
The Anti-College Is on the Rise - mitchbob
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/college-anti-college-mainstream-universities.html
======
nimbius
Disclosure: I'm an automotive diesel mechanic by trade, and chose the anti
college 15 years ago.

Trade school cannot continue to be a four letter word in american households.
HVAC, plumbers, machinists, welders and electricians are all facing massive
shortages and offer a skilled, well paying job with benefits. These are all
1-2 year with an apprenticeship and the opportunity to build something you can
be proud of.

~~~
latencyloser
I'm just gonna vent for a sec out of envy: As someone who did the software
route, there are days I deeply wish I had done this sort of thing instead. My
neighbor is a welder, lives in a house the same as mine, doesn't work crazy
hours without getting paid overtime, doesn't spend weekends keeping up with
the latest welding technology or practicing esoteric welding techniques just
to pass an interview (as I sit here learning Rust because my team is starting
to use it and practicing interview problems because I'm trying to transfer
internally at the company). His boss probably doesn't pressure him to go give
talks at welding conferences off hours as publicity to the company. Or come in
on Saturday's to listen to presentations on what other parts of the welding
org are working on. I'm tired of a career that consumes _my life_. I so truly
just want to clock in, clock out, work about 40hrs/week and have time for my
family. But I'm scared to do that in my industry, it just moves too fast and
it's too easy to feel left behind, especially where I'm at in it--a weird
limbo between programmer and manager where I'm expected to know how do to
things without being allowed time to learn them. I loved programming when I
was younger, and I still do, but my god I hate this industry. I daydream about
taking a pay cut just to be able to go live in like... Cheyenne, WY or
something and not be a part of the tech rush. Once I pay down my house a bit
and can afford to start over with my family somewhere else, I just might.
/rant

If any software folks who understand where I'm coming from wanna chime in on
that, I'd love to hear about what you did about it... Or maybe I'm just a
negative nancy, that's plausible too.

~~~
tsomctl
Counterpoint: he is destroying his body. He's pretty commonly lifting heavy
things and exposing himself to hazardous chemicals. Depending on what kind of
welding he's doing, he's breathing smoke from all kinds of different paints
and oils. There are fume extractors/ventilation, but they don't remove
everything.

My dad and grandpa are both plumbers. My grandpa destroyed both his shoulders.
He's had one replaced, and needs to have the other one done. My dad is well on
his way to destroying his shoulders too.

~~~
weirdstuff
I'm kind of tired of the trades "break your body" argument.

I think just as many bodies routinely get destroyed in office
environments—especially in tech. You know the trope. Sitting all the time
under artificial light breathing nasty "inside" air staring at screens in open
office environments with a lot of mental stress. Etc.

In each case, blue collar or white, proper care can be taken to avoid these
injuries. Especially in blue collar trades.

~~~
qvrjuec
I think your last point holds true, but it's really not an equivalent amount
of stress you're putting on your body in an office. You can always go outside
more after work and remain physically active to counteract the damage you're
doing by sitting in an office all day, but if you're in a physically intensive
trade, you can't avoid the damage you're doing by remaining less active after
work.

~~~
fjp
Also you're going to have less energy to do the physical activity you _want_
to do.

I paved roads for a summer at 18 and even though I was a very young energetic
kid, I was barely getting anything out of my evening workouts or soccer games
with friends after 10 hours outside shoveling asphalt.

------
jorgesborges
I'm almost thirty with a degree in philosophy. College was easily the worst
financial decision I've ever made. It's scary to reflect on how I made that
mistake as a teenager. The people I've met that were able to successfully
leverage the advantages of a college degree fall roughly into two categories:
1) people whose parents had the money to support them financially but also the
sense to guide them with respect to a career; and 2) highly ambitious people
with a plan. The problem is that there was a generation of students (myself
included) that thought a university education led to a well-paying job. I know
how incredibly naive that sounds. But it was also the understanding of many
parents without formal education encouraging their children to attend. But I
think in general there's an increasing awareness that this isn't the case and
now we're having these anti-college conversations.

