[zig]

For people nearing the end of high-school, please go to college.

I don't have a degree and have been extremely lucky; I managed to get into middle-management and have been successful.

The problem is that I'm not as "portable" as I would be with a degree - in other words, a layoff or termination could put my lifestyle in jeopardy. As such, I am going back to school at 29.

Get it over with :)

[antidamage]

I'm 37. At my age a degree is completely irrelevant if you have the skill set. In fact, ten years ago I was approached by a university to start my Master's degree, with the missing Bachelor's degree being credited through time spent working in my industry at the time.

The reality of education in America is that it's an expensive tickbox. It verges on being a racket. While you don't want to be the lone rebel being crushed under the wheels of the machine, if you can avoid becoming indentured to the government with a student loan then do yourself a favour and choose not to waste money on education you can just teach yourself.

[dtparr]

> At my age a degree is completely irrelevant if you have the skill set.

This is a dangerous thing to say without any qualifiers. It depends on the industry, economic conditions in your area, type/size of company you want to work for, etc.

I've known a couple individuals who had the skills and 20+ years of experience who lost jobs at floundering companies and weren't able to find anything relevant due to a lack of a degree. In both cases, they had a few interviews that were basically "Wow, you're a great fit experience-wise and it like you've worked with the same technologies/processes we use here and some we're hoping to go to. Oh, except we can't hire you for an engineering role unless you have at least a BS. Would you be interested in an hourly maintenance job?"

[nsxwolf]

But that's madness! You'd be great for this job but we can't hire you because you don't have a piece of paper? How long can these self inflicted meaningless restrictions continue?

[IkmoIkmo]

I agree.

Although sometimes there are legal requirements. Like a lawyer in a law firm, don't know how it is in the US (probably the same) but here there's no way you can practice law and represent someone in a court without a master's legal degree. And starting your own firm requires a degree above that. Although you can start a legal advisory firm without it.

I appreciate you may still think that legal requirement is madness but I can imagine there are some jobs where you want a government to accredit a university's degree, as a form of consumer protection and regulation. For example say a doctor, or a financial advisor, you may want to have 'audited' and given some level of quality assurance, which is essentially what government-accredited degrees aim to prove.

What would be madness is if that same government did not try to accommodate for people with degree-equivalent experience to get their experiences accredited with a formal degree at no-cost or low-cost. For example if you're a self-taught engineer who, due to work experience, could actually finish engineering courses without going to any classes because of self-education, then you ought to be able to (after demonstrating said experience) pay for the mere administrative cost of examination (i.e. $50 per exam) and take all examinations in a year for less than $1k and get your degree. Without spending years, going to classes, and paying tens of thousands for teaching you don't need and won't make use of.

This isn't always easy but separating examination from teaching in schools is something I think we haven't explored enough. You can do a GED or GMAT without enrolling in any classes, and just taking exams, and if self-taught or skilled by experience somehow, then the test is just an accreditation of your skills. Yet we don't have equivalents for advanced degrees. It's not easy to set this up of course, but I think we ought to try more. Although for legal professions it exist, the bar exam afaik doesn't require you to ever have gone to law school, if you happen to be able to take it due to e.g. working in a legal office and somehow picking up everything in an assistant role.

[jegutman]

I know it's crazy that companies with 10k+ employees want some agree of conformity (read: predictability) out of their workforce. It's not the CEO of these organizations saying "we can't hire you because of this piece of paper" it's a hiring manager saying that. Many large companies are working harder for alternative methods of identifying talent, but it's hardly and easy problem and if you need to screen 2x as many employees to find 10% more good hires that may or may not be worth the tradeoff depending on how productive your employees are in general.

