
Do I need to go to university? - dfield
http://colah.github.io/posts/2020-05-University/
======
dcole2929
I think this article misses out on what in my opinion is the biggest reason to
go to college for a teen and it all has to do exploration. Simply put you
don't know what you don't know and at 17-18 that can be a lot. College gives
you an opportunity to explore who you are and what you care about in an
environment largely free of external stress (yes I know there can be stress
but it's generally a lot different than "I need to provide for my family"). A
lot of people are super confident in what they think their life path is until
they actually encounter the steps it takes to get there. Generally we do a
pretty poor job of educating young people on what different careers actually
look like and what it takes to get there. There are a million lawyer and
doctor shows but it's a lot harder at 17 to know that you'd actually love to
study library science, or be an economist.

At 17 I thought I wanted to be a sport journalist or shoot rockets into space.
Turns out I had zero interest in the path to ESPN and am terrible at
chemistry. Sure looking back I can totally see that computers made all the
sense in the world but I didn't recognize that then. If I had bypassed college
and just started working to get to one of those paths I saw for myself who
knows where I'd be. This is not to say that college is the only place where
you get this freedom to explore, but colleges, especially good ones certainly
encourage you to explore other options.

I think ideally your last year of high school would be nothing but career
exploration, but failing that I recommend most teenagers go to college even if
they think they know what they want to do.

~~~
flak48
Your comment is much more than this, but: just wanted to add that in a lot of
places (like India) the norm is being forced to pick your major before
entering college, which unfortunately negates a lot of the self-discovery that
happens in freshman year.

But besides the area of study / major I loved the college experience of being
forced to be away from the sheltered environment of home (although college is
sheltered and restrictive in it's own ways). Being able to recognize thought
patterns and impulses that I always grew up with felt like being able to see
new colours that I never knew existed.

Also being able to make friends - I don't take this for granted.When you are
in an environment where you have 10x to 100x the number of people you went to
high school with, it is much easier to find someone/ somoe group that you can
gel with regardless of how many ever quirks you have. After all these years,
my best friends are still the ones I made in college - not the ones before nor
the ones that came after.

At the very least I'm grateful to my college education for making me less of
an overconfident asshole who thought he knew it all, while at the same time
boosting my confidence in other ways.

I understand that in many countries like the US, the exorbitant cost of uni
education might make what I said look like nice-to-haves and luxuries but I'm
happy for a change to be born in a place where I could afford to have this
experience (while recognizing that many will not be privileged enough to
experience even this :( )

~~~
prawn
_" being forced to pick your major before entering college, which
unfortunately negates a lot of the self-discovery that happens in freshman
year."_

I was generally a straight-A student leaving high school but lasted six months
at university before quitting. I distinctly remember much of my career
decision was based on a single sentence description of the engineering degree
flavour. I had good entrance scores but wasn't interested in medicine or
dentistry. The description mentioned computers and design which were two
things I enjoyed, but in reality it was more about designing computers rather
than with computers. Had great teachers and parents but don't recall being
steered by any of them on my selection.

Not sure what the answer is, but I imagine it involves more flexibility in
that process (rather than prerequisite courses that start to narrow in at age
15) and more guidance.

At one point, we were given a large book - an index of jobs, basically. We
flipped through and laughed at "cheesemaker" and "crane chaser" but there was
not much about areas of interest or one-on-one with counsellors. Is a high
school teacher really going to be best positioned to coach their cohort (with
varied interests) on what direction to take?

------
sdan
I'm a senior in high school and decided to. I started a startup and got
invited for a YC interview(got rejected) and am onto another startup which is
raising soon.

Despite how much success/failure/I learn I endure, college name matters... a
lot. I snuck into Nuro's open house last year and found they exclusively
invited Harvard/Stanford/MIT students (I can say this because I was a minor at
the time of signing their NDAs)

College name matters, especially when you're starting out (which can impact
where you evenetually end up... whether its working for a startup or working
at a cool VC firm) In fact most of the time, the people who've said: "don't go
to college" are the same people who go to Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford and
probably don't realize how much of a network/presitgie gives them to get them
where they are now.

~~~
inapis
>In fact most of the time, the people who've said: "don't go to college" are
the same people who go to Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford and probably don't
realize how much of a network/presitgie gives them to get them where they are
now.

Can't emphasize this enough. College is still necessary for something like 95%
of the planet's population. If you are not born into wealth or have well
connected parents, a college degree is your only way to a better life. You may
not learn anything in college but you need that fuckin' piece of paper just
for the bureaucratic formalities. A very talented friend of mine was denied
the US visa probably because of lack of a bachelor degree.

