Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090903350.html?hpid=topnews

by cwan • 16 years ago

55 96 16 years ago

ziweb3• 16 years ago

Unless you want a job in Academia. College is still a big barrier for many professions, and probably the only way you will have adequate training for those professions.

Also, I would not give a 18 year old $10,000 to start a business. You need at least some training or experience working before you head out on your own. If I had $10,000 I would give it to him only if I saw he had a real plan.

josefresco2• 16 years ago

Are you implying that you'd give $10,000 to an 18 year old to spend on/at college with no plan and/or major? Seems just as crazy.

ziweb3• 16 years ago

Yes, I think there are certain areas in technology were someone 18 - 20 can come up with a spectacular idea. Just didn't want to rule that out.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

Print version, no ads, single page, faster loading:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09...

cryptoz• 16 years ago

First, your linked page does have ads. You must have adblock on if you didn't see it. Second, traditional newspapers are struggling and it seems pretty mean to go out of your way to block their ads. The industry needs a new plan and a total overhaul but in the meantime, lets at least not direct people away from their only revenue source online.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

Huh, interesting. I was wondering why all the hate/down-votes.

OK, I won't edit the original because that's what I wrote, and that's what's being down-voted - fair enough. Even so, it's still single page and much faster loading. I don't even really mind the ads, I just get annoyed at having to click through, click through, click through, ...

Thanks for leaving the comment and helping me (and possibly others) learn, and not just down-voting and moving on.

9ec4c12949a4f34• 16 years ago

orenmazor• 16 years ago

you dont go to college to get a job. you go there to get an education.

arethuza• 16 years ago

This seems to have changed so much in the 20+ years since I graduated. When I started in my first job I was more or less told that I wouldn't add any value to my employer for at least six months - the CS course I did was fairly theory heavy. However, they were happy with that, I more or less accepted that they were investing in me and I was fairly naive about the world of business - painfully true in retrospect.

samtp• 16 years ago

education on shotgunning beer and bong hits

pmichaud3• 16 years ago

That's what they say when you point out that college doesn't really -> job anymore.

I went to college, and pretty much got jack shit for an education. I educated myself. I went to a small high, Catholic high school and learned more there in the sense of "enrichment" than I ever did at the colleges I attended (and excelled in). Maybe at some point this was true: colleges enrich you, and college means you can get better jobs. That's not really true for a lot of people now, myself among them.

achompas2• 16 years ago

Agreed. I've learned more about life and the world in the years after college than in the 4 years I spent getting my BA.

cageface5• 16 years ago

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

— Frank Zappa

Retric3• 16 years ago

There are two basic fallacy’s in this article. One, all colleges cost 200k, and second the assumption that most degrees are equivalent. In many ways a college education is much like a car because a Honda civic will get you around the country but a Bugatti Vayron can get you there much faster. So it comes down to how much a more prestigious education is worth? If you are going down the street or becoming a social worker then Harvard is probably a waste of time.

PS: I have a BS from small and inexpensive college and at 28 I got promoted to the same job as the 27 year old with a BS and MS from MIT I sit next to. Now we both went to college, but if you compare the sticker price of his education he got a much worse deal then I did. Granted, 10 years from now he will probably make more than I will because he works ridiculously harder than I do.

pmichaud3• 16 years ago

The word you're looking for is "college."

josefresco2• 16 years ago

You know, I was going to point that out, but figured it was too petty and didn't add to the conversation. However now that I see you pointing it out, it does seem ironic given the topic. What is more important? Making a solid point in a debate with horrible spelling or spelling things correctly without much to say? Sort of summarizes the arguments for/against education. Some would argue that education values form over function, while others would argue that good form is needed to fully understand the function.

locopati• 16 years ago

This assumes that the only marker of comparison is your job/salary at a given age.

yardie• 16 years ago

I went to a huge land-grant university in the south and my ex-girlfriend went to a private college in the mid-atlantic. She left school with $8000 of loans and mine was double that.

How is that possible? The state backloaded the additional costs into university "fees". And my scholarships, though easier to get, were much smaller (public schools are misers about the grant money). Her school had 3 itemized things: tuition, housing, meal plan. Tuition was $40,000 and the school paid for 90% of it, Pell, Stafford, and workstudy covered the rest. Since the majority of her fellow students came from rich, mid-atlantic families they were generous with the endowments.