[xerophyte12932]

Reminds me of that guy who posted "The Unemployable Coder" exact same issue with him. a decade of relevant experience but no one hires him because of a lack of degree

[eropple]

> indentured to the government with a student loan

I graduated with under $30K in debt from a state school (with a number of merit scholarships and some but not extensive parental help) and paid it off my second year out of college. One need not take on heavy debt (don't you love the rhetorical phrasing, though? Indentured!) to go to college, and I tend to think that self-styled autodidacts discount the social rounding and educational breadth available at any good university.

[oberstein]

How much under $30k were you? $30k is still a lot of money, even if it's not the even larger $100k-$150k number more and more people are reporting. What were your average monthly expenses including the summer months, and did you work at all?

If you're going to be indentured, then at least indenture yourself for an engineering degree. $30k isn't hard to pay off within a year or two of full time employment, and even $100k-$150k in debt isn't infeasible to pay off in a short amount of time (shorter than it took to accumulate) if your degree qualifies you for a well-paying low-stress engineering position at BigCo.

Do you think that your assertion about not taking on heavy debt will remain true? Debt continues to rise, as does the cost of tuition. If more students seek out the cheaper state schools, or the cheaper community colleges beforehand, the cheaper state schools are going to raise their prices to deal with the increase in load.

[morgante]

$30k is right around the average college debt these days.

$100k-150k is an extreme outlier from people who made the extraordinarily poor decision to attend expensive schools which weren't prestigious enough to provide adequate financial aid.

[IkmoIkmo]

Well consider that a normal person going to university and paying a low amount of $1k on living expenses (i.e. equivalence of living on a $12k annual salary), for a four-year university.

Now imagine he has to go to university full time (the fact full-time is rarely upheld says something about the economic difficulty of spending full-time on school). That means you spend all your disposable non-leisure time on school, either going to class or doing readings, homework, research. In other words: not employed.

That means right off the bat for a 4 year university you're spending $48k, while your income is 0. In other words the mere opportunity cost of a 4 year university instead of working full-time, is nearly $50k.

Then add to that the average tuition annually is $9k at a public local university. (private avg is 3x that, and out of state is 2x that. So the $9k figure is below average, basically the average of the cheapest option). Even with a 50% scholarship you're still looking at roughly $20k in tuition for the 4 years. Then add some for books and such, but whatever let's make it $20k. You're now at $70k.

Now imagine that the average student loan interest rate is around 5%, on the average of $70k for 4 years. And then consider that $1k living expenses is relatively low, and $9k tuition isn't atypical.

So we're now getting close to $80k without the rounding errors and we're not living any amazing lifestyle here at $1k a month in living expenses to pay for rent, insurance, food etc, on a 50% scholarship.

The fact that studying full-time actually entails for most people spending part-time on school, and part-time on work, to offset this financial picture a bit, says something about the economic feasibility of simply dedicating years of time to nothing but study. But even then with a part time job making a few hundred bucks (e.g. $10 an hour flipping burgers 2 full days out of 5 working days a week gets you to $160 a week pre-tax extra), a lot of that goes straight into a modest fun lifestyle above your $12k a year expenses, like a spring break, a college trip, or a semester abroad.

Anyway I don't mean to say that $80k is typical, as you said it's much lower, the average nowadays is actually $35k, nothing close to $80k let alone $100-150k. But I think it's important to appreciate that it's just $35k because of concessions, which means for example not going for certain studies cause it'll be way above the average (e.g. medicine at $100k+), or not dedicating yourself to education because you need to spend 2 full days working part-time besides your studies (some of which you simply have to put in the numbers or you'll certainly fail) while not burning out doing this for years in a row.

So I do believe the $35k figure may diminish that the financial burden of college is a lot harder than the number indicates on face value. To exaggerate what I mean with an analogy it's a bit like observing an extremely dangerous area and seeing very little crime and concluding 'the crime rate is low', when underneath it may hide the fact that people stopped going outside, that the city became unliveable because of this and that there's actually huge problem. In the same way I'm seeing in my own environment many of my peers spend more time working than studying, while enrolled, still graduate with tens of thousands in debt, just for the piece of paper but without having had the ability to fully dedicate multiple years to their craft. This obviously isn't the outcome we want, and represents a huge waste.