~~~
sokoloff
How can college be necessary for 95% of the population when somewhere south of
50% attend now?

I’m a significant proponent of college attendance for social and educational
reasons, but even with that bias, I don’t agree with “necessary for 95%”.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Because their lives suck now, and college would have alleviated that. That
they didn't (have the chance to ) go is part of the point I believe.

But yeah it was worded strangely.

~~~
sokoloff
College would have alleviated it for four years _during college_. I’m not
convinced that the job market transforms quickly to absorb twice as many
people in jobs we think of today as “college required”.

I’m not sure what the correlation between income (or other life outcomes) is
between “attended college” vs “would typically have chosen college but took
another route” but I suspect it’s a lot smaller than between that latter group
and the “was never even considering college” group.

It’s not clear for an individual who “should” attend college how important the
decision to actually attend is. I seem to recall studies that suggested there
was a much stronger correlation between _applying to Harvard_ than there was
between that and _attending Harvard_.

~~~
sokoloff
This might be the paper I was recalling:
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322](https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322)

As summarized by the Atlantic: "For most students, the salary boost from going
to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after
adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if
Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but
Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the
same income throughout their careers. Despite Harvard’s international fame and
energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an
observable “Harvard effect.” Dale and Krueger even found that the average SAT
scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of
success than the school that student actually attends.

This finding suggests that the talents and ambitions of individual students
are worth more than the resources and renown of elite schools. Or, less
academically, the person you’re becoming at 18 is a better predictor of your
future success than the school you graduate from at 22. The takeaway here:
Stress out about your habits and chill out about college."

To be fair, the Atlantic continues on to say that the effect is different for
women (which they ascribe primarily to increased workforce participation
rates).

~~~
topkai22
Unless I completely misremember that article, the article says nothing about
not going to college at all. I don't think I'd use that paper to conclude that
highly talented individuals will have similiar income outcomes regardless if
they go to university or not. The credentialing effect is likely very
important

That being said- strongly consider going to a place that is willing to throw
scholarship money or special programs at you. The financial aspect of that
advice should be obvious, but buy in from the school into your education can
mean better access and sponsorship from professors as well

------
AdrianB1
I had in my teams people without any college degree or college dropouts, some
gave up after one year and some close to graduation. They were good
developers, the only difference I saw between college graduates and the other
developers was that the college graduates were less flexible and tending to
apply what they learned in college to the letter, even where it did not make
sense. A few days ago I was talking to one of these people doing some informal
code review, he found a very formally correct explanation for a constructor
that had no value in that context, something like "it is a good practice to do
it because in case X it can be used for y", where x and y were completely not
applicable in that code.

As a recruiter I never looked too serious for credentials, knowing myself
going through the college only for that piece of paper at the end, working
full time and knowing a lot more from the job than what the other students
learned. From my former class in college I think I am the only one practicing
IT, the others too other directions, including one that was a quite successful
music band leader.

~~~
OkayPhysicist
I've had the opposite experience working with a mix of uni-attendees and not.

Compared to their university-attended coworkers, the straight-to-industry folk
were far more likely to cargo cult design patterns, languages, and frameworks.

~~~
toomanybeersies
A bit orthogonal to the actual discussion at hand, but I've become a big
proponent of cargo-culting in a pragmatic fashion. I definitely ensure that
everything is done in the "Rails Way" for any Ruby on Rails code, despite not
necessarily agreeing with what's considered the "Rails Way" by rubocop or
general rails developer consensus. If I'm doing code review for my colleagues
I'll force them to refactor their changes into idiomatic Rails code, even if
it's perfectly functional code. I'm less strict on JS or other languages,
purely because I lack the experience to say what's the "right" or "wrong" way.

If your codebase follows a well-recognised style and pattern, it becomes a lot
easier for new hires or contractors to get on their feet and start productive
work than if you have some kind of brilliant idiosyncratic codebase that takes
3 months for a new hire to get their head around (as was the case when I
joined my current company).

------
da39a3ee
This Thiel-influenced not-going-to-university thing has got quite tedious.
It's as if people think the only thing worth learning is coding and
entrepreneurship.

If all you want to learn is programming and to a lesser extent computer
science then I guess you don't really need to. However if you want to learn
science, medicine, law, mathematics or any other real subject then of course
you should. Plus if you want to have fun meeting new friends, getting wasted,
and meeting sexual/romantic partners.

~~~
NikolaNovak
It's that last sentence that covinces me that university is obsolete or at
best misrepresented as an educational experience. Getting 100 grand into debt
to have fun and have sex? Get wasted?