The point is if you ask your colleague from MIT how much he paid he might have even paid less than you. Those that can get into those schools have no problem affording them. I believe for Harvard any family making <$70,000 are fully covered. It's probably a similar scheme for MIT.

joshuacc• 16 years ago

This is a really important point. My wife attended one of the Seven Sisters. While we're still paying college loans, we owe much less than if she'd gone to any of the state schools in her area.

Retric3• 16 years ago

His parents are somewhat loaded so he/they paid over 300k which is ~3x what I paid. Plus he did not work for 2 extra years so toss another 100+k in lost wages and interest over time period.

tomlin2• 16 years ago

I didn't go to college. I didn't finish highschool. All of my colleagues have and spent thousands doing so. We all make the exact same salary and have the same expectations in our workplace. I have been employed for over 7 years. I am an accomplished web developer and designer, working on small and large brands.

Where do I sit in your fallacy?

nwmcsween• 16 years ago

What do you want to achieve in life is basically what this all boils down to. You didn't go to collage / university but some want to understand calculus, organic chemistry, etc. Learning by yourself is completely impossible in higher levels of education as buying million dollar machinery isn't really in the grasp of a single person.

btilly2• 16 years ago

You assume that because you have the same job and sit next to each other that you make the same amount of money. In my experience that is a very unsafe assumption. Unless you know what he makes, you don't know that. (In most US companies, talking about what you make to co-workers is a fireable offense for a reason.)

zach• 16 years ago

Quick note: in California wage secrecy is illegal.

Section 232 of The California Labor Code prohibits employers from:

    * requiring as a condition of employment that any employee refrain from disclosing the amount of their wages [Section 232(a)];
    * requiring an employee to sign a waiver of their right to disclose their wages [§232(b)]; or
    * discharging, formally disciplining, or otherwise discriminating against an employee who discloses the amount of their wages [§232(c)].

ryanlchan2• 16 years ago

This, but in a more subtle way. People seem obsessed with the economics of having a university degree: how much money you make, the cost of it all. But we're putting an economic microscope on something which is inherently hard to value in dollars.

How much are your friendships worth? Your outlook on life? Your confidence and optimism in human nature? Your expectations of what is achievable?

These are all things that college will mold and shape, yet are impossible to value from raw dollars. Yeah, so maybe if you were just looking at pay, getting a Harvard degree isn't the best investment. But having a few years to indulge in the best faculty, stunning facilities, and intimidatingly intelligent peers changes things for a person at a very core level. Maybe it's worth the debt.

Degrees are not commodities, even in some instances they are treated as such. Your education is not a financial investment, even if some people people will treat it as such. If you're worried about the payback on schooling, you're doing it wrong. And that comes from a guy with a significant amount of it.

drivebyacct23• 16 years ago

What about not paying for college? I'm loving the college life and not paying a dime for it.

gacba2• 16 years ago

Nice gig if you can get it. Not everyone is so lucky, unfortunately.

drivebyacct23• 16 years ago

Right. I'm just used to seeing the stance "College is a waste of (time/money/etc)". I mean, if you're paying for college, it's a tradeoff just like anything is.

It's an investment. If it's not going to pay off in the long run, don't go. Basic economics. That was my point, didn't intend to sound so arrogant in my op. :(

noodle• 16 years ago

its all situational, at least right now.

in some cases, it probably is smarter for an individual to bypass higher education. or, instead of going to a 4-year college, it would be smarter to go to a 2-year tech school or trade school. in others, its smarter for someone to go to the prestigious, expensive university.

beilabs• 16 years ago

This was my Irish education:

1 degree, 1 postgrad + 1 MSc later. 7 years of university.

Total university fees: Roughly 5000 euros.

What would be the equivalent in the United States?

patio113• 16 years ago

Zero to about $400k. Depends on university, grant aid, academic performance, and family ability to pay.

Edit to add: technically, cost could be negative. Mine was for a few semesters due to aggressive pursuit of scholarships. I know at least three people paid to study.

Hovertruck• 16 years ago

I didn't get a college degree and I feel like I'm doing relatively well. Sometimes I wonder if I'll regret not going, but it is what it is.

parfe2• 16 years ago

All this hate on a college education annoys me to no end. I went to college to learn. I worked hard at getting myself a diverse education.

