
A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t - ege_erdogan
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-twenty-year-professor-on-starting-college-this-fall-dont-df3ea4024f70
======
frankbreetz
As a millennial college graduate, my number one piece of advice to college
bound high schoolers is do the first two years at community college. The debt
is not worth the experience. Most people spend the first two years figuring
stuff out, community college is a great place to do that. I didn't even know
this was an option until after college and I feel failed by my high school
college advisors. Unless you are very confident in what you want to do and get
into a very good college you don't think you can get into again, get a full
ride, or have ridiculously rich parents, go to community college. Edit:
perhaps full ride is too strict a requirement. If you can save money by going
to community college, taking into account lost scholarships, you should go to
community college.

~~~
wikibob
Disagree.

Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

There is vastly less academic support available.

The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you.

Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4
year university.

Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is
cheaper, or go where you get the best financial aid.

~~~
serf
>Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges.

how is that a useful metric for anything, really?

Look how many extra programs pull people into community colleges, and look at
the difference in accessibility between community colleges and universities.

A stay-at-home mother isn't going to be eyeballing Stanford as a viable way to
get her nursing degree with night classes. In the same instance, a stay-at-
home mother who is using community college in order to get a degree
necessarily has a lot more difficulty in managing her time and money than a
university aged adult being sent to university by their parents with far fewer
personal responsibilities and burdens.

The stay-at-home mother will necessarily have higher drop-out rates just
simply from things that exist as burdens in their life from the get-go. As
will the displaced worker who is being funded by the state for re-training at
their local colleges.

University life is designed to reduce burden on the student in order to
facilitate their learning. Comparing metrics like drop-out rates between
universities and community colleges is wholly unfair. They both result in
degrees, but they serve (mostly) different communities of people.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
It's a metric of exactly what you're describing. Going to a community college
means immersing yourself in a community of people who see academics as a more
of a luxury and less of a necessity; people who have other priorities in life,
and will only participate to the extent that it doesn't interfere with their
more important goals and obligations.

------
downerending
Arguing in the other direction, if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this
might be an unusually easy time to get one.

Personally, my college experience was mainly useful for discovering that my
college experience wasn't going to be very useful for me.

(Mildly interesting: The author seems to be this woman.
[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-
seek...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seeks-
terminate-gadfly-professor-allegedly-threatening-assassinate))

~~~
gumby
> , if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy
> time to get one.

It’s a good point: this year and next will have an unusually high percentage
of pass/fail options, but networking will be quite restricted.

~~~
500-degrees
I've met 0 people to code with in college :(

~~~
gumby
That’s a shame; I’m have remained close friends with a couple of dozen dorm-
and lab- mates even after 35 years. Even started a company with one 20 years
ago.

And we were all non-gregarious nerds. I wonder if that is why?

My university was quite large, with about 4,000 undergrads and about the same
number of grad students. My high school was about 40 students a year (240
total) and I am barely in contact with any of them.

------
zdragnar
I generally detest the large expense of universities given the difference
between what they claim to offer and the actual value. That said, the options
here seem to not be any better.

Get a job? Fresh out of high school kidd are going to have a hard time finding
gainful employment for awhile, especially in the hardest hit areas.

Volunteer for a political campaign? Meh. That isn't much of a substitute, even
if it has its own intrinsic value.

Why not encourage kids to instead look for schools that have been doing
distance learning for years, or starting at a local community college instead?
Its a heck of a lot less expensive (addressing the articles risk of investment
point) and they are far less likely to take the money you ponied up for
dormitory living while kicking you out.

~~~
dmoy
> Volunteer for a political campaign?

How is that an option, do they house and feed you if you vomubt for a
political campaign?

~~~
ForHackernews
Sometimes, yes. It's common for local supporters to open their homes to out-
of-state volunteers. When I was younger, I spent months living for free in a
nice lady's basement in Iowa.

------
sramsay
Another twenty-year professor here. I would just like to point out that this
article is articulating -- with absolutely accuracy and lucidity -- every
college administrator's worst nightmare. They've all been discussing the
possibility (that parents and students will make this very decision) for
weeks.

It might be the right decision to make, but it would be absolutely
catastrophic for most schools.