~~~
eikenberry
I'm have a master is philosophy and don't regret it for a second. Helped shape
my thinking in so many ways and was probably one of the largest contributors
to my ongoing success as in software development. I've known a surprising
number of philosophy majors in software, so I don't think it's an accident
that it helped me. Seems like philosophy may be one of the better areas of
study to help get your brain working in ways that are conducive to software.

~~~
csomar
I used to hate Philosophy and think it's something people who can't do
anything do. My vision changed lately and I think Philosophy and theoretical
thinking is important.

However, abstract theoretical thinking without an adjacent skill (like
software development), is probably useless in the market today. This is
probably why the OP didn't find financial success.

Suggesting a philosophy career is then a bad idea. Suggesting a CS +
Philosophy career might be a decent one though.

~~~
eikenberry
Oh, for sure. Philosophy has pretty much 1 career path, acedemics, and it is
pretty cutthroat and pays poorly. I figured out that didn't appeal to me in
time to pivot into software development.

------
bryanwb
Several things irk me about this article

First, the proposed educational experiences sound like more silly adventures
for kids with money (or debt) to burn. You could learn more about life and
yourself by working at McDonald's for a year.

Second, it fucking annoys the shit out of me that when articles like this talk
about "the liberal arts" they really mean humanities. I have yet to meet
someone who espouses the merits of a liberal arts education who realizes that
it technically includes math and the natural sciences. How many English majors
takes statistics? How many History majors take discrete math or more than the
most basic math requirements needed to graduate? Bet it is less than 1%.

I am all for a liberal arts education as long as it has equal helpings of math
and the natural sciences along w/ English, philosophy, etc.

Have you really "learned to think" from your humanities education if you have
no understanding of calculus, probability, statistics, or physics? If you have
never learned how to design and conduct an experiment?

A "good" university education is simple and not sexy. High quality courses
taught by passionate teachers. Nothing else. No student unions, no sports
teams, no academic or emotional counseling, no beautiful buildings, no study
abroad or fucking trips to Alaska. Which basically describes university
studies in central Europe and Israel.

Not very sexy so no NYT articles about it.

I actually attended a pricey "liberal arts" college where I majored in
computer science. I am currently in the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech and the
quality of education I am receiving through it is much better at less than a
tenth of the cost. We have better discussions on Slack than I did sitting in
seminars w/ a bunch of rich kids 20 years ago. No picturesque campus to stroll
through though :)

~~~
hadsed
Your second point seems really overblown. Language evolves, embrace and accept
that. People seem to be using the words humanities and liberal arts to mean
the same thing these days.

~~~
bryanwb
bullshit, the removal of natural sciences and math from liberal arts reflects
today's math-phobia and fear of doing hard things.

------
ngngngng
Good. But on that note, there are ample opportunities to get an affordable
education in the US. You just have to make 2 simultaneous decisions. 1) Go to
a public school, 2) Stay in-state.

Why the hell are so many people choosing non-public and out of state schools?
Do people really think that double the cost gets you double the returns?

~~~
gravypod
I'm in state and in a public school and I'm in huge debt. Family used to make
a lot of money. Drugs and situation ruined my family just as I was going to
college. FAFSA only takes "$year -2" income into account so my $0/month income
family was being given the support that a 6-figure family got. Had to take out
a 30k loan at >20% APR since no one could co-sign for me except my mom and
she'd been evicted 2 times, stopped paying her bills, and had no income so
it's all i could find from Sallie Mae.

"Just do x" doesn't help when the game is rigged from the start.

I'm doing everything right:

1\. Work during school (on campus & industry) 2\. Getting good grades 3\.
Applying for FAFS 4\. In state 5\. Engineering progression (IT) 6\. Not
dorming (except first year because of family situation) 7\. No meal plan

I'm levereged over $100k in this degree. Hoping to finish soon. I know my
situation is nonstandard but this misinformation is just polluting the
dialogue on this topic and it's something that really hurts people like me.