I took classes in CS, Geology, Philosophy, History, Political Science, Sociology, Psychology, Math, Physics and some stuff I'm forgetting. Other than the CS, I directly use exactly zero of it in my career. And I use more of what I learned in my part time jobs during school than actual CS classes

Ancient Greece, Modern China or glacial striations have no bearing on my career. But maybe one day I'll travel to China or Greece, or be able to explain to a date on a hike why the exposed rock face in the valley is heavily marked while the summit is not. And I know that to raise my now 13 month old dog positive reinforcement is absolutely essential and punishment is pointless if I'm even 30 seconds late to apply it.

If you want job training go to Lincoln Tech and learn how to repair refrigeration units or fix a car.

dgabriel3• 16 years ago

This is all good, but if you have to go $220k in debt to learn about stuff, that's ridiculous.

There are ways to learn and grow outside of academia, and until the costs become reasonable again, I don't pooh-pooh anyone who decides to learn about Modern China by traveling to China for a year instead of taking the class.

patio113• 16 years ago

I was going to say, for my three courses on non-Japan countries I could have lived virtually anywhere for a year. $80 an hour, yay.

cageface5• 16 years ago

If you're bright and motivated, you can learn a lot more on your own. Why should you be forced to march through every subject lock-step with 30-100 other students at a median pace that's probably unsuitable for 2/3 of the class in any given week? Why should your learning be doled out in time chunks that are arbitrarily convenient for administrative purposes and nothing more? Why limit your study to the handful of sanctified texts when you have the entire internet at your fingers? Why pay that hefty tuition to sit in a lecture hall so crowded you may never ask the teacher a single question only to move to a T.A. section run by a harried grad student that often barely speaks English? The traditional academic learning model is an artifact of 500-year old technology.

Not only that, but the academic humanities are totally infested with continental post-structuralism. If anything you're just setting yourself up to be the victim of the next Sokal's Hoax.

harshpotatoes2• 16 years ago

Well, the costs are reasonable, it's just that generally people make unreasonable choices. Yes, $220k is an unreasonable amount of debt. However, at big public University, the costs are much closer to $60K (for four years + living expenses, assuming in state tuition).

gacba2• 16 years ago

You could learn a lot of what you just mentioned for nothing at the Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/). If it's the overall value proposition you want to compare, college blows on a cost per unit of knowledge acquired for someone who really wants to learn. There's an entirely different experience--I'll grant you that. But is that worth thousands a semester?

fuzzmeister• 16 years ago

Thank you. A liberal arts education in the atmosphere of a university, with thousands of people your age, is an incomparable experience. It is a luxury, no doubt, but if you can afford it, it is like nothing else.

Mc_Big_G• 16 years ago

Personal anecdote:

Supported a large family through work and student loans. The only job I could get was a gas station attendant and/or roofer and did both all during college. These jobs were a kind of torture for someone who took AP calculus senior year of high school.

Fast forward five years, two-internships and one mechanical engineering degree. I was now qualified for a $41k+ (13 years ago) job and started the day after graduation. Goodbye gas pumps and hot tar.

Unfortunately, most employers are too busy to bother finding out if someone is smart enough to be a great employee, so they rely on that piece of paper as your validation. However, engineering school instills a deep understanding of logic, critical thinking, organizational skills and knowledge that is very difficult to pick up by yourself.

I'll be paying $500+/month on my student loans for a looooong time, but it's THE BEST MONEY I EVER SPENT.

maukdaddy3• 16 years ago

I wish I could upvote you more. The fact that kids can work in college seems to be beyond most people.

My wife worked part-time all through college and managed to get an engineering degree. I worked 25+ hours per week through most of my college and managed to get a CS/MIS degree. Sure we each had approx. 20k in student loans, but that is entirely manageable.

One thing about college - you get exposed to areas you never would on your own. As part of my education I was forced to take language and public speaking classes. These are areas I would not have explored on my own. But to be honest, they have been worth far more than any technology class I took.