~~~
closeparen
Universities would seem uniquely capable of just going into hibernation for a
while. They do it every summer, after all. That tradition is even because of
infectious disease risk!

What does it really cost to park a campus in "summer mode" a while longer?

~~~
patrickthebold
The people who work there might have been planning on 3 months w/o pay, but
are expecting a job in the fall.

~~~
elliekelly
I wonder whether tenured professors can be laid off/furloughed?

~~~
williamstein
Yes, they can be furloughed. This happened during the 2008 financial crises,
and it already happened a few days ago at Univ of Arizona.

------
chadlavi
This seems pretty out of touch. Encouraging people to go right into the jobs
market as 18yos without degrees is encouraging them to trap themselves at the
(already rapidly expanding) bottom of the economic ladder, unless they're from
an already upper/upper-middle-class family.

And the same goes double for encouraging degreeless 18yos to skip getting paid
entirely and volunteer. That's rich kid stuff.

~~~
jseliger
_Most schools will allow you to defer for a year. Consider taking them up on
it. And if they won’t let you, well, a school that admitted you once will
probably admit you again (or a different one will_

And:

 _There are other important, worthwhile things to do if you take a semester or
even a full year off_

And:

 _If you defer or postpone, what’s the worst that can happen_

~~~
taylodl
That's generally true unless there's a scholarship involved. Those are take-it
or leave-it. If you had 50% of your tuition paid for by a scholarship would
you leave it?

------
collegeburner
I'm looking at college this fall and seriously wondering about this. I'll have
to spend a lot of money if I go to an "elite" school, and the point of doing
that is to make connections with my peers and with professors. I don't see the
point of paying that kind of money for that sort of experience. That aside,
not starting college may not be a good idea, either. Does anyone with more
experience have advice on this? I do have a job at a cybersecurity firm where
I'm a part-time developer, and my boss would probably convert me to full-time.
I've also been working on some interesting side projects to learn stuff and
could continue self-teaching. Does anyone with more experience have some
advice for me?

~~~
t-writescode
> I do have a job at a cybersecurity firm where I'm a part-time developer, and
> my boss would probably convert me to full-time.

You already have a job and your boss has made you a developer. One thing
you'll get in school that you won't get on the job, in general, is algorithm
training. This is an important step for developing the best code you can and
being exposed to weird and different ways to write things. This is important.

I personally do not see a real advantage to going to an elite school,
depending on how you define elite school. If you're speaking Ivy League or
some school that's world renowned, then no, that's not really important, I
don't think. You already have contacts in the industry and there are "lesser"
schools that are still pretty great.

Your company might be willing to pay for your college education. It almost
certainly won't be from MIT; but, it could greatly reduce the costs you're
worried about.

The next thing to consider is future employment, not this employment. Future
companies that you work for may want you to have a degree or look down on you
for your lack of one. Lacking particularly impressive projects or lots of
random technologies on your resume may cause this.

Whether you decide that's going to matter or not is up to you; but, I think
the one thing you should make sure you have experience in, either way, are the
classes seen as less important for day to day development: your algorithm
classes, discrete math classes, and similar. You can get much of that
education online and for either free (YouTube, etc) or through educational
sites like Pluralsight.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I have no college education because decades ago, I was in the same situation
as OP: had a job in hand, so I went to work instead of college. It was the
best choice I ever made. I never worked somewhere that required a degree,
three years into my career was making six figures, and have made at least that
for the next ~20 years of my career. I had no student debt, or school
expenses. I have had employers offer reimbursement to go get the the undergrad
checkbox, which I’ve passed on (more important things to do IMHO).

