[ianai]

People forget how much more free time and freedom there is at college. Yes, there are deadlines and schedules but you’re given opportunities that the usual 40 hr/wk job won’t afford. You could take student loans out to buy yourself dumb things, for sure, but you can also take student loans out for really good things, too. The rest of your life that won’t so easily be the case. I would love to have the time flexibility I had at college now that I’m “in the industry”.

[StudentStuff]

School is a different kind of challenge from work. One provides clearly delineated tasks, coworkers and employers who are apt to help you complete said tasks in a timely manner, and pay for doing said work.

School, comparatively is $2k to $6k a quarter (depending on which public univeristy you go to in Seattle), and while some classes have vague goals, most lump everything into a handful of tests or a two dozen page paper, with 80 % of your grade riding on that. Study groups at community colleges, 2nd tier universities (say UW's satellite campuses), and even at major colleges are few and far between, with many professors discouraging them from forming.

I've proactively contacted every professor prior to taking their course since I re-entered college, and while it has definitely helped me screen some truly awful professors, what my parents describe as their college experience is nothing like what I or my friends has gone through.

If I didn't need a damn receipt to get a decent job in Seattle, I wouldn't have gone back to school. Even with a half decent Github, it seems a CompSci degree is mandatory unless your okay with throwing $40k+ in potential yearly earnings out the window for the next decade.

[tzekid]

As a student I've always put my projects before school | uni, because from what I've read and been told experience and the `soft skills` are more important than a degree.

And shouldn't the experience gathered from side projects, eg., documented (or simply hosted) on github account more than a degree?

[StudentStuff]

Seems almost entirely to be a matter of networking and having a degree of some sort to get into decently high paying jobs here in Seattle. Otherwise you end up at a small or mid-sized company, significantly underpaid and wasting your days with their shenanigans.