I'd like to echo: THE BEST MONEY I EVER SPENT.

edit: Our degrees are in marketable fields. Spending a fortune for a degree in art history is not marketable, and is entirely foolish.

patio113• 16 years ago

A degree in art history is like DHH's car: not quite my taste in conspicuous consumption, but I support rich peoples' right to waste their own money.

geebee• 16 years ago

It's excellent that you managed to work and get an engineering degree.. but I'm not convinced this is something that can work on a large scale. Where did you live?

I knew a guy at UCSD who was trying to major in computer science while supporting himself. He was working about 30 hours a week in retail at a department store. San Diego is expensive, and just making ends meet can be a challenge for someone low on the pay scale, and he was trying to balance this with paying for tuition, books, a laptop, and so forth.

Now, add in the fact that he's trying to get good grades in data structures and algorithms, vector calc, physics, and a general education elective. He ended up dropping the data structures class.

Now, people drop that class for all kinds of reasons. But personally, I'd rather not see America's promising young minds struggling with a 30 hr a week retail job while taking a heavy course load of math, physics, and engineering. I've heard of students putting 20-30 hours a week into data structures alone. This can lead to 70+ hour weeks. It's character building, and some extraordinary people will succeed, but I think we need to recognize that this would knock many students with above average motivation, study habits, and intelligence out of the game.

Unfortunately, the answer for the "middle class" may be to target universities near home and stay with the parents. UCs are about 10K/yr now for in-state undergraduates. I think a student could swing that with moderate part time work and limited loans. This would come with its own kind of costs, though.

itg• 16 years ago

I really doubt someone could pull that off now. With the cost of college and cost of living in general, you would barely make a dent in your college payments. Add the fact that it is impossible to get a job these days.

jbarham• 16 years ago

It's also worth pointing out that if your goal is to be a Professional/Certified Engineer, AFAIK you must start with a university degree before you can even begin the certification process.

alassehz• 16 years ago

Education is the most beneficial for those who can do the economic an social leap from a hard background (Kudos by the way). I would like to add that in college in a same major or field you are more likely to find people who are similar minded. Who knows your next co-founder could be sitting right next to you.

mkramlich• 16 years ago

> However, engineering school instills a deep understanding of logic, critical thinking, organizational skills and knowledge that is very difficult to pick up by yourself.

Disagree. I did that long before, and mostly outside and independently from college. If I can, others can too.

jmspring• 16 years ago

It really does depend on your situation. At a prior employer, about three years ago, we brought on an intern as a developer who wanted to skip college. He felt he wouldn't learn anything in school and that he should go straight into working.

He was smart, but after awhile it was decided to let him go for a couple of reasons - mainly around professional behavior and maturity. He couldn't focus and management didn't plan for/have the bandwidth to really properly handle an intern in this situation. Some of us tried to help where we could, but already having to work 60+ hour weeks left little energy/time to do so.

In the years since he was let go, he has matured and is turning out some great projects and working at a company that is really happy to have him. It took time and a good amount of job hopping for him to get his sea legs.

College is just as much about learning as it is about maturing and getting out on your own. Depending on the person, some people need this and some may not.

bmelton• 16 years ago

In general though, I'd say a lot of natural maturation occurs between the ages of 18 and 22, or even older for your masters degrees and the like.

Anecdotally, I once worked with a girl who on paper was sharp as a whip -- 2 masters degrees from prestigious colleges, top of her class, etc., but in person, was quite socially awkward and had absolutely zero real world experience, as she had only ever been a professional student. She was responsible and mature enough to do the job, and she definitely had plenty of book-type scenarios upon which to apply her vast education, but in the little things, that typically aren't taught out of books, she floundered. Now I think she holds a great title in finance at a decent bank, which probably suits her education better, and hopefully affords her less social interaction than when I knew her.

Another thing that bothers me about college (I didn't attend, though I constantly consider enrolling now) -- is that it means that degree seekers end up in the job market so late in life. I had a portfolio of applications I'd written, technical expertise, and a good working reputation by the time most college grads are just entering the job market.

Obviously, I'm potentially discriminated against by companies who heavily value college degrees, but at least for early job markets, it seems that (outside of silicon valley anyway) the college grads who had to compete with others like myself were at a disadvantage.

AlexC04• 16 years ago

I'll have to admit, this was really a bit of a TLDR for me. I've heard the arguments before (and by scanning this one it seems generally an economic argument).