YouTube, online material, and actual experience of trial and error will take
you a long way without a degree. You probably also don’t want to work
someplace that prioritizes a degree over experience. Don’t forget to network:
that’s the biggest ROI you’ll ever have. It’s who you know, not what you know.
Two cents from 20+ years.

~~~
non-entity
> You probably also don’t want to work someplace that prioritizes a degree
> over experience.

No but I want to work on the things they're working on.

As much as I despise the absolute scam that's peddled by universities, and
dont think they're for everyone, they can still open up a lot of opportunities
that would otherwise be inaccessible or highly difficult to access. OTOH If
all you're worried about is money, then yeah no, you probably don't want to
waste your time there

~~~
toomuchtodo
Money buys options. Options are freedom. Don’t let others gate you
unnecessarily. We all operate in a physical world that doesn’t care about
credentials as long as you adhere to the laws of physics (caveat aside for
professionals that require credentials by law, such as the medical profession
and such).

Going to school in another country that’s more reasonable about costs (Europe
comes to mind) is also an option.

Consider more efficient paths to the end state you desire is all I’m
suggesting.

~~~
t-writescode
Or honestly state colleges. There's some really great state colleges in the US
and they're far less expensive than some of the other options out there.

------
hanoz
There must be a lot of people thinking they won't be getting the full
experience if they start this year. I wonder if this will be the pin which
pops the credit fueled runaway costs bubble?

Anyone who ends up not bothering with it at all will at least have great
reason for not having a degree - _well I was all set to go to such and such,
but then coronavirus, so I started work for a while instead, and just really
got into the whole working hard thing..._

~~~
rlanday
I don’t see how the college bubble continues as-is after this. What we had
before was basically a common knowledge problem. Everyone knows college is a
ripoff and, aside from a small number of degrees, the students are mostly just
getting subsidized by taxpayers to drink and smoke pot for four years while
the rest of us work and pay taxes. But, we didn’t all know that everyone knows
that. There was also a coordination problem in that even if everyone is
skeptical of the value provided by the experience, the pool of college
graduates was still some combination of smarter and more conscientious than
the pool of non-college graduates, so there was a signaling effect to going to
college. But now a lot of smart, conscientious young people have an excuse to
bail out of the system at the same time. I think many of those young people
will end up doing something with this time that sounds better to employers
than “I spent $80k a year living in my parents’ basement watching ungraded
online lecture videos that were inferior to ones I could watch for free on
YouTube.”

~~~
Chyzwar
These kids that drink and smoke pot are paying in personal debt, the taxpayer
is not really subsidizing this (at least based on what I was reading). For
most career paths outside a small portion of the technology, college is the
only way.

Part of the problem is that the US is not spending enough taxpayer money into
education. If the US spends a portion of it military budget 570B$ to enhance
education spending 70B$ problem could be massively reduced. To compare Germany
military spending 50B€ and education 130B€.

~~~
rlanday
The US spends plenty of money on education. If the data on this site is
accurate, local, state, and federal spending makes up about 6.35% of US GDP:
[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending)

vs. it looks like about 4.8% from Germany. Maybe there’s some discrepancy in
how those numbers are calculated, but they’re at least not wildly different.

~~~
Chyzwar
Universities in Germany are mostly free with generous system of funding for
poor students.

From attached link most of the spending is on state and local level.

>Federal education spending: The federal government had little involvement in
education in the early 20th century. This changed in the 1930s when federal
education spending increased from less than 0.05 percent of GDP to over 0.3
percent of GDP. Federal education spending decreased during World War II but
then increased to a peak of 1.03 percent of GDP in 1949 as it funded education
for veterans in the GI Bill. Federal education spending declined in the 1950s
to 0.3 percent of GDP, but began an increase in the mid 1960s reaching a peak
of 1.2 percent of GDP in 1979. Thereafter federal education spending declined
to about 0.6 to 0.7 percent of GDP in the 1980s and 1990s before increasing
modestly to nearly 0.8 percent of GDP in the 2000s.

> In the early 2010s federal education spending declined to 0.7 percent in
> 2015, and is expected to be 0.5 percent GDP by 2020.

------
yial
I think this is a great article, however, I think a more tempered approach may
be to take online courses from a community college or similar to begin working
on at least some gen eds.

This frees you up to do some of these other things that article suggests,
while still getting credits under your belt.

~~~
kevindong
It's important to note that some colleges restrict the number of credits you
can take/earn during the time between high school graduation and college
matriculation.

