Most people probably shouldn't go to school

http://coryliu.com/post/109988042607/a-dirty-secret-most-people-probably-shouldnt-go

by coryl • 11 years ago

31 51 11 years ago

This is idiotic to think this way. So we distill your experience of college into what MOST people should do? I think not. Why? Because it becomes a head trash excuse for the lazy.

A degree is something you get for finishing. A lot of people have very little to claim they have actually completed that has meaning to an employer. But a degree is one of them that is a gold standard. A degree also signifies you've given a certain subject a lot of thought. So do certifications, previous work experience community service, awards and more.

Surprise, if you are somebody who can work smart and knows how to complete things, you are more employable than somebody who doesn't. And if you also stack on that a lot of other good qualities, skills and finished work you're an even better candidate. And if you're personable and work well with others, even better.

A more appropriate sentiment would be you didn't get much out of your degree because you changed careers. (Many people do that, no news there) But others respect the work they have done in the past and how to synthesize what they've learned from specialized and general studies to apply elsewhere.

Everybody knows college is expensive. It's not a mystery. The costs are laid out there. But it's also quite easy to develop alternative paths to completing a degree in a specialized field and not get into enormous debt. One is to do fantastic and apply to a ton of scholarships. Another is to do community college work, get the degree there (something finished) and also work and save money. But I can tell you there is a point where you can do part time college, part time work and find it really draining. it's good to complete things in a lump sum.

coryl4• 11 years ago

OP here. I also quoted two friends who graduated from the same program and work in investments. They agreed with me for what its worth.

Unfortunately your ideas for decreasing the financial burden of college do not scale. Not everyone can just perform well and get scholarships.

unknownian• 11 years ago

The top twenty to thirty private universities in the US have extremely generous financial aid, and the public ones aren't super expensive depending on which school you go to.

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

Not every idea will scale for everyone. Especially dropping out to make iPhone apps. But overall paths to affording college do scale. Community College scales. Turns out they open more branches when the student population fills up.

Your two friends in your same program are, 1) going to agree with you 2) from same location / program therefore could have had same disappointing instruction & facilities and don't offer any further example or statistic for a wider population.

Not going to school and deciding to make iPhone apps doesn't scale either. The world NEEDs most people with a good education so they think critically. For example accepting that they may be wrong. You don't like paying money back that you borrowed. You feel unfulfilled or didn't get what you feel you deserved for your money. you feel that NOW. What is this your first job? How much credibility do you think anyone has who has a struggle with finding work and then decides to generalize their experience on the majority of the world?

Pyret2• 11 years ago

A degree also signifies you've given a certain subject a lot of thought.

If by that you mean a Bachelor's Degree, than I don't agree with you. First four years of college is just a glorified day care for young adults.

zzalpha3• 11 years ago

The first four years of college is what you make of them. You ultimately get out what you put in.

And ignoring that, you also cannot make blanket statements like this... there's an incredible amount of variability in four year programs. I can tell you my BSc CS degree was well earned...

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

In any setting like a college any student who needs a daycare isn't employable anyway so maybe that environment is still best for them (hopefully done on the cheap). But if you're serious about a subject, you enjoy it or strive to make money from it and contribute to society you put in the work, go to the library, participate in discussions, own that subject during your time there. You are giving it more thought than most people.

Why is this so hard to understand? I think it's great for people to rebel against the system that is expensive and seemingly drawn out for you so as to control your destiny. Doesn't mean the existing infrastructure isn't for anyone at all. There's a lot of effort of the past put into educating people. Dig in and fix it, don't give people head trash to denigrate what is a reasonably effective way to learn, grow and get work in the world.

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

Methinks you vastly over-state the average person with a desire to fulfill a goal. I've got a recent example. Allow me to re-phrase a line from your last paragraph:

Everybody knows buying a house is expensive. It's not a mystery. The costs are laid out there. But it's also quite easy to develop alternative paths to completing a transaction in a specialized form of finance and not get into enormous debt.