[jschwartzi]

When I was in school I didn't take a single vacation or "modest fun lifestyle" trip of any sort. I worked when I wasn't in class, and I was in class when I wasn't working. Anything I had I had had since I had graduated high school. I barely got out with about $30k in debt and a fairly worthless degree in Physics.

[morgante]

I don't understand why you're doing a bottom-up analysis when the data on actual indebtedness is readily available and it's about $30k: http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data

In actuality, I think even that statistic s overstated because it's the average debt of students with debt when 3/10 students graduate debt-free. Taking into account those with a debt of $0, the actual average debt is closer to $20k.

> This obviously isn't the outcome we want, and represents a huge waste.

Speak for yourself. I personally think it's entirely reasonable that people should work at least part-time to pay for their education and it's been happening for generations. I've personally worked full-time for most of university and definitely think it has enriched my education a lot more than joining some silly clubs or a sports team.

[redblacktree]

> self-styled autodidacts discount the social rounding and educational breadth available at any good university.

Yes, you learn to use words like "autodidact" instead of "self-taught."

[logical42]

'Self-taught' isn't exactly a drop in replacement for 'autodidact'. You'd have to say 'self-taught person' or something, which is more awkward as a phrase.

[dopamean]

I'm 29 and do not have an undergrad degree. I was recently accepted to a well respected masters in computer science program. I declined to go because I'm pretty happy with my career trajectory at the moment and I think taking the time off work to do that would actually be detrimental.

[ErikRogneby]

Usually to be accepted you need to apply. Why apply if you were going to turn it down? (genuine curiosity)

[dopamean]

Hey sorry for the late reply. I applied at a time when I was unhappy with my job and was unsure of my prospects. During the time I applied I was out doing interviews as well. I got a job at a company I love and am really excited about it. That excitement has more to do with why I declined to go to grad school in the end.

[jamestnz]

I'm not the OP, but I think it's not that uncommon for people to apply for positions/opportunities that they're either ambivalent about, or outright have no intention of accepting. I know I've done it before.

Some feel this helps them to stay "well practiced" at going through recruitment/interviewing, gives them a good reason to keep their résumé up to date, expands their professional network, gives the potential confidence-boost of being offered a position then declining it, and so forth.

[jschwartzi]

There's a good 17 years gap that a non-graduate would have to fill. How did you spend your time after you finished high school?

[verbin217]

In my personal experience a solid work history is much better than a degree. Once you have it the value of a degree decreases significantly. Its almost entirely redundant. The only problem is you often need the degree to get the work history.

I've also noticed as I start working with people who have their Masters and some with PHDs that people take me seriously. It's like... I must know what I'm talking about. How else would I still be here?

[vonmoltke]

Not having a degree does lock you out of some opportunities where HR uses it as a binary checkbox. We can go on and on here about how such policies are stupid and how you wouldn't really want to work at a place like that anyway, but the fact of the matter is not having a degree closes doors. In that sense, there is value to having one.

[busterarm]

Especially at companies that are using some SaaS product to streamline their recruitment process...Greenhouse, I'm looking at you.

I don't even bother applying to companies that do that anymore as it's counter to my whole "make a personal connection at the company to apply" philosophy.

[verbin217]

Right, I agree. Towards the end of my comment I tried to express that there is some value in not having one. Like entirely in addition to the benefits of, what I believe is, a superior education and lack of student debt.

If you're actively involved in doing this stuff you're going to be able to find the work you want. It's easy. You just contact the people working on it and tell them what you're going to do for them.

[ams6110]

That is true but if you have a good work history, in most cases nobody will really care where the degree is from, what you majored in, or what your grades were, etc. Only that you have a degree to satisfy that checkbox.