~~~
diminoten
Your situation is insanely rare, it's not fair to think what you're living
through is what people should be talking about as an average.

~~~
gravypod
I acknowledge that in my comment. I'm trying to say that you can do all of the
traditionally "correct" things and still end up with an unacceptable amount of
debt. This to me signals that the traditional wisdom in this area is not the
full story and limiting our conversation to "Just stay in state and go to a
public school" _full stop_ is not a helpful method of introspection.

~~~
diminoten
Yes, you can get hit by a metaphorical bus. It's sad, I'm sorry you're having
to deal with it, but it's not relevant to the aggregate conversation.

"Just stay in state and go to a public school... also don't be insanely, one-
in-a-million unlucky." <\- does that feel better to you?

~~~
gravypod
If I was reviewing code of a junior developer and found a very specific case
that would break the code they submitted I'd ask them to go back an fix that
bug. If they came back, providing a solution similar to yours, it would look
something like this:

    
    
        if (input == null) {
            return;
        }
        doWork(input);
    

I would still refuse to accept this situation. Hacking out the error case
isn't fixing the root problem. This is similar to this discussion.

The conventional wisdom used to be correct. You used to be able to avoid
massive debt by staying in state and attending a public college. This is not
the case anymore. I know plenty of people who aren't in as bad of a situation
as I am and received similarly low financial support from the government and
the university I attend.

Focusing the conversation on "what to do" is not helpful. Focusing on "why do
you have to" is helpful.

Why do you have to pay ~30k/year, minimum, to live on campus with the most
basic meal plan at a state run college?

The out of state tuition for my college (NJIT) was $6,214 [0] in 1998, the
year after I was born. This year the out of state tuition is $32,750. This
does not count living expenses or textbooks. The college also mandates you
have a laptop with some hardware requirements. Using chronicle's "Adjust for
Inflation" tool it seems that my college's tuition grew at a rate of >300%
above inflation.

I'm not going to make any comments here as to why I think this is, though I do
have opinions, but I will state that "just stay in state" ignores this. This
is a trend common to most public colleges. If this trend continues for NJIT
(of add ~$1k/year to the tuition for in and out of state) in 18 years, when
the next gravypod comes around, they'll be even more screwed.

[0] - [https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and-
fees](https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and-fees)

~~~
diminoten
> This is not the case anymore.

Yes it is. Full stop. Local community colleges are _vastly_ cheaper than many
universities, and the credits match up 1:1. Working full time, getting an AS,
transferring to a university to earn a BS is still a _very_ viable path.

Following this path it's not only possible, but expected that one walks away
completely debt free with their BS at the end of four years.

Just because _you_ didn't do the right things (or even if you did and still
got very unlucky) doesn't mean the rest of us can't have a fruitful
conversation about how things will work out for the _vast_ majority of people.

You need to understand this, or you'll forever be trapped making terrible
coding analogies on the Internet, not being understood. Literally none of the
numbers or situations you cited are relevant to this conversation.

------
Causality1
The mainstream college culture needs to die, no question. It's my opinion,
however, that "hippie wilderness getaway for upper middle class kids to find
themselves" is just profiteering from disenchantment.

>They will take on 15 to 20 hours a week of manual labor in Sitka >all at an
affordable price >found the program in order to give young people a taste of
the education he received at an older countercultural experiment, Deep Springs
College >Deep Springs — a tuition-free, highly selective two-year liberal arts
college >Our goal is to make our credits transferable to four-year
institutions upon accreditation

So in order to further the spirit of a tuition-free liberal arts college, is
charging "students" an as-yet unrevealed fee, working them for four hours a
day covering almost every single non-management job at the Sheldon Jackson
Campus, with absolutely no set curriculum or accreditation or transferable
credits.