This is a significant exaggeration of explanation of what happened to the housing bubble which led to the 2008 recession. However, it is very well known that Universities have been in an "arms race" and chargning more and more for less and less relevant skills. For-profit colleges prey upon the weak, and that's why we have a Student Loan Bubble brewing...you know, because it's not like there are predatory lenders or marketing materials which lead impressionable people down the wrong path...

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

I don't want to live in a world where people aren't educated. One less desperate person in the world saves us all a lot of pain. And contributing people mean more societal benefits. Small but meaningful. People are a big mix of desires. College is a great place to learn where you can learn where to direct your energies and passions instead of being a fledgling heap of empty want susceptible to predators in every field.

zzalpha3• 11 years ago

Classic survivorship bias. "I became a successful, self-taught iOS developer, therefore all school is for suckers!"

It's unfortunate that this kind of thinking is so pervasive. You see it in a lot of contexts... I've seen this in folks who manage to raise themselves out of poverty and become successful, only to turn around and oppose social programs because, well, they didn't need them!

The author can't be faulted... this type of reasoning, a combination of survivorship bias, hindsight bias, and confirmation bias, is extremely human. We're wired for it. The hard part is realizing when you're doing it so you can try and catch yourself. The clearest remedy is the simplest: use data, not anecdotes.

In this case, the data supports the view that post-secondary education leads to long-term advantages. Of course, that needs to be balanced against the increasing debt load students are burdened with. But the reality is, generally speaking, more and more jobs are requiring a post-secondary degree, and advising people against getting one is generally speaking bad advice... while there are the odd outliers, they are just that, outliers.

coryl4• 11 years ago

Actually I didn't say all school is for suckers, I drew the line at hard sciences and soft sciences.

Survivorship bias is real, but so is remarkably low return on investment. Its just harder to measure in people.

zzalpha3• 11 years ago

Yup, fair enough! I have no doubt some degrees have greater value in the economy than others, and god knows management degrees (as an example) have their fair share of detractors, rightly or wrongly.

To me that just means folks need to be more thoughtful about the degree they select... after all, a quality, valuable education isn't something you're simply given, it's something you take.

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

your headline said "most people" -- and the whole "investment" thing is very hard. Which is why you shouldn't frame your discussion with certainties even in the headline. There are enough idiots out there telling people not to bother studying, both in words and by example. You want people hungry to work on tough problems, but they have to know what they are. And they have to see a variety of opportunities out there.

College is NOT an absolute fast track to employment. But it's an excellent reliable way to do that. Plus it's a fantastic place to find out more about yourself, meeting people, friends and for relationships. A lot of people have the college drinking perception. Which there is too much drinking, but there are a lot more ways to meet people in college where you're not drinking than in the working world.

Again just respect the work you and other people have done to get where we all are. Just to say "most people shouldn't go" is ridiculous. We want MORE people going. Show them how to do it in a financially responsible way. If that's too boring then stick to what you know.

ibebrett• 11 years ago

I have a feeling if this person had actually gone to school for CS they would have thought it equally useless. Most CS programs don't concentrate on say building iOS apps etc.

txu• 11 years ago

I learned iOS myself, and I know it would be harder for me if I didn't learn different flavors of programming languages and basic data structures at school.

I don't know how good people are at evaluating the usefulness of knowledge and skills they've acquired, but I'd believe there is some kind of bias. I tend to think things I know are trivial and can be learned easily. But I've also seen smart but non-CS background people cobbling poorly written code together only to make it work and he wished he has taken some CS classes while at school as well.

It might be true that smartest people can learn everything on their own, but by definition 'most people' aren't the smartest.

TillE• 11 years ago

I strongly believe in eventually getting rid of most traditional university lectures and replacing them with excellent online, free videos. However:

1) That's not all you get from a university. Labs, smaller classes, etc etc are very important.