[unimpressive]

Four years is quite a bit of time getting things over with. Everybody likes to talk about the memories of going to college and how much I should expect to enjoy it. I don't expect that, I expect to be absolutely miserable for four years. A more fanatical past version of me would almost rather die.

And on a certain level I think there's definitely a spite involved here. I know that going will permanently invalidate me from attributing my success to anything else, and it will help empower these institutions to keep intruding into lives and charging people outrageous fees through what is essentially a collectively enforced racket. Going will be existentially painful, so I'm avoiding it for as long as possible.

[mikekchar]

As another person who detests classes, exams, etc, I can feel your pain. University/College is useful for computer science, though. One of the problems in industry is that there are a huge number of cowboy coders who dismiss all of the important things they learned (or not!) at school. The number of times I've run across people who said things like, "Statistics is a complete waste of time", and then "benchmarked" their app by running it once...

So, basically, what I'm saying is that on the one hand working in industry will give you important skills that are hard to learn anywhere else. You need to learn to read and write code, and you have to learn idiomatic ways of programming, and you have to do a lot of it. You need to learn how to work with others and how to effectively prioritise work. You can't learn this at school. On the other hand, you will be in an environment which may stunt your growth because it is often dominated by people who think that being able to write code is the only valuable thing a programmer needs.

School is an academic environment with (hopefully!) a focus on academic goals. You will need these things to claw your way beyond the mediocrity that pervades our industry. It's not that you can't learn it anywhere else, but it is often hard to understand what is important and what isn't unless you can surround yourself with people who have an academic focus.

I would gouge my eyes out before I would go back to school again, but I am very grateful that I did go. I encourage you to either go to school or devote yourself to finding alternative means of learning all of the academic things you will need. Doing it by yourself is much more difficult, but by no means impossible.

[unimpressive]

>devote yourself to finding alternative means of learning all of the academic things you will need.

Definitely part of the roadmap. The sort of person you described here:

>The number of times I've run across people who said things like, "Statistics is a complete waste of time", and then "benchmarked" their app by running it once...

Bugs me immensely. One of the barriers I've had trouble piercing, and that wouldn't really go away in a more traditional academic context is how to learn the 'language' of math used in academic computer science papers.

[mikekchar]

> One of the barriers I've had trouble piercing, and that wouldn't really go away in a more traditional academic context is how to learn the 'language' of math used in academic computer science papers.

Interesting that you say that. I taught English for 5 years in Japan (without an education degree, so I suppose it's kind of related to the conversation ;-) ). I did a considerable amount of study on language acquisition. Although I find the research "sketchy", the work of Stephen Krashen is very compelling. I tried to apply the principles in my classroom and in my own acquisition of Japanese. I found it to be quite enlightening. (Fair warning: Krashen's work has a following that pretty much thinks "This is the way it is -- for sure!" and are trying to prove it. On the other side are people who think he's definitely wrong. As in many fields of psychology, it is hard to build good studies, so people mostly shout at each other ;-) ).

Anyway, if you are interested, take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

In a nutshell: There are 2 types of learning: learning and acquisition. Learning is about remembering stuff. Acquisition is about being able to use stuff without really thinking about it (i.e. it comes unbidden to your mind when you see a reference).

A good example of the difference is reading. Take a look at an English word:

Apple

When you read it, what came to your mind? What thought process did you follow to get there. Now if I told you that in Japanese sakana=fish, inu=dog, ringo=apple and then write:

Inu Sakana Ringo

How does your thought process change? Now go back and look at the English word I wrote earlier, but this time try not to remember what it means. Can you look at the word and not read it? How difficult is it? Now look at the Japanese words and try not to remember what they mean. Can you notice a difference?

I hope you can. That difference is the difference between acquisition and learning. With English, the meaning comes unbidden to your mind. With Japanese, you have to actively try to associate the word in your brain with the reading -- even if you can remember that meaning already.