This is by the far the most transparent scam I've ever seen make it to HN.

------
maxdamantus
Luckily I'm from a country where university is still reasonably affordable ..
in fact, since I left, they've made it so fees are government-funded for the
first few years. Even though I did have a student loan, it was at least
interest-free.

I think university education should be seen as an extension of all earlier
education. If you start thinking in terms of "is this financially a good
idea", you'll start wondering if people should be leaving school at 14 or
something, because they're basically able to work at that age .. right?

Personally, I think the time I had at university was massively useful to my
educational development. Even though a lot of what I learnt during that time I
consider to be "self-taught", the university environment seemed much more
conducive to self learning than the working environment, where you do what
your company wants for 8 hours a day then spend the rest of the day trying to
defocus.

Just like primary and secondary education, it seems insane to me to just think
about tertiary education as some concrete monetary investment. If you give
everyone the opportunity to spend a short amount of time (like 3 or 4 years,
out of a career period of 45 years) focusing on a particular field of their
choosing, surely there must be a massive benefit there to society.

Edit: Also, it should probably be pointed out that a lot of research that
happens at universities is used in industry, so if the university system
continues to be undermined, you can expect these gains to be lost. We're
probably mostly programmers, right? Try pointing to a significant feature of
any programming language (old or new) that isn't taken straight from academia.

~~~
simonsarris
> If you start thinking in terms of "is this financially a good idea", you'll
> start wondering if people should be leaving school at 14 or something,
> because they're basically able to work at that age .. right?

Yes, this age is something we _should_ wonder and re-wonder often over time.
Is all the delayed adolescence of the current state desirable? Do all people
need 4 years of high school? Do all degrees need to take 4 years for wildly
different fields? Would many people benefit from a "work study" version of
high school instead? Etc.

~~~
maxdamantus
I really dislike the idea of providing a monetary incentive for kids to stop
going to school. People who are not well-off are going to be pressured into
taking this path, causing a further arbitrary wealth gap within the
population.

~~~
simonsarris
That's a good thought and big concern.

But the alternative path is not necessarily one of less learning. Many people,
both gifted and not, detest academics and feel school is a kind of prison or
CAFO. This would give them more options. It would give bullied kids more
options too, or kids looking to get away from gang activity in their (bad)
school.

~~~
judge2020
> But the alternative path is not necessarily one of less learning

The problem is this still doesn't solve the wage gap. Businesses look for
concrete ways to determine someone's skill, and a Diploma/GED and college
education provide them easy standards to set for who can even get to the
interview process. Not many CS jobs will take anyone who only lists "self-
taught", even if they have some amazing code work linked (this is especially
true for recruiters).

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
I can relate- as a 16-year-old teenager with soldering abilities, knowledge of
OS X, Windows, and Linux (including data recovery) it was quite saddening /
depressing (I honesly don't know the right word to describe it) to hear that I
_couldn 't get a job, or even an apprenticeship_ at any of the local computer
repair shops because I wasn't old enough.

This isn't a 1:1 comparison, because being young is a legal problem, but I
definitely feel your pain- and the pain of others in that situation- it's a
serious downer and quite demoralizing for someone to say no just because you
don't have a certificate (in this case, a DL). It's honestly really hard to
get someone to take a chance on you.

------
lordnacho
How many people in the US have come across the Open University? They do
distance learning courses in a range of subjects, and has a reputation built
over the last 50 years. Costs money but nothing like a private US degree.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University)

It's actually the largest university in the UK, and has thousands of overseas
students.

~~~
sdinsn
> Costs money but nothing like a private US degree.

I mean, public US degrees also cost nothing like a private US degree

~~~
synchronizing
Depends on whether the student is an out-of-state or in-state student.

------
nknealk
I'm currently pursuing an MBA. There's a huge body of research that shows raw
cognitive ability is the strongest predictor of a high performance hire.

That is sometimes, but not always, correlated with educational attainment.