I feel that it's a fair point if your sole measure of lifetime value is an economic one... unfortunately I disagree that money and Debt are the only things to measure your life by.

I found University opened my mind in ways that I don't think I could have found on my own.

It was very little things for me in terms of a way of thinking, but "correlation does not equal causation" fell upon me like a 10 megaton bomb.

That's the most significant one that I can recall but there were thousands of little things that I'd never really have tracked down on my own.

Plus the fun and friends and University girls :)

Debt is one way to measure your decision to attend University, richness of life experience is another.

Undoubtedly there are other cheaper ways to experience life... but I think University is a damned good one.

EDIT: Arguably, there's probably quite a bit of post-hoc decision making going on in that argument as well. "I came out of uni with debt and without a job - so I would have been better off without it" does not mean "people in general are better off without university"

And so on.

9ec4c12949a4f34• 16 years ago

Higher education for the majority is a total scam, I'm sorry this just needs to be said.

I apologize for not getting into details, I am in the progress of a real post you may expect posted sometime after my work-day is done and I get home (expect it within 12 hours).

Here's the first few lines anyway:

We are indoctrinated into the belief from the earliest stages of our lives that we must head to the best schools and become specialists in an indescribably small target of knowledge if we are to ever "make something" of ourselves. In our capitalist society this means rich.

(Surprisingly, it's not a rant against capitalism, just the establishment, man.)

ams6110• 16 years ago

OK so the guy gets a degree in computer science, then trys his hand at investing and stock picking, fails, and concludes that college is a scam?

rgoddard• 16 years ago

I would see it as a case of premature optimization.

parbo• 16 years ago

Or live in a country where higher education is free.

Paid for by taxes (I just know someone will point this out)

ziweb3• 16 years ago

It might be better to question why college is so expensive, or why student loans are so harsh ( http://www.collegescholarships.org/research/student-loans/ ) For example, in Denmark tuition is free for undergraduate and MSc and MA studies. ( http://www.internationalgraduate.net/denmark_university.htm )

tofumatt• 16 years ago

I actually dropped out of university because of work. I started making $35k/year plus freelancing (usually another $10-20k) when I was 18, and while I tried to keep going to school for awhile during work, it was too hectic and I wasn't interested in class anyway/anymore. I was already working in my field of study and felt I learned more on my own.

Sometimes I'm bummed out I never took some lower-level, nitty-gritty CS classes, but I don't miss university in general, and I've learned a lot of the theory/low-level stuff you don't just "pick up" through teaching myself and learning from other programmers at work.

Four years later it seems like the right choice, as I'm making a lot more than I did at 18 as a full-time, salaried employee at a small startup-ish company.

carlrice• 16 years ago

Similar deal here. Went for two years, got a full time job and I couldn't get student loans big enough to cover the other two. Were the classes and connections worth the price even without a degree? Absolutely. Considering todays economy, a body of work, salary and two additional years of work experience is more valuable than a BFA from a pricy art school.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

I enjoyed my time in college, I even learned and experienced much that I still value. However, to be honest, most of the knowledge that I value has come outside of traditional education. Much of my most useful knowledge in physics, biology, astronomy, language, etc. has come from self-study, from reading old issues of National Geographic, Popular Science, Scientific American during high school and after, from reading text books and non-fiction books on my own. The most important contribution to my intellectual character has probably come from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, above any course or line of study in formal education.

That being said, there have been some substantial and crucial bits of knowledge I likely would not have acquired outside of school. Calculus and advanced mathematics, most especially the rigor of formal proofs that has proven immensely useful and practical to me and yet came of a degree course I chose essential by accident. And the experience of chemistry laboratory courses, using equipment that I would not have had access to outside of college, is something I would be sorry to have missed.

Overall, I'd say that college can still be a valuable experience but the increasing reliance on college as the sole route to education is troublesome and problematic.

DanielBMarkham2• 16 years ago

I'm not going to pile on college, or defend it for that matter, but I will make a couple observations.

First, if you just spent many years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars on something, it's going to be a great thing. This is "mountain climber" syndrome, which says that after you spend all that time and pain climbing the mountain, it's going to be the best experience ever.

