[shellfisher]

> That said one needs to be realistic about it, is going to college really going to make you 3x more productive at 22 than if you didn't?

Obviously this depends on what you might have done instead… If on the one hand you went to college and learned to program, and on the other hand you didn’t go to college and didn’t learn to program, then you are going to be 100x more productive (as a programmer) having gone to college.

It’s hard to disentangle having gone to college with having learned something there.

[giantg2]

I learned plenty of things in college. The real question is how much of it is stuff I actually use today, especially for my job.

Calculus - no, literature - no, Spanish - no, English - no (HS level is sufficient), cryptography - no, networking - no, COBOL - no, assembly - no, business minor classes - barely, all those liberal arts - nope.

[shellfisher]

And yet, had you not learned to program, a programming job right out of college would have been out of reach.

So it’s possible to learn something at college that makes you 10 times more valuable for a particular job.

[giantg2]

I learned how to program in HS. A bootcamp could also teach someone how to program. So could an associates degree. But employers just want the credentials of a BS or MS. For whatever reason, associate degrees are uncommon and looked down upon.

So sure, you could learn something useful in college, but there are more efficient/cheaper ways to do it. A lot of college is waste due to excessive employer demands for credentials and bureaucratic school requirements (liberal arts, foreign languages, etc).