Source eg [https://hbr.org/2017/10/what-science-says-about-
identifying-...](https://hbr.org/2017/10/what-science-says-about-identifying-
high-potential-employees)

~~~
danieltillett
Pity you can't just test for this and hire [1].

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co).

------
ne01
College is the idea of paying someone to force you to read a bunch of (mostly
useless) books.

Just read books and google if you don’t know what to read

And choose a field that does not require a degree to work

This way you save your time and money and probably will end up being more
successful

~~~
ryanmercer
>And choose a field that does not require a degree to work

The problem with this is, more and more employers are wanting a 4-year degree
for ANY job, even basic office work because 1/3 of the country has at least a
4-year degree.

~~~
randomdata
Specifically, employers look for a degree when the market for a particular
line of work is saturated. Practically speaking, an employer can only evaluate
a handful of people who are vying for a job, so filtering out everyone without
a degree is a quick, and legally accepted, way to cull applicants down to
smaller numbers.

The problem is that if you are trying to compete in a saturated market, you
are already going to lose as there is always someone who is better, faster,
and willing to work for less money, leaving the degree to be of no great
benefit to you, with respect to getting a job.

------
pmoriarty
It's long past time for the wealthiest country in the world to make education
free.

~~~
cyrksoft
Free? Who pays?

~~~
EliRivers
Done right, educating people should lead to them being more productive and
producing a richer society. Done right, it's an investment that produces more
wealth than it costs.

Somewhere there's a point where it costs more than it produces, dependent on
how much time the person will spend being a more-educated person before they
die, and I expect also dependent on the precise education being imparted, but
I'd be surprised if that line was where the free education cut-off currently
is.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
It seems like a lot of the excess value will be captured by the person who
attended college, if that's true aren't they the very person to pay for it? If
it isn't why bother with it at all?

~~~
EliRivers
Done right, they produce more wealth and some of that wealth goes to society.
It's not just that they pay more tax; they also simply produce more wealth,
which is not a zero sum game. Over a lifetime, society benefits and the person
benefits. Everyone wins. Done right.

Stretching the discussion a little, we could ask the same question about all
education. Why is any of it free? But the benefits to the United States (for
example) of almost everyone being able to read and write (for example) are
incredible. If a large proportion of the US population had dropped out of
school before being able to read and write (because of the cost), the US would
be extraordinarily less wealthy. Everyone would lose out.

------
austincheney
People I have worked with who have graduate level education (masters or
doctorate) are extremely well prepared when performing as a software
developer. The education can be in any academic discipline.

People who have a bachelors degree are less prepared to work as a software
developer. Counter intuitively this lack of preparation is magnified for those
with a computer science degree. Most of my computer science coworkers have
historically had weaker communications skill, such as describing details with
precision objectively or documenting a simplified set of instructions. I am so
under whelmed that basic reading and writing are something I would test for in
a job interview.

In addition to weak communication skills I have also observed less flexibility
or willingness to learn unfamiliar skills from computer science skills
undergraduates. It’s as though these students believe they know all they need
and the employer should adapt to the set of techniques these employees were
taught. I have had heard somebody on HN describe this as lame duck syndrome. I
have observed this enough that it biases me in opposition to job candidates
with a comp sci education.

~~~
anonymous5133
Those little quirks can be eliminated through proper employment screening. You
can implement personality screening, skills verification exams and so on.
Assuming the screening is effective, these undesirable candidates can be
eliminated quickly.

------
dsfyu404ed
A lot of people in these comments are forgetting which types of employment
took the biggest hits in the past few recessions.

~~~
rb808
Were you around in 2001 after the dotcom crash? It was really difficult to
find work. I know a few web devs that never worked in the industry again.

~~~
anonymous5133
I graduated from high school in 2006 and was determined to study computer
science when I went to college but by the time I had graduated I decided to
just go with accounting because I had heard so many horror stories about how
there were no jobs in tech anymore. I viewed accounting as something that
might not pays much as a programmer but it would surely get me a job because
every company needs accountants. Nowadays, being employed in accounting, I
kinda regret it because my true passion was computer science.