Second, if the cost of college is rising faster than the cost of inflation, the question isn't is college worth it, the question is is college worth it so far. Because at some point it's not going to be worth it. The only question is when.

I'm a huge fan of education. Personally I wish that everybody had the equivalent of a 4-year degree in liberal arts before even starting on the rest of their education careers. But I think it's painfully obvious that the idea of college as being a simple ticket out of anywhere has gotten a lot more complex than it used to be. Lots of factors to weigh. Hard-working people who self-educate do well with or without college. Other folks may be thinking that college is giving them something that it isn't.

Not only is the cost an issue, but technology is moving so quickly that having a little stamp of approval isn't going to hold weight like it did even back forty years ago. If you're in the technology field and your degree is more than ten years old? You've got an ancient history degree, sadly.

olegkikin• 16 years ago

I'm a huge fan of education, but spending 4 years on a liberal art degree is a huge waste of time. It will not land you a job.

If you actually want to learn something, go online. Most of the information is out there.

DanielBMarkham2• 16 years ago

everybody had the equivalent of a 4-year degree in liberal arts

nobody is saying spend 4 years in liberal arts. The point is that a 4-year degree that would give you a wide cultural background (and no, I'm not talking talking-to-trees, I mean things like classics, history, art, etc) and allow you to enjoy life more. Doesn't have to take any extra time. You can do it anytime you like. I just think that there is a great benefit to the things offered under the title "liberal arts" -- much more than we analytical people like to admit.

Yes, short-term, get something that works for you. These short-term, long-term value decisions is exactly why it's such a difficult conversation to have.

Sadly, we've created a system of higher education that I think has developed a system of courseware with a very high impedance mismatch with the criteria use to decide. That just makes figuring out the usefulness of college tougher on everybody.

rwaliany• 16 years ago

It varies per person. For me, I finished all of my curriculum at Carnegie Mellon, but I will not be completing my degree because I've already gained all the value in my opinion. I think going to school and dropping out was very valuable to me.

9ec4c12949a4f34• 16 years ago

Higher education has become perhaps one of the largest and most well composed scams of our age, at least, in North America (I have no global perspectives into this). We are indoctrinated into the belief from the earliest stages of our lives that we must head to the best schools and become specialists in an indescribably small target of knowledge if we are to ever "make something" of ourselves: in our capitalist society, this means rich.

So our society tell us that to live the life we're supposed to live (ie, "Six figures, at the least!" means you're happy), we need to gain the means to make that kind of money. We have arrived at this universal consensus that higher education will produce your goals and therefore university education equates to life fulfillment. How did we get here? By having people from highly specialized and technical fields being able to charge higher-than-average value for their time. That's right, university enabled many really smart people to get really high-paying jobs. These people all went to university to make something of themselves. We also don't like to take risks to get where we want to be, as we have it drilled into our heads since youth that risks are bad and university is the only way to ensure you'll be happy later in life, because lots of high-paying jobs come demand university education of any type, and it's the best way to ensure you get a job (lowering your risk of not making six-figures). These two factors have lead to our inability to evaluate this realm without the consensus that university is the key to life fulfillment (a fat juicy salary). Despite my tone, there isn't anything socially wrong with this model.

So where's the scam? We're told that university is the key to the universe. Universities have long since abandoned our goals in attending them, and realized they are a business. They can create classes that aren't exactly surgery, building rockets, advanced maths-- (things that are the high-paying jobs, and be deserving of it), and still make money off of them. Why? You attribute value to a scrap of paper that has the words "Bachelor's degree" or "Masters degree" of ANY type, entirely without the slightest consideration for what was studied, what was retained, how one can preform, or anything from those 5 years. It's almost as if this is straight out of Hairy Potter: you're writing down on a magic scroll "Curriculum vitae" add the archaic words "Baccalaureus in Arte Ingeniaria" and poof you've been instantly transported to the land of SixFig to do the same repetitive task for the next 50 years of your life, which will make you very, very happy.

We have such a bias to generalize that any person with any degree is better than any person with no degree simply from the value we attribute to this magic word. What does a degree even mean now? The business of education has flooded the market with degrees to get more business. We have students applying in droves with the knowledge that they simply must get a degree to live a proper life, but they don't want to do surgery or rocket science (it's too hard, or uninteresting), so they study really interesting things like the arts, history, and philosophy (things that our society and more importantly business out to make money hardly care about; their only "9-5 SixFig low-risk" jobs are to teach what they learn, and thus go learn a skill applicable to that business).

