it never ends. It's not for life. If you haven't paid it off in 20 years, the rest is forgiven. >Anyway, folks aren't bellyaching about $100 a month. Student loans are costing millions of Americans many times that for 20 years. The income plan is for people on the lower side of the income scale. The standard plan is only 10 years. If you can afford that, you'll be done in 10 years. If you can't afford that, it's unlikely that you'll pay "many" times $100 a month for 20 years because what you pay is directly proportional to your income. And anyway, $100 a month for someone making $30k a year is basically an equivalent burden to $350 for someone making $60k. Sure there are exceptions--people who took out enormous sums of money to live on campus at an out of state school. The solution is to got to either go to a state school and don't live on campus, get scholarships, or go to a school with a large enough endowment to waive most of the cost.

joelgrus 11y ago

I personally never had the motivation to work hard in college. I always assumed this was a personal flaw. Years later, after I'd completed a large number of Coursera courses, I realized it was because college was boring. (edited to add) I should also note that the Coursera lectures themselves were pretty boring -- the innovation is that they provided slides and lecture notes so that I didn't have to sit through the lectures.

koblenski 11y ago
That's a good point. I couldn't stand the lectures in the few edX courses I took, but the slides and notes could be more beneficial. Although, I tend to prefer the better continuity of books when reading, and there are tons of great books out there. Of course, getting through books takes a lot of intrinsic motivation while Coursera or edX courses may provide the extra motivation that will help more people get through the whole course.
bphogan 11y ago
No, college isn't boring. Lectures are boring. And they're boring because they can't rely on students to read the textbook so they have to tell you what's in the textbook. The best teachers don't lecture. They facilitate discussion or present a problem and give you feedback while you work through it. You watch some videos outside of class and you come to class to be assessed. But that's hard work. Lecturing for an hour 3 times a week and giving a bubble-sheet test is easy for the teacher, and easy for the student.
- nightski 11y ago
  Well, the other problem is similar to all schools. Students are at varying levels of competence. I finished many labs in 10 minutes which took the other students a full hour and a half simply because I already knew Java/C inside and out. Same with lectures where I was already familiar with the material.
  - bphogan 11y ago
    The question is why were you in the class if you already knew the material? People like you should be able to get credit for what you already know if you can demonstrate it. Unless of course you're just looking for a GPA and need the easy grade. If the school just made you sit there because reasons, well, yes, that's a huge problem. A problem which is being rectified all over the US.

deleted 11y ago

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sonabinu 11y ago

How much are you willing to push yourself? Will you try multiple ways of solving something till you really understand it? Motivation is key. Some find it years after college, some find it while in college. Some find it without any college!

1971genocide 11y ago

Nonsense. The best knowledge that I have retained over my educational "career" has been self taught. College partially helped dictate the direction but why should I be paying 100,000 grands for just directions ? The best learning also happens when you are not stressed out due to "shame, external pressure". Or in my case financial and parental pressure. I remember reading studies done recently that found out that students are more stressed out than people locked up in prison. How is this fair ? Khan Academy's lectures on cryptography, physics and chemistry helped me through high school and college more than any other source. To the author of the blogpost : Stop whining about having to listen to young people's doubt about college when you have no clue what society is putting them through.

bsilvereagle 11y ago
> I remember reading studies done recently that found out that students are more stressed out than people locked up in prison. I'm curious which prisons were used in the study. High security? White collar? Food and shelter are provided for inmates. Students, on the other hand, have to make tuition payments, rent payments, figure out where every meal is coming from, work in groups for grades, deal with exams, ever changing project requirements, etc.
learc83 11y ago
>but why should I be paying 100,000 grands for just directions You don't have to spend anywhere near 100k for college, and the vast majority of people don't. The average in state tuition and fees at a public university is $9,139. Some kind of assistance is available to most people--the Pell Grant is income based and many states have Scholarships. Georgia (where I went to school) has the hope scholarship that covers around 90% of tuition and fees for high school students with a B average and close to 100% for students with a 3.7. In addition almost everyone qualifies for student loans. And if you take out more than $30k or so (I forget the exact amount) you can qualify for income based repayment where you pay back only 10% of your discretionary income (Income - 1.5 * Federal poverty level) for 20 years.
- jlarocco 11y ago

maehwasu 11y ago

1. List (very real) benefits of going to college. 2. Repeatedly refuse to engage in any sort of analysis of whether those benefits were justified by their cost by using phrases like "I can't even put a price on those experiences." 3. Claim that college is worth every penny. "College is just a means to a higher salary" is a strawman. The real question is whether the other things it brings are worth tying yourself down in heavy debt for most of your working life. Also, if a big reason to go to college is motivation you can't find anywhere else, how completely f*ed will you be when you enter the real world heavily in debt and unable to learn new things without paying an institution thousands of dollars per month to motivate you?