~~~
meestaahjoshee
Never too late to start! Seriously with so many online resources and/or coding
boot camps you can totally do it.

My company has three engineers who have done boot camps and two who are self
taught coming from other industries including myself.

------
christopher8827
Good. I think the university system is outdated and there should be other
institutions to train people for the workforce.

------
jokoon
I went and failed school programs several times as an adult, in a country
where those programs are free. The last 2 programs I went to were 1 year
programs. I already have programming skills yet they did not give me the
"degree" because they might have perceived a lack of motivation. Those
programs were web oriented and I'm more focused on industrial programming.

I tend to dislike higher education as a general rule because it's more a
process of fitting in and obeying a teacher, instead of focusing on the
subject matter. I don't care that much actually because I know I'm already
skilled at programming. I might not be an excellent programmer, but I can do a
lot of what's required.

While education is important, I have put a lot of personal time to learn more
and more programming skills after the year I failed one, 8 year ago. Yet the
job market is constantly focused on "the degree", while everybody knows that
self-teaching is more important in programming. I don't get hired and it's
always a matter of trusting a new guy who doesn't have professional experience
and can only talk about his skills.

Personally I don't have a lot of faith into the market and the market doesn't
have faith in me. So yes, I have plenty of reasons to say that people going
into higher education are lucky, privileged or just obedient people who are
not yet capable of learning new things, or did not have to waste so much
resources to learn things they could do at home.

In the end, you will either have large companies with normative, schooled
people, or start ups, who will always struggle to start products because they
have no resources.

I'd say that higher education can be bad because normalization slow downs
innovation, so in the end, degrees become privileges. People who are taught
skills but don't use them to improve society and constantly encourage
obedience are a brake on society. In an age of inequality, degrees are seen as
rent seeking. People get degrees for comfort. Other people won't seek degrees
because they don't want to obey to a system they see as lame and evil.

~~~
itstimefor2020
I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years
later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to
simply avoid my resume being thrown out. So I went back to school and I bet
you can already guess what happens. Now that I have to spend at least 25 hours
a week studying I barely have time to work on my software skills. I used to
learn stuff like writing compilers, work with FPGAs, read up on machine
learning, etc... You can argue that maybe I focused too much on individual
topics and a CS degree covers many more but at the same time the lack of a
degree isn't what's hindering me from working in these areas. I'll finally be
done with school soon and then I can go to college next year and I
definitively am going to specialize in topics that I am unfamiliar with such
as robotics. However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the
same trivial web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and
more opportunities during the job hunt.

~~~
jamesmp98
> I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years
> later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to
> simply avoid my resume being thrown out.

> However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the same trivial
> web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and more
> opportunities during the job hunt.

I started working in the field professionally around 18 or 19, and I'm begging
to fear this same thing. If I do decide to go back to school, it'd be in hopes
that I can escape subfields that bore me to death, but I feel the reality is
that there just really isn't any real job market for the things I'm interested
in.

------
wyclif
This is nothing new, St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland has been
educating this way for years (tutorials and no grades). The only question is
if it will become more widespread in the face of the erosion of the quality of
higher education.

------
bawana
It’s not about blue collar vs white collar. It’s about working for yourself or
being an employee. Corporate culture is ‘anti human’, anti-planet, and anti-
social. When you have to use energy to demonstrate your ‘adherence to policy’
that is waste. Furthermore, corporations make you spend that energy from your
private store.

------
magical_mishka
Say what you want, but a college degree is still necessary for high paying
jobs.

~~~
jchw
No it isn't? It is necessary for _some_ high paying _careers_ , like working
in medicine. But, I am certainly a software developer, for a very large
company, pretty happy with my paycheck, and I have no degree. Nobody even ever
asked me about it.

Whether or not it helps is another story, I am not claiming a degree is
literally useless. I am however a little rubbed the wrong way by claims that
you _need_ a degree to ever have a job that pays good, that seems false.