The scam doesn't just end there. Human Resources departments across the country have so highly placed value into simply having this document that they mandate it's requirement on almost every job application they put out, especially the really repetitive and easy work in an attempt to "weed out all the bad candidates". They honestly don't even care what you studied, they just want to see it, it's great to have it on there. I have heard enough asinine flawed reasons defending why it's there to fill a room, but when it comes down to it, it's simply there because people looking to hire you have placed a lot of value into any random specialization of knowledge from any random institution. They don't even care how well you did, or what your W degree in field X at school Y from year Z taught you that is different from a W degree in field X at school A from year Q. Oh, but Brock University, Ontario is better than SD University, Rajasthan ... that's obviously a given because they're from a country I know nothing about.

A degree is treated as if it's part of an ISO standard of documents, but entirely ad-hock, vaguely defined, difficult to match knowledge gained with job requirements (pfft, a software degree, did you even learn what GIT was or how to talk to business people, or did you just write a linked list in 50 languages?)

Suddenly we are full of anecdotal evidence that degrees are useless: we have cabbies, stock boys, cashiers, janitors, librarians, wait staff, and gas attendants with magic letters at the end of their names. Damn, someone lied to us, the magic spell didn't work, and yet somehow, we're full of anecdotal evidence of people who don't get these magic letters starting massive and successful businesses all over the world, producing paradigm shifts in their field of interest. And still we have statistical proof that people with degrees make more money: HR says that it's required to make that much.

A degree is a wonderful thing when you want to try and move up in a kafkaesque bureaucracy where you're surrounded by others doing the same thing for 50 years all very, very happy that they used to know so much about some special field of interest now long and far in the past, so remote from this spreadsheet they look at every day with a fist full of highlighters trying to reach Dave's quota of spreadsheets they glared down for the month.

A degree will get you a job running behind a wall every day to push the X-Ray button so you can look for a pre-defined and well established set of what different types of damage look like. You obviously had to study the history of the machines to come to those conclusions, and know that electrons are being thrown from a spinning tungsten disk to a volt-sensitive sheet, and they need to know how electrons displace the ones in your bones, and how the chemicals work, because they'll be busy expanding that science while they look at your broken bone's image and match it against the examples. Makes sense, right? You need a degree to do a task that really is simple? I mean, that's what other people with degrees say, and they're all smart too... better shut up so I don't sound like an idiot in front of the geniuses who are so much happier than me because they make so much more money. I just don't "get" it, I never learned the special "ways to think" in university.

A degree could also lead to something really rewarding, you might study something you love, and gain a knowledge of the universe you could get about philosophers and art (but, that's not available at the library, and if it were, probably doesn't come with bragging rights). You might expand your field of study, you might become famous, you might even have studied something that is a very high-paying skill to have and be very happy on your death bed that you made that much money.

So, go on, buy a few sports cars or even a house worth of education in degrees, you're going to be working hard on expanding that field sitting behind a 9-5 job for the next 50 years wrapped in a warm lie that it was necessary to do your job that could get outmoded very quickly if we dropped the act. Just be sure you don't disappoint your parents that worked their asses off to pay for you to have the chances they [never] had, do what they did[n't do]: get a degree. Just don't lose sight of what's important.

tl;dr: Dogma.

maigret2• 16 years ago

I'm repeating myself as I wrote that already, but this is not the case in most European countries. The education is not so bad out here after all, and you can drink alcohol before 21.

ajleary• 16 years ago

This is really a story of the rising cost of college. As it has grown well beyond the cost of inflation it leave many with debt our parent's generation never had. My father busted his tail in the summers and paid for half a year of college with what he saved.

Does anyone think the quality of educations has gotten better? Is it administration? Facilities? Research?

Reduce the waste in education and the value goes up for everyone (except maybe some people in the dean's office).

rythie• 16 years ago

It seems odd that in U.S. you have to make such a choice, in the U.K., University is in easy reach of most (provided they did well enough at school).

ryanlchan2• 16 years ago

I'm sick and tired of people putting arbitrary dollar valuations on abstract things. College is not a financial investment. You can not only look at your debt and your income to make this decision. It might make for a good, sensational news article, but it's almost immoral how backwards this viewpoint is.

