[manbearpigg]

A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob.

I guess it's better than a gender studies degree, but believe it or not, undergraduate education is not completely useless. I learned a hell of a lot.

[emodendroket]

Even a gender studies degree would have a lot of value. A lot of people who get university degrees, myself included, end up working in a completely unrelated field, but that doesn't mean the education was worthless.

[20years]

"A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob."

Not sure I totally agree with this. I have meet a ton of very smart fully qualified engineers who have no business sense whatsoever.

That does not mean I am discounting the engineering degree. Not at all. At least an engineering degree will generally give you a very nice return. What makes a good engineer though is not often the same as what makes a good entrepreneur.

[lazaroclapp]

Guess the point is: All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur (and, not less important: a reasonable backup plan) than someone fresh out of high school. Likely they will have a better network too. And this is all assuming that entrepreneurship is really the goal, which, lets face it, for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold.

[20years]

"All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur"

I think that is where we may disagree.

Plenty of Entrepreneurs who made it big without a degree. Some of the top of our time actually. http://www.businessinsider.com/top-100-entrepreneurs-who-mad...

"for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold."

This I somewhat agree with but I oftentimes wonder if a lot of the "very unlikely chance" part of it has to do with the inaccurate and unrealistic image the start-up scene places along with the lack of good education on starting a business. You can build a very comfortable life running your own business without being a unicorn but seems as though most are shooting for unicorn level. That I believe is where most of the failure comes from.

It really isn't all that difficult to build a $200k to $500k+ year small business. Easier today than ever. But that's not sexy so people shoot for the stars and miss more often than not.

[hacksonx]

It's not completely useless ... Yet, but with the shift the world is taking (globalisation, *robotisation and move to renewables) it will be. Some engineering degree too will put not have a place in the future.

[EduardoBautista]

What he's saying is that a college education does not have ton map directly to a job to be useful. So even in your example an engineering degree will have some value.