My alma mater, Purdue, permits incoming freshmen to take a gap year (but not
purely due to Coronavirus [0]). During that year, the would-be freshmen may
not take >=12 credit hours of courses or else their admission will be
rescinded and the freshmen would be required to reapply as a transfer student
[1].

[0]: [https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/](https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/)

[1]:
[https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php](https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php)

~~~
Robotbeat
Behavior like this and the for-credit/not-for-credit distinction (for the same
class!) is some rent-seeking, power-imbalance nonsense. I hope we figure out a
better way.

~~~
soared
I would disagree. If you were accepted, but then had significant changes to
your application you should reapply.

It makes sense that an acceptance is good for 3 months, and then you’ll need
to reapply after that. If you went to a new school, the reapplication process
is different.

------
timkam
Observations from overseas (Sweden): possibly because college/university is
typically (almost) free of cost and because of Sweden's culture of continuous
education, there is an increase in university enrollment applications:
[https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx](https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx).
I must say that I like that in times of high unemployment, the "free
education" feature allows people to further educate themselves when there are
little employment opportunities. IMO, this feature takes the risk burden (that
the article is mentioning) off the individual.

------
sys_64738
If lots of smart people decide to not start then it might be easier to get in
for the Fall semester if you're less able. That is, it might be to your
advantage to start college this Fall.

------
diebeforei485
Here's my take: if you get into a top engineering/CS program, you should still
go.

------
credit_guy
What we are going to see this year is a "run on the colleges". Just like there
were runs on the banks in the 19th century, we will now have a new phenomenon,
of run on the colleges. Right now colleges are preparing for a 20% decreased
enrollment for the Fall semester. Due to blog posts like this one, and
generally people talking with one another, a lot of students will realize that
if schools are budgeting for an 80%-year, it's better to skip the year and
come back in Fall 2021. My guess is that we'll actually see a 40% reduction in
enrollment.

This will not make a difference for institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford
with huge endowment funds. But it may break the back of many a poorer college.
The 2020-21 academic year is going to be very interesting...

------
glofish
perhaps a little bit premature advice

college students are not at risk to begin with - I'd recommend waiting closer
to mid summer

it might be the best time to attend college, fewer people enrolled, getting
more attention from educators etc

~~~
icedchai
Professors, faculty, and parents are at risk, though. If corona infects a dorm
it will rip through like wildfire. You'll have 100's of asymptomatic carriers
overnight.

Then they go home for break...

~~~
dredmorbius
And staff, likely the largest cohort. And least privileged.

------
hindsightbias
There was a time when school was about teaching students and not protecting
the staff first.

Janitors can work at night. Cafeterias can be take out. Profs can be on a
screen or given early retirement. I realize it is an inconvience, but how
about students first for the first time in a long while.

We collectively are safer if the college kids are away at school and not
infecting grandma.

------
einpoklum
> Don’t like any candidates? Then get engaged in issue activism.

Recommendations to be politically active regardless of the cause and position
sound rather vacuous. Or rather - sound like someone has an opinion, but not
the guts to voice their opinion.

Anyway, the main problem is the debt issue. If students going into the first
year of University (or "college") did not have to pay for it, it wouldn't be
such a gamble.

So, here's the political cause to pursue:

* Occupy your university campuses, state parliaments and governors' offices, together with existing and other incoming students, to

* Demand tuition-free higher education and free/discounted housing for students, in both "private" and state/federal-state-owned institutions, effective immediately. And let the federal government do some "quantitative easing" to pay for that - which they seem to have no problem doing ten times over to cover the financiers' losses.

Even in regular times, this is not an outlandish demand and not even
revolutionary; it's a meaningful but not earth-shattering reform. In these
times and with the Corona crisis it is closer than usual to achievability,
especially w.r.t. the potential of mobilizing students.

PS - If organized labor in the US had not been so week, an alliance on common
demands would have been quite relevant, but at the moment it's not a realistic
recommendation.

~~~
baggy_trough
Far too many people go to college as it is. More subsidies to go to college
only make that problem worse.

~~~
einpoklum
1\. These are (mostly) independent issues. Many countries have free
universities, but not many of them.