The real value in college, like just about any other pursuit, is network building. Like several commenters have said, if all you wanted out of school was to learn something, you could go to the library. The fees for college are for the intangible aspects, and are worth far more than a direct dollars-to-dollars comparison will show.

Think of college as an IDE for personal development. It sets up a ready-made environment for you to explore new relationships, indulge in a variety of pursuits, and learn about the world. There are thousands of other people using the same IDE, creating a lively place for discussion of issues you'd never otherwise think of. People introduce you to new features or mechanics which you never considered before; you naturally begin to collaborate and contribute to large scale projects. You might even lead a few. Could you get all of these experience by piecing different activities together? Of course. Would it be nearly as productive, successful, and transformational? Of course not.

Like an IDE though, sometimes college can get a little bulky; you're naturally going to be paying for some features you don't want or use. But most of us keep paying anyway, because there's a few killer features which make it all worthwhile, ones that you wouldn't dare put a pricetag on. Attending university altered the entire trajectory of my life, starting from how I saw myself to what I want to accomplish. It redefined what I thought was possible for human endurance and achievement. It restored my faith in the ability of small groups to enact large positive change. It cost a pretty penny, but it has provided an unquantifiably large return on investment.

9ec4c12949a4f34• 16 years ago

I'm sorry but this simply sounds like you're searching for justification to yourself. I gained nearly no networking value from my time in post-secondary. I have gained far more from being capable of creating great interpersonal relationships and connections between people who could easily be perfect strangers only an hour ago.

No network is worth paying an administration and professor hundreds of thousands.

People are perfectly capable of having conversations outside of that setting, just look at this thread. We're not in a school, we're online, and all have different backgrounds and perspectives.

I have had more of a personal transformation over the past 8 years of my life with nearly none of that coming from my college experiences. Once upon a time I was as articulate as sum1 dat type lik diz yo. I learned about history, philosophy, religion, languages, cultures, foods, how to create inter-personal relationships, studying behaviour, some basic psychology, debate, frameworks of thought, and so much more. Did I learn any of this at post-secondary? Of course not.

So keep your IDE, I'll stick with EMACS and VIM.

Lastly, don't attribute success due to your own ambition to going to a school. Without your ambition you'd have a lovely job using a masters to deliver pizza, your success in school came along for the ride.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

>The real value in college, like just about any other pursuit, is network building.

I was with you for the first para. I thought you were going to say the building of a base on which to expand the realm of human understanding, further the development of the human race, expand minds and horizons ...

sbowles• 16 years ago

I think this is a dangerous assertion, and I say this as someone who didn’t finish college and did pretty well financially in the end (alas no successful exits, only market-rate Bay Area startup wages). Only the super motivated, talented, brass-balled or well connected can manage the upstream push against the pervasive social perception - outside of tech centers - you’re second rate if you didn’t finish college.

I think the American education system is broken for a sizeable percentage of kids, from low-quality grade schools all the way through to the outrageous cost of college. For most poor or middle class kids who aren’t in tech, currently they need the exposure to college and they need some additional skills training if they’re to have any hope of getting a decent job after high school. Unfortunately, the esoteric, academic, over-priced world of universities have been turned into the required stepping stone for employment when it is only minimally relevant in many employment sectors. It would be more productive to reinvigorate market-based apprentice programs, revamp junior colleges and redirect some state/federal post secondary education funding to the employee job training credit to truly incentivize employers to take on more entry level employees. Less kids with less debt is a good thing, but they still need skills to be employable. I think it is easy for those of us who are self-directed learners to forget about our peers who really do need training and coaching to succeed.

Like many on this board, learning to code was my meal ticket for years and it is the work world safe haven for those who drop out of/never go to college. I got grilled a lot more about why I didn’t finish college once I moved into code-free jobs. There are millions of university graduates who are unemployed right now. It takes a certain degree of arrogance to pitch your degree-free self as a better candidate than your degreed competitors. I’d never be so smug and delusional about the specificity of my degree-free success to pitch foregoing college in the present economic environment to someone just out of high school. Even when it worked for me.

Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree

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