Being able to look at something and instantly recognise it, or to have it spring to your mind automatically when you want to use it requires acquisition. So when you speak English, you don't sit and plan the grammar of the sentences that you want to say. You have a thought and the English just shows up in your brain. In fact, it shows up so conveniently that you can actually use it as part of your thought process (i.e. thinking in English). When you get fluent in another language you can do the same in that language.

Finally, I get to the punchline. I have been told by some people that mathematics works the same way for people who are fluent in it. It's just another language and they can think in math because they have acquired it.

How do you acquire a language? That's the $64,000 question. According to Krashen, acquisition is a function of input that you can understand. Output seems to be unnecessary (although, personally I find it helpful even if it is unnecessary).

It's a difficult topic and I've already typed too much, but if you would like to try something, this is what I did for learning Japanese. Do not memorise vocabulary or grammar. Do not try to reason the whys and wherefors of the system. Instead memorise exemplars of the language. Just an example sentence for things you come across that you don't know. Make a flashcard (spaced repetition software is useful: http://ankisrs.net/). Read appropriate level material and keep making/memorising cards for anything you don't know.

The memorisation builds a fast lookup table that allows you to work out your own comprehensible input. Then by reading, reading, reading, reading, you get lots of comprehensible input. Finally you can test whether or not you have acquired the input by trying to produce output.

Hopefully this will help you with your math.

[unimpressive]

>Hopefully this will help you with your math.

Not particularly, thank you though that was interesting for orthogonal reasons. I already knew the role of memorization in language acquisition and have actually seen quite a bit of that advice on HN prior. (As a further point of evidence for the importance of memory in cognition, notice that Jon Von Neumann had an eidetic memory. I suspect that being able to wholly memorize something at first glance would assist massively with being superintelligent.)

The problem is finding clear examples of what things mean in the first place, or understanding symbols. Mathematics has no standard language of description, and like a natural language it is highly context based. From an outside perspective it is difficult to figure out what is an established concept I should go read more about and what is being introduced as part of the problem for this specific local context.

Moreover there is strictly less mathematics text involved than there is English text, so the training corpus is smaller.

[msutherl]

This is extraordinarily cynical. There are many different colleges in different places, different majors, and different lifestyles you can construct that ultimately get you through the machine and out the other end after 4 years. If you can't find a configuration that works for you, you will probably be miserable anywhere doing anything.

FWIW, I went to university in a large city outside of the US and basically never went to class, worked in a research lab the whole time, and spent a lot of time partying. Still, it was a stressful time and I have a lot of regrets, but I can't blame the environment ... I chose to live the way that I did. Ultimately my life isn't so different now than it was then except I make more money and I figured out the stress thing.

Other people go to tightly knit schools in small towns that provide a comprehensive 'experience,' or play sports and hang out in frat houses. Perhaps this is what you think college is like for everyone. Trust me: it isn't. Choose what you think will work best for you (hint: location is the most important factor) and make it work.

[unethical_ban]

I do believe that University should not be required for many fields which currently do.

I also believe University costs too much for many, and that textbooks are an outright scam.

I also believe a broad post-secondary education is a wonderful thing to have, and that if you can do undergrad full time (doing a real "job" as little as is required to supplement a beer/computer fund), you'll find that having your full time "job" being to learn new things and meet new people is an amazing gift. Throw in the opportunities of studying abroad (that I didn't take advantage of - do it in the first two years) and University is a great experience.

[degenerate]

The important thing is to keep learning on your own during the 4 years of college. You're essentially playing the game, going through the motions for the degree. What they teach you in college you probably won't apply to your actual job, so keep learning on your own and teaching yourself new programming languages, tools, and techniques for what you enjoy doing. The degree just opens doors.

[Alupis]

The degree doesn't just open doors, it forces you to learn and be exposed to some things you wouldn't have otherwise.

Sure, we can say taking a Film Study class is a waste of time, but I can tell you from experience that years later, you will look at things in film a little different than before. Would I have sat down on my own and studied film techniques, types of lighting, angles, etc...? Probably not. Does it apply to my career? Well, not directly, other than making the mind think about things a little different.