2) The amount material covered by currently available free courses/videos is very, very small. You might get a semi-complete computer science and math education, but that's about it.

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

I dont' know about getting rid of lectures. on the one hand, I think just being talked to formally for 90 minutes absolutely sucks. But it's not going to be better on video. Plus maybe it helps you discipline for uninteresting things. I like group work and discussion based stuff, however there's a limit because I want the person who knows what the are talking about giving most of the points, not the person who wants to be class clown or waste my time in an expensive course.

Group work, or actually working while being able to ask questions is pretty cool. It can always be better for any particular person but it's never going to be perfect, so best to just keep steering it in the right direction.

I do agree that the lectures should be recorded and available. Otherwise it's just lost to the ether when the educator quits or dies. And I need to hear things a few times before the importance sticks.

cornewut• 11 years ago

Non vitae, sed scholae discimus[1]

[1] Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, Seneca

kornish• 11 years ago

In case anyone is wondering, this translates roughly as "We do not learn for school, but for life." [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_scholae_sed_vitae

jdminhbg• 11 years ago

OP has the phrase backwards, which is either a typo or asserting that learning is being done for the sake of satisfying school requirements rather than for real life.

lotso• 11 years ago

The most valuable thing I received from my school was my network of friends and a place to learn and grow as a person.

Animats• 11 years ago

That's what the Ivy League is really for. Getting into Harvard is difficult, but getting through Harvard is easy.

autoreleasepool• 11 years ago

You can get a lot out of a degree program if you try. It takes effort on your part not just the school's. As someone who is currently working on a SECOND bachelor's in CS (my first one was an economics), I can honestly say I'm learning way more than I ever did the first time around. I'm also learning way more than I possibly could on my own. I'm becoming a well rounded programmer. Instead of pigeonholing myself as self taught RoR or iOS dev, I'm learning the proper foundations needed to do more or less anything in the field. Combined with the effort I'm putting in my own side projects, I truly believe that the value of this education has been worth every penny.

To be fair, I actually had this exact same sentiment about college before I enrolled in the CS program. I really didn't put in more than the absolute minimum effort towards my Econ degree. At the time, I was focused on just getting the piece of paper; I waved my hand at the resources available to me.

The difference in maturity between then and now is also a factor. I almost feel as if I would have been better off taking a few years off between high school and undergrad. I would have had the maturity to appreciate all that a University offers.

coralreef2• 11 years ago

Do you think you learned more because CS is more applicable? Ie. You learn databases, you write a database. You learn algorithms, you write an algorithm.

Whereas in econ, you learn about an economic model. And then...you don't really have many practical things to do with it right away?

littletimmy• 11 years ago

What school accepts people for a second bachelors? I have been seriously thinking of doing that but I thought most schools didn't accept people for a second bachelors.

OSUCSstudent• 11 years ago

Oregon State University offers a post-bacc program specifically for people who already have bachelor's.

Pyret2• 11 years ago

Colleges are great in that they offer nice infrastructure that's hard to find elsewhere: amazing libraries, laboratories, possibly, access to people doing research in the area you are interested in...Ultimately, though, everyone has to teach their own selves.

stared2• 11 years ago

They have it. But as an undergraduate you have little possibility in using them - only doing classes.

Libraries are a difference there, but in times of Internet they are no monopolies.

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

mmm, not necessarily. If you were interested in a specific field you could visit the class a few times and sit in, observe, ask questions of the professor or aids on office time. If you want to do a lot of things at a university, you can likely make it happen.

jarjoura• 11 years ago

Before I went to "college" (it still feels wrong for me to say University lol), I too thought it would be a waste of time. I really just wanted to get out in the real-world and work. Then I went into my freshman year basically partying my grades away and crushed my ego to a little pea. Actually, it turns out you have to work your ass off to do well in an undergraduate program. So I learned how to study and I learned how to become disciplined enough to say no to distractions.