2\. I don't know what US colleges are like; but - higher education is to a
great extent its own rewards. Of course, if you're doing it for the diploma
and the chance to score a better job, then it's a different kettle of fish.

------
unethical_ban
What are the practical, social negatives of this? Will in-demand schools hold
a grudge on the thousands or more of students they would have liked to have in
fall 2020 and skipped? "You weren't there for us in 2020 so we think you're
better off elsewhere."

Not that any university should behave this way; I'm asking if any quality ones
would be.

~~~
downerending
No. In 2020, students entirely have the upper hand. Colleges can no longer
grow and shrink their classes according to the suitability of students. Their
finances are dire.

(In principle, the rich ones like Harvard could, but they won't either.
Falling enrollments just wouldn't look good.)

------
skybrian
I'm not sure this fall would be a great time to work on a political campaign
either, since you might not want to be meeting a lot of people in person. I
guess you could improve your phone and video conferencing skills, though?

Giving online courses a try seems like a good idea.

------
thih9
If people follow that, colleges might decide to lower the entry requirements
and the amount of students who join this year might be similar to the usual
amount.

Perhaps a better approach would be to plan safe working conditions instead.

~~~
downerending
If their money is green, you can bet that this will happen.

------
imtringued
Somehow the Americans outdid themselves. Six figure debt is now the norm?
Despite being completely over funded colleges still cut their important staff?

------
ghostpepper
Is the best thing a new high school grad can do to become more tech literate
really brush up on their "Blackboard skills"?

~~~
angry_cactus
Yeah that was a bit silly, even saying something as basic as PowerPoint or
Excel would have been better.

------
Hydraulix989
By the time it is fall, this professor's advice will be obsolete. The death
rate is already slowing down in NYC and Italy. The curve is flattened in South
Korea and China, and there, many are going outside to cafes and the Han River
park. San Francisco has had a grand total of 20 deaths. US is already planning
to gradually reopen the economy.

~~~
jkmcf
_The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention said it 's trying to
understand why the patients retested positive for COVID-19 despite previous
negative tests._

[https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/04/18/COVID-19-Survivor...](https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/04/18/COVID-19-Survivors-
test-positive-again-in-S-Korea-global-deaths-hit-150K/9651587211288/)

Not to mention: Denver had a significant spike in 1918 when interventions were
removed.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVHzq2AWkAEhbJo.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVHzq2AWkAEhbJo.jpg)

Note: I didn't locate this image on WashPo's site.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I'm sure you see why a graph of just Denver is suspicious. It strongly
suggests that the rest of the country saw a smaller second hump or no second
hump at all, so the graph makers had to exclude it.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Beat me to it. It's really egregious how many disingenuously flawed graphs
(one even suggesting that the death rate passed up heart disease!) and faulty
mathematical models (dY/dt=kY) there are floating around. This is why
education is important because ignorance is placing blind trust in the media
(whose narrative of fear helps to glue more eyeballs). There's plenty of
indications we've already hit the inflection point:

Nature: Antibody tests suggest that coronavirus infections vastly exceed
official counts
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0)

SFGate / Stanford: Study investigates if COVID-19 came to Calif. in fall 2019
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200408180013/https://www.sfgat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200408180013/https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Study-
investigates-if-COVID-19-came-to-Calif-in-15187085.php)

From the very article you linked (did you actually read it?): "'At the moment,
we think there is no danger of further secondary or tertiary transmission,'
Kwon said." We had 8 new cases today, and 6 were from Americans/Europeans
entering the country. Given that I lived in Korea for two years and have a
fair amount of friends and family there, I am a bit familiar with their
situation.

------
noelherrick
I just can’t believe these friends, or folks. We can do so much better.

------
m3kw9
One thing for sure the all these colleges that was charging rates up to the
stars is gonna be in a real shit storm staring now

------
xwdv
Yup, and if you are already in college don’t enroll in new classes until at
least 2021 if you can freeze tuition. It is such a ripoff to be paying for
world class education and end up with some basic online courses tossed
together in a hurry due to a pandemic. Not to mention missing out on the
social networking aspects that college life brings.