Without those CS classes forcing you to learn Binary Trees, Shortest Path, Circular Queue, Algorithmic Proofs, etc... how many would sit down on their own and learn them? Probably very few. Will it apply directly to a job? Maybe. It really depends on what type of job you have. Simply "programming" or "developing", then probably not. Engineering a system, then those Priority Queue's probably come in handy.

A lot of arguments settle on the basis that [1]University doesn't teach you anything you couldn't learn already, and/or [2]it doesn't teach job skills.

1) Of course it teaches things you could learn on your own... but would you? It's unlikely.

2) Of course it doesn't teach job skills, University is not a Trade School.

The big take away from University is that it's an experience that enriches your life. It's unlikely you will notice it immediately, but it will impact your life in a positive manner. University shows commitment, and accomplishment.

[ghufran_syed]

As they say in finance, "price is what you pay, value is what you get". In these discussions about college, it's worth us differentiating those two parts. Many of those arguing in favor of college are describing the value of college ('what you get'), without discussing the price. Many of those arguing against college are focussing mainly on the price (tuition, lost earnings etc) without discussing the value. Clearly, the balance between the two is what matters, and that is different for different careers, and different funding mechanisms for college.

As a thought experiment, imagine the same college degree was available: 1) tuition free, with an additional $20,000 / year given to you for living expenses 2) tuition free, with no living expenses 3) at a tuition cost of $100,000 4) at a tuition cost of $1,000,000 5) at a tuition cost of $10,000,000 and so on

'What you get' in the degree would be the same in each case, but there come a point where 'what you pay' would be too high in relation to 'what you get'.

[untog]

Also, as someone who has dealt with visa issues before, it's far, far easier to move around the world if you have a university education. Maybe right now you don't think you'll want to, but it's a tremendous opportunity to have.

[xiaoma]

Money opens those doors even wider. Once you hit a certain level of financial independence, not only is it easy to visit wherever you choose, but permanent residency and even citizenship often become much more straightforward as well.

[volaski]

No one is saying go to college and forget about money. I don't know if you're saying this based on what you heard over the shoulder but I actually do know a thing or two about buying citizenship and green card with money. It is FAAAAAAAR easier to just go to college than become rich enough not to care about these things. Most college grads will never accumulate enough money in their youth to buy green card from countries they aspire to move to. Also buying green card is also not as easy as it sounds.

[xiaoma]

>I don't know if you're saying this based on what you heard over the shoulder

I've spent half my adult life living abroad and have met many people foreigners in many countries including the US who have gotten great visas without a college degree. And money isn't even the only way.

Becoming an expert at one's field is also a great route to a visa, and it pays a whole lot better than being just another person with a degree. For certain fields, a college degree is required and the gatekeepers are inflexible. For those in fields where success is more easily observable—sales, direct response marketing, entrepreneurship, novel writing, programming, pop music, etc—it's better to save the money and spend the time on actually mastering the craft and its business rather than on collecting credentials.

@eshvk: I know multiple foreign nationals without degrees who have held engineering or even engineering leadership positions at YC companies.

[volaski]

> I know multiple foreign nationals without degrees who have held engineering or even engineering leadership positions at YC companies.

You may be either talking about an O visa case (or H1B with all kinds of evidence that the person has irreplaceable qualities, which is difficult on its own right, basically you need to prove that you are as worthy as college graduates). Neither of them are easy. Sometimes even if you are covered on The New York Times you don't make it.

Don't just throw these things online as if it's easy to do this just because you saw some YC company do it. If you look around there are tons of other much more talented but unfortunate people who couldn't make it and had to go back to their countries.

These types of misinformation literally hurt people who are not knowledgeable about the matter. I can sense you have no idea about this just based on how you write about it. Are you a foreigner who have gone through the US visa application process? If not, don't say it's easy.