~~~
snarfy
Not having a degree in CS certainly limits how far up the ladder you can go.
For most jobs at FAANG companies the #1 requirement is a degree. You can be
the highest level senior developer at a company but you'll never make director
or vp without a degree.

~~~
agrenader
Agree, this is exactly the reason why M. Zuckerberg is not a VP.

~~~
rev_null
Zuckerberg never had to interview at Facebook.

------
duxup
That really reads more like something centering more on some personal
philosophy than something that would challenge traditional education.

~~~
Barrin92
Yes, to me this is the very worst version of counter-culture. This isn't
challenging the elite instititutions, it's even one step up the ladder, like
some 70s hippie experiment of the privileged who roleplay as workers in some
retreat in the mountains reading Plato. Gender segregation and overly strict
"no alcohol" policies included. it's rebel roleplaying.

If people want practical experience and physical work the organisers of these
institutions should go to Switzerland, learn how the apprenticeship system
works and bring it back to America so people can be set on a viable career
path.

------
victor9000
You may also consider studying in a country like Germany, where they heavily
subsidize education even for immigrants.

------
cwperkins
Joe Biden said it himself, he didn't like how elitist America is becoming. I
couldn't agree more and couldn't be happier to see people choosing a career in
the trades. They can be high paying and stable.

------
vetelko
No college. No debts.

------
achingtooth
I don't think the gimmicky travel to Alaska, take a gap year, or having "a way
to talk about one’s higher purpose in the world" is important at all. What is
important is having cheap tuition and solid courses. As much as people bash on
college, it's still important. I don't have a college degree and it's been
impossible for me to find a 'real job', though some of that may be due to my
age. This is despite having a decent amount of programming and freelance
experience. Overall college is important if you want to go down the
traditional job path smoothly, I think these people are focusing on the wrong
thing.

~~~
anonymous5133
Completely agree - having solid courses that teach relevant theory/skills is
extremely valuable. We simply need to make the means by which we take such
courses more efficient and therefore lower cost.

The bigger issue here is that employers have gravitated far too much towards
the college degree as a signal device for a quality employee which effectively
shuts out alternate forms of education. Employers need to be willing to hire
people who are smart but don't have a college degree. If someone self-studied
all the subjects on their own and it is clear they are on the same level as a
college grad then they should not be excluded from the hiring process.

It is almost like we need some sort of "SAT" for various subjects. That way if
someone is really smart then they can just take this SAT in whatever subject
to evaluate their knowledge. We sort of have this already for certificates but
it seems like employers don't place much value on them compared to a college
degree. There are exceptions but they are mostly outliers IMO.

~~~
yostrovs
It is basically illegal by federal law to test potential employees for their
overall intelligence. It is considered racist, the term being 'adverse impact'
in this case.

Corporations effectively outsource intelligence testing to colleges, as they
have no other choice to obtain info about their future employees' abilities.

~~~
fredgrott
sorry no its not a IQ test as far as SAT, PSAT and the other tests..see
Mismeasure of Man by Gould for why!

------
thrownblown
Who goes to college to work in tech anymore?

~~~
esoterica
Most people who work in tech? Do you think the number of Google engineers with
a degree is above or below 50%. Take a guess.

~~~
armatav
Do you think their employees make up more or less than 50% of the population
of engineers in Silicon Valley?

~~~
asdff
As a whole nearly 50% of all people in SV have a B.S. or higher and over 70%
have some college experience; it's the third most educated place in the
country.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/25/silicon-valley-
is-3rd...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/25/silicon-valley-is-3rd-most-
educated-region-in-america-study-says/)

~~~
thrownblown
I would argue that a significant proportion of those in tech have that do have
degrees, hold degrees that are irrelevant to their profession.