True, the computer science part of my degree was the easy part, but the other courses, the "liberal arts" part, that was the tough part that also expanded my mind. I loved most of my classes because in reality, I love learning. I love seeing the world through different lenses.

University life is also about meeting life-long friends and self discovery. EVEN if software engineering can be distilled to just learning a language to instruct a computer, going to college is still a giant stepping stone in life that I think every capable individual should experience.

vlan0• 11 years ago

Man, I connected so much with your thoughts on college that it's a little scary. Are we the same person?

awkward• 11 years ago

In this post, a holder of a business degree performs an informed cost benefit analysis of getting a business degree and finds it wanting. Also, a well trained twenty something argues that training can't match the benefits of his experience.

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

It is absolutely worth $X0,000.

You can't really grasp the value of college as a smart and capable young person until you hit your thirties. That's when the idealism of youth starts to fade and hard truths start staring you in the face.

One of those hard truths is that most people are not smart and capable. They rely on others around them. If you took a smart and capable person and transplanted them into a strange environment, they'd thrive after a short time finding traction. Take most everyone else out of their carefully-cultivated social milieu, and they'd fall flat on their face.

So smart and capable people will pooh-pooh the value of college because they don't understand what it's doing for them. They'll think of throwing themselves against the free market as the ultimate challenge, the great meritocratic equalizer. And for these people, it is.

For those that are not smart and capable, it is not. The free market is a horrific meat-grinder of a system that chewed up everyone you loved as a child and spit them out beaten and broken. Most people need social stability, structure, a safe place. That's what our social institutions provide.

The value a college degree provides, that piece of paper that signals to your future employer that you are worth hiring, is indispensable. If you are not smart and capable, you will not be able to jury-rig alternative signaling. You're at the bottom of the free hiring market.

I would love to live in a world where you didn't need to mortgage your future to pay for the present. But the world is not like that. As a young person without family money to fall back on, you're going to have to make a number of investments just to get to the point where you are comfortable. You need a home, you need a vehicle. You need a spouse. You also need a degree. You're starting at the bottom of a hill, and the college degree is right there at the bottom.

michaelbuddy9• 11 years ago

I like the way you put this. well done.

vanderZwan2• 11 years ago

I would love to live in a world where you didn't need to mortgage your future to pay for the present. But the world is not like that.

Speak for yourself - the US is not the world.

Signed,

someone from a Western European country without crippling student debt and a degree.

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

Speak for yourself

I was.

claypoolb• 11 years ago

I work for a Fortune 10 company and when we are hiring young professionals, a degree signifies the individual has a certain level of commitment, dedication, and has the ability to achieve goals (aka win!).

Additionally, I have always noticed that taking a single individual's experience can lead me to taking their experience out of context. That situation is typically compounded especially when a understand very little about the person as an individual.

I would argue that Cory's experience does not reflect the average (to be fair I only began to understand the value of statistics while pursuing my college degree). In fact, check this chart out... seems like a no-brainer to me: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

jekrb• 11 years ago

    > a degree signifies the individual has a certain level of commitment, dedication, and has the ability to achieve goals (aka win!).

Can't you also say the same about a young person without a degree, yet is still achieving levels of success in their field?

In fact, wouldn't this person have more commitment, dedication, and ability, as they have the critical thinking skills to become knowledgeable and experienced, without having to fork tons of money and time to an institution?

caminante4• 11 years ago

You can't say the same with the same degree of efficiency.

If someone's a no-degree superstar, they have to network or market themselves harder to get on claypoolb's radar. Information exchange is more expensive.

degree+GPA's a reasonable filter to pass over lots of candidates. Mind you, claypoolb's also talking about entry-level positions (I think...)

arunbahl• 11 years ago

This makes the assumption that the sole goal of education is a path to a job. That's simply not the case.

Education != vocational school.

Most people probably shouldn't go to school

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