[eshvk]

Agree.

- Most (all?) work visas in the United States require a degree in the field of specialization.

- The "buying green card" program requires one to invest at least a million dollars and create at least ten jobs for two years before you get one. [1]

[1] http://www.uscis.gov/eb-5

[Dorian-Marie]

I'm 23, left school when 21 and now going back exactly for the same reason.

Without an degree you have to prove yourself harder for every single little thing (resume, visa, job applications, etc.).

[jlarocco]

Agreed. When people say degrees are overrated and there are too many people with "useless" degrees, they're not talking about science and engineering degrees.

Skipping a degree in CS is just making things harder for yourself. Best case scenario you'll just spend that 4 years working up your salary to what you would have had in the first place with a degree.

[delecti]

> Best case scenario you'll just spend that 4 years working up your salary to what you would have had in the first place with a degree.

If the options are 4 years making okay money or 4 years likely accumulating debt, after which you're at the same income level either way, why would anyone in their right mind go to college?

I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, I just think that that's not the best way to highlight it. For example, college is quite useful for the connections and career placement assistance.

[jlarocco]

> If the options are 4 years making okay money or 4 years likely accumulating debt, after which you're at the same income level either way, why would anyone in their right mind go to college?

I can only speak to my experience, but most of my friends in college worked while they were in school, and eventually got decent paying internships their junior and senior years. I think most of us had to take out loans, but I know I was able to pay mine off less than 2 years out of school, and I think most people did. 4 years in school isn't necessarily accumulating a lot of debt. And it wouldn't surprise me if the person with the CS degree still enough extra money to account for student loans.

Of course that's assuming the person in question is pretty smart (and they better be if they're considering skipping college) and can get at least some kind of financial aid or scholarship money. It's also assuming they're not insisting on a big name school.

[delecti]

If you took 2 years to pay it off at dev salaries then that's probably a fair bit of debt.

And besides, that really just deflects my point by saying "well it's not that much debt".

[madeofpalk]

I think it's also worth noting that I think there is a huge cultural difference when it comes to the value of a degree.

In IT in Australia, I've never had a problem with lack of degree, and I'm doing pretty well for myself - getting paid a decent amount of money in a place I love working in. I'm involved in a hiring process for new developers and I cannot remember the last time we've looked at or considered their educational background.

[xiaoma]

>Best case scenario you'll just spend that 4 years working up your salary to what you would have had in the first place with a degree.

Wouldn't the best case scenario be more like founding Apple, MS or FB or becoming the president of YC?

[someear]

I think blanket advice for everyone is probably not the right approach. Getting a college degree is likely the best path to financial success for most people, but definitely isn't for all.

For some, the opportunity cost of investing time/money into an education prevents them from learning more through some alternate means (i.e. starting your own company, apprenticeship with key individuals, etc.), and may lead to more economic success. Probably not true for the vast majority of people, but definitely true for some.

[bdg]

All the companies I've ever been interested in never had a problem with my education. One actually asked me to verify I'm a drop-out for their background check =/

[marincounty]

I couldn't imagine a tech start-up caring about college--unless it's a big stupid company? Plus--the guys I know without a degree, seem to try a little bit harder? I've always thought if I had the right idea, and funding--would I even bother to hire a college graduate, unless they had a lot of projects/accomplishments under their belt? I would prefer people who worked hard, and didn't have that Little bit of self-entitlement a degree brings.(It's there--it seems to just sneak in somewhere along the line? I have found it gets in the way--sometimes?)

Unless your degree is in the hard sciences, we all know what college entailed; for most of us it was a four years of fun, and the worst day in college was better than working? Hell--I never wanted to leave!(That was before it got so expensive though.)

I sometimes over hear recent graduates in gossip groups(usually after a few cocktails) go on and on about their degree, and college accomplishments; If my upchuck reflex is not irritated--I listen a bit, and ask myself, "I couldn't imagine paying them to do anything?".