pmorici 11y ago
"tying yourself down in heavy debt for most of your working life" Considering the typical adult entering the workforce today is going to have a career on the order of 40-50 years until retirement I don't think the typical 10 year repayment period of a typical college loan qualifies as 'most' of your working life.
madeofpalk 11y ago
> "College is just a means to a higher salary" is a straw man. I've always wondered about this. Does having a degree lead to higher salary? Or is it that the types of people who go to collage and get degrees are more naturally inclined (for whatever reasons) to get paid more? It seems like a pretty 'basic' and fundamental question, so I'm sure there's been studies/research on it before.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  My buddy Tom and I went to the same college at the same time. I graduated; he didn't. We've worked at 7 different companies together over 20 years, at essentially the same level. Sometimes I get hired and get him in; sometimes the opposite. But I have to admit my graduate credentials get me the interview sometimes, and that's what gets us in. So not having a college degree can be a bar to entry. A very real problem.
- downandout 11y ago

maehwasu 11y ago

zf00002 11y ago

Author doesn't get into it, but the quote at the top from a HN comment briefly touches on why I went back to college. I just graduated at 41 years old. There's not a clean, easy single reason why. But it involves some bits of pride and shame. I'm the oldest of all the grandkids in the extended family and had been the only one who hadn't earned a degree. Lost one of my grandmas a few years ago and I wanted to make sure my other one could see me get there. Also I wanted to do it just to prove to myself I could finish something I started over 20 years ago. Money ain't everything.

SixSigma 11y ago
That's like my story. I dropped out of CS degree and spent 20 years working on some great self motivated projects, I've had CGI videos on Mtv including one for a #1 charted band (not the song I did), taken a company from $250k turnover paper based business to $1m+ by computerising, started an ISP. But when I reflect: "no degree" always rankled, especially when I was hanging out with MIT grads at conferences. It definitely opened doors to them that were closed to me. I have heard "I could get you a semester of research in my lab if you had a degree". So here I am at 46 doing a BSc and am lining up my doctorate. Dr SixSigma has a good ring to it.

xacaxulu 11y ago

And in many cases, it isn't even a means to a higher salary. Often it's a means to a lifetime of debt.

rdudekul 11y ago

Author is making biased observations, probably based on his experience. Parental pressure, peer pressure, shame are all wrong reasons for going to college to get a degree. The lectures I watched on Khan Academy, Coursera or EdX beat almost all lectures I attended at college. For me there isn't a "big difference between watching a video online and actually being there". Many times I learned more from watching Youtube videos than attending lectures at universities/colleges. Hands-on learning courses on codecademy or codeschool are much better than in-person corporate trainings I attended, that companies I worked with spent thousands of dollars on.

tjl 11y ago
Most of the Coursera and EdX lectures are actually college lectures, just put online. I know as a TA, it can be hard to answer some questions via e-mail, so I'm assuming it would be difficult to do in a web forum as well. I once spent several e-mails trying to explain something to a student and after failing, asked them to come to my office and explained it in five minutes in a way they understood. So, while there might not be the difference for a lecture, it's the things around the course that can make the experience better. I know Khan Academy has some problems (at least in the past) with some of its material. One example is discussed in, http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/khan/ http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/khan/ I can verify what he's saying is correct as I used to be involved in teaching the same material. I first learnt C++ in an in-person corporate training session and it was excellent. I think it all depends.

learc83 11y ago

I've seen this debate from both sides. I worked as a self taught programmer for about 7 years before I went back to college. College forced me to learn the all the (seemingly) boring parts of Computer Science that I'd skipped over while teaching myself. Some people have the discipline and drive to spend time proving that an algorithm is O(n^2) or that a grammar isn't regular--most do not. My CS degree filled in so many holes in my background that I didn't even know I had, and most of the other self taught programmers I've worked with weren't too different from me. Many times this is the difference between spending a week banging your head against a wall, and taking 10 minutes to realize your particular problem was solved 50 years ago.