That said, if you can swing it; go to college, and I guarantee when you look back, it will be the best years of your life--for the majority of you. While I'm on it--don't let upper division classes scare you. I found them no harder than lower division courses. If for some reason you find yourself wanting to drop out, get a four year degree in anything! Anything! Go to a notoriously easy college like Santa Cruz, or Chico State and get your degree in Spacing Out?

Why, because too many of the idiots out there still think a bachelor's degree is important? Oh, and they love to quote that worn out statistic, that I can't even write anymore. I guess it's still true--so finish and get the diploma? I have a weird feeling federal bankruptcy laws might change in the future, and student loans might become dischargable?

One other thing, that person in college you kinda take for granted--that guy, or girl who you sometimes wonder, "Why do they put up with my antics?"; are not hanging out in bars waiting for you to graduate with open arms!

[ErikRogneby]

There are plenty of tech startups where the people doing the interviewing are recent enough out of their CS degree that they ask you a bunch of big-O related questions. If you didn't go to college and just have been hacking on code you probably don't know the answer.

Personally I feel like this is misguided and probably triggered more around self-validation and feeling clever. (worry about scale when you need to, etc...)

[spamizbad]

It's rare, but some startups prefer their early hires to have degrees tier-1 schools. I assume this is to impress investors and (enterprise/gov) customers. Today's market makes this nearly impossible but I recall it being a thing in the 00's

However, they are looking for a very specific type of college graduate. Merely having a degree with a good GPA is insufficient for them. It must be a tier 1, name-brand institution.

[rayiner]

> For people nearing the end of high-school, please go to college.

Also, at that age you really don't know what you may want to do with your life. At 19 I seriously considered dropping out of college to go full-time at the startup I was working at. At 25 I decided I wanted to get into a different career entirely, one where a college degree was required (as is the case in pretty much every white collar profession besides programming).

[seansmccullough]

* But pick a major that will pay for itself, and try not to rack up $50k in student loans.

[Alupis]

> * But pick a major that will pay for itself, and try not to rack up $50k in student loans

I think this is a societal issue rather than an education issue.

We're so quick to encourage people to achieve a degree in whatever makes them happy, even say Art History or Medieval European History, knowing full well that the prospects of gaining a decent paying job after school is practically zero.

How does that Art History major repay a $30K student loan when they can realistically only get a $30K a year salaried job?

Should't we as a society encourage people to major in things that will pay off in the end? Or instead deny loans to degree programs that statistically are turning out far too many candidates for a very small field (leading to massive unemployment for that degree program)?

[chrisseaton]

This is such nonsense! You can do almost anything you want with an Art History or Medieval European History degree. Do you think there's some kind of requirement that you can only take a job in the field you studied? I have friends who did degrees in Theology who went into banking and insurance and make several times what I do with my Computer Science degree.

[FLUX-YOU]

With today's college prices, it's a bit silly to play chicken with your financial life vs. the job market

It'd stand to reason that you could make that much, if not more, than your friends because you have a technical degree. I know this is more about having a job than not, but the technical degree would also improve your chances vs. your friends

[chrisseaton]

> It'd stand to reason that you could make that much, if not more, than your friends because you have a technical degree.

Yeah that's my point. The jobs those chose were open to (very talented people) who studied any degree - Computer Science, Theology, whatever. There are thousands of well-paying and very well-paying jobs that are similarly open to any degrees.

[analog31]

How does that Art History major repay a $30K student loan when they can realistically only get a $30K a year salaried job?

Thinking about it from a different angle, how does a CS major repay a $30k student loan if they were under pressure to choose a lucrative major, hated programming to the point of never getting good at it, and couldn't conjure up the motivation to compete with the kids who were in it for fun?

In addition, for a lot of kids, a technical major isn't an option because they don't have the math background.

Now, do they major in art history anyway? That's a whole 'nother ball o' wax.