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StillBored 11y ago

Frankly, I think 15 years out from school the most important thing I got was the 1 line on my resume that says `BS Computer Engineering`. Everything else I either have forgotten because it wasn't applicable to my daily life, or was basic enough that a few months in the "real world" would have either taught it to me, or I have since moved far beyond. But, that one line keeps the door open when I need to look for jobs. I have an ex-coworker with similar skills, experience, etc. And when looking for positions I get about 2x-3x as many callbacks as he does. HR departments seem to throw his resume away, and the only thing we can think is that it must be the lack of degree.

louthy 11y ago
You have the raw end of the deal, not him. If an HR person can't make a judgement on whether a candidate is good or not other than by their qualifications (or they're actively marking the individual down when they have the experience but not the piece of paper), then the chances of the other employees at the company being chosen poorly is high. If he got no interviews whatsoever, then it'd be a cause for concern. But it seems to me he's got a more optimal list of possible future employers.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Not quite fair. HR people have a huge number of applicants. They need something to winnow down the field. They could choose white males, or blue-eyed females, or athletes, or anything really. And still have a pretty good cross-section of candidates, some with skills. So they choose college degree, for (somewhat) defensible reasons. And they interview those that pass the filter, and choose 'good fits'. Which is what they'd have done if they had used any filter at all.

adrianscott 11y ago

It's not a binary decision of college or "no-college"... It's a matter of considering the "space" of portfolios of other experiences you could assemble for potentially greater value (including non-financial value) at lower expense.

conradev 11y ago

> If someone doesn't have the motivation to get through college classes, it's unlikely that they'll have the motivation to learn on their own with online videos and exercises. If you don't have the motivation to learn something, then I posit that you haven't framed the topic in the right way. I like this quote from Feynman: > "I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough." The only way I'm going to put in the effort to learn something (really learn it, not just pass the class) is if I find it interesting in some way. I'm sure that awesome professors are great at framing topics in the right way, but I can also see myself doing that. For example, 3D graphics. There can be a lot of tedious math and programming involved, but if you can master it, you have the ultimate ability to visualize anything you can think of.

bphogan 11y ago

This article focuses a lot on lectures. And lectures are dying. Modern teaching methods are trying to phase them out, as the Internet is really good at giving you information. The educator's role is now a facilitator. "Guide on the side, not sage on the stage", or so it's been said. And that's how it has to be - that's the only way a college can compete. Because the online lectures you see are just captures of regular lectures. You don't need to go somewhere and pay money to watch someone talk. The value the professor adds is in assessing your work. And if classtime can be used to do that, or classtime can be used to let you practice, then there's the advantage.

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smokeyj 11y ago

Diamonds maintain their value thru strict control of the supply enabling them to serve as a symbol of status. Processes that threaten the control of artificial scarcity represent an existential threat to the value of the diamond industry and diamond holders. Draw parallels at your own will.

mkbrody 11y ago

As someone who dropped out of college and had to cope with the consequences, I often think if college is worth it for the typical use-case in HN discussions: an ambitious & hard-working American citizen < 24. While there's plenty of edge-cases in that definition (esp. the orders of magnitude over-represented college dropout billionaire), indubitably I think it is worth it for the vast majority of people for these two reasons: 1) The majority of society (aka the people who work in HR) still thinks it's important. Being the guinea pig (or crusader) isn't fun. While people like Peter Thiel, who graduated from Stanford 2x, pontificate about the outdatedness of education, note that before becoming a billionaire he leveraged his education to earn serious money and experience in respected careers that unanimously goto college graduates: finance & law. This gave him the financial foundation & creditability to invest in Max Levchin and ultimately run PayPal. The same opportunities are not offered in our society to people who graduate from top 10 universities vs drop out from the average American university. The latter will have to prove themselves 5x more to compete for the same opportunities - whether it is jobs, capital, co-founders, or even dating. Theres nearly no statistically likely argument where dropping out leads to better outcomes for the typical HN user over the long run across almost any metric. 2) Wait till you want to change careers or move into senior management to earn more money. Want an MBA so you can double your salary for the next 25 years? Want to become a teacher or a professor? How about a lawyer. Great, now take a bunch of classes with 18 y.o. know-it-alls and earn zero money for 4 extra years of undergrad tacked onto grad school when your opportunity cost is literally $500k (just for undergrad). I fought the good fight, and the lesson is it's generals and politicians who win wars, not soldiers.