And jf I appear to be cherrypicking the second half of your post, it's because
thr first half is cherry picking itself - I'll venture that fields where you
Do need university stamp of approval such as medicine and law are becoming
rarer and fewer compared to fields and professions where there are valid or
better alternatives.

This is not to say education isn't needed and awesome, or even that
structured, guided, formal education isn't needed and awesome. But north
American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one) have lost their way
and are far from the most efficient or effective method these days.

~~~
da39a3ee
> Getting 100 grand into debt to have fun and have sex? Get wasted?

Fair enough. I spoke from a European perspective where it is in many places
not at all that sort of financial consideration.

> But north American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one)

If that were so then would you not be an alumnus or an alumna?

Sorry.

~~~
NikolaNovak
Fair enough - It has admittedly been 25 years since Terra Terrae Terrae Terram
Terra Terra rt has been instilled into my head -and I'm rescuing those neurons
just as fast as I can! :-D

------
bregma
I went to university. I did not receive any job training at university. It is
not design for job training and I did not expect to receive job training.

I am not a job. I am not a career.

I learned two important things at university that I doubt I could have picked
up otherwise.

1\. I learned how broad knowledge is. I learned about things I did not even
know I did not know about. Some of these things I learned in classrooms. Most
I learned outside of classrooms, either through interaction with my peers or
by accident while researching something unrelated in the library. Sometimes by
hacking on the school computers. In high school I learned that being smart is
bad. In university I learned there are people who value thinking.

2\. I learned how to organize my time to complete tasks I had no personal
interest in, how to force myself to work despite my dislike of team mates or
organizers, and to finish by deadlines. I only wish I had learned these things
before my 6th and 7th years in university, but alas.

You don't need to go to university. We will always need garbage collectors and
street sweepers, and remember, anyone can write bad software. Vendors continue
to try to make it easier to do so.

~~~
jmvoodoo
Wow. This is shamefully elitist. No, you did not need to go to university to
learn those two things. There are plenty of people that have learned them from
other life experiences. Also, some of the worst code I've ever had the
pleasure of reading was written by people with graduate degrees.

I myself didn't graduate, because the allure of starting a company was too
strong. Here I am 20 years later advising people with degrees. If you are
dedicated enough and creative enough (in the hacker kind of way) you can
become skilled in just about anything you want.

However without a degree there are doors that are closed to you. For example
the UC system will not even consider you for an MBA if you don't have an
undergraduate degree. Don't even bother applying. Other private institutions
will consider you but you need to be absolutely exceptional to get in.

I use that just as one example. People with a degree (especially a good
degree) can stroll into an opportunity that I have to work 10X harder to to
get. That said, once I'm in I tend to outperform my peers simply because I'm
used to a world set on "hard mode" at all times.

Another thing I'm lacking are the deep friendships and connections that people
who have a degree seem to have. That, to me, is the biggest loss from skipping
a degree. Despite significant effort I don't seem to be able to make that part
up.

~~~
bergstromm466
> Another thing I'm lacking are the deep friendships and connections that
> people who have a degree seem to have. That, to me, is the biggest loss from
> skipping a degree. Despite significant effort I don't seem to be able to
> make that part up.

“The Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love

There is another entrance to grief, a second gateway, different from the gate
connected to losing someone or something that we love. This grief occurs in
the places often untouched by love. These are profoundly tender places
precisely because they have lived outside of kindness, compassion, warmth, or
welcome. These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and
banished to the farthest shores of our lives. We often hate these parts of
ourselves, hold them in contempt, and refuse to allow them the light of day.
We do not show these outcast brothers and sisters to anyone, and we thereby
deny these parts of ourselves the healing salve of community.

These neglected pieces of soul live in utter despair. What we perceive as
defective about ourselves, we also experience as loss. Whenever any portion of
who we are is denied, we live in a condition of loss. The proper response to
any loss is grief, but we cannot grieve for something that we feel is outside
the circle of worth. That is our predicament—we chronically sense the presence
of sorrow, but we are unable to truly grieve, because we feel in our body that
this piece of who we are is unworthy of grief.”

“The Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive

There is another gate to grief, one difficult to identify, yet it is very
present in each of our lives. This threshold into sorrow calls forward the
things that we may not even realize we have lost. I have written elsewhere
about the expectations coded into our physical and psychic lives. When we are
born, and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, and the stages of
adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome,
engagement, touch, and reflection. In short, we expect what our deep-time
ancestors experienced as their birthright, namely, the container of the
village. We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth
and communal rituals of celebration, grief, and healing that keep us in
connection with the sacred. As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land “Once upon
a time, we knew the world from birth.” This is our inheritance, our
birthright, which has been lost and abandoned. The absence of these
requirements haunts us, even if we can’t give them a name, and we feel their
loss as an ache, a vague sadness that settles over us like a fog. This lack is
simultaneously one of the primary sources of our grief and one of the reasons
we find it difficult to grieve. On some level, we are waiting for the village
to appear so we can fully acknowledge our sorrows.”

\- Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

------
mvind
I think the freedom to pursue intellectual curiosity is a thing which
universities offer almost unconditional unlike jobs. This is a perk that not a
lot of jobs in the real world offers. Almost nowhere else in a person's life
are you given such an opportunity to invest in ones interests.

But I'm biased towards going to uni, since I live in Denmark where I get paid
monthly for going to university.

~~~
oleks
You are not paid to go the university in Denmark. You are awarded credits by
the government, and it is up to you to do something sensible with those
credits. Don't waste them on needless courses! Learn that which will yield you
(and the Danish government) the greatest benefits throughout the rest of your
life.

~~~
henrikeh
It reads a little like your are misunderstanding what is meant by “paid to go
to university”. Danish citizens receive a grant called “SU” (Statens
uddannelsesstøtte), which basically is a payment from the government for being
enrolled in education. It is meant to be spend on food, rent, living, books
etc

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

------
Vuska
I went to mediocre uni here in the UK studying Web Development. The
educational value was pretty much worthless. I learnt more in a year at my
first job than three years of university. But being forced to move out and
become independent was invaluable.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Some education isn't all that useful. I had a computer-something-related class
in college where we were talking about how computers were getting faster.

Professor: If you think computers are fast now, it'll blow your mind that back
in the 60s the NSA has computers running at 1000.

Me: 1000? You mean 1000 megahertz?

Professor: No, 1000.

Me: _facepalm_

I'm still paying off those student loans.

~~~
dekhn
I got in an argument with a philosophy professor. He put a stick in water and
said 'look... the stick is broken'. I said "no, the stick is not broken. it
appears broken because the index of refraction is different in water than air,
which causes light to bed". he didn't like that very much. It's still not
clear to me what point he was trying to make (that human senses are limited?)

~~~
dpau
you were of course correct, but your professor was simply illustrating a
point- of whether we can trust our senses, of how we truly "know" something.
philosophy often brings up "commonsensical" questions such as these. he
probably didn't reply to you because he was bored from hearing the same smart
alecky response every year :)

~~~
dekhn
If that was his point, there are far better ways to argue for it
(specifically, Descartes' great deceiver). There was nothiing smart alecky
about my response- just touching the stick, or pulling the stick back out,
would verify that it was not broken.

------
laingc
The anti-university sentiment on HN is absolutely alien to me. Not only did I
get a lot out of my university education, but it was a totally transformative
experience for me. It also enables me to do my job, and I’ve never seen anyone
without a good education do it well.

Yes, I get that you can be a react developer without a university
qualification.

This may come as news to some, but most fields bear no resemblance to writing
JavaScript for a living.

~~~
analog31
I was going to make the snap judgment that HN happens to be popular among
computer programmers, an occupation that is fairly unique in terms of
providing lucrative indoor work without strictly needing college training.
Many of the programmers of my generation (graduated high school in 1982) have
little or no formal training in programming.

I don't know anybody who learned math or physics outside of a college
classroom. Maybe there are some out there, but I haven't met them.

But it goes further. What strikes me is not only an anti-university sentiment,
but also a strong _anti high school_ sentiment. I've been surprised by the
number of comments from people who are obviously smart and diligent enough to
be programmers, but for whom high school was a disaster. And it occurs to me
that this does reveal that education is not serving everybody equally well.

So, even though I value my university education, I'm still interested in
hearing how others have experienced it. However for students, my advice is
that you have to find the thing that makes college worthwhile for you. If you
go in with a cynical attitude, that it's just "signaling" or "networking,"
then you are likely to be blinding yourself to the other kinds of
opportunities that it presents.

~~~
jason0597
>I don't know anybody who learned math or physics outside of a college
classroom.

I think the vast majority has technically learned maths and physics outside
the college classroom. The teaching quality I'm getting at my university isn't
the greatest (bar a few exceptions), and I find myself regularly going to Khan
Academy or 3blue1brown to understand a concept better. This is learning
outside the classroom!

In a lot of ways, I find universities to be assessment centres and certificate
issuers. Not in all ways of course, certain aspects such as labs, coordination
of group projects, someone to ask questions to get back to you instantly, are
all things which cannot be replaced in any circumstance. But when it comes to
the dry theoretical stuff, I'm not sure why I would go to a lecture if I know
I can get a better quality of teaching somewhere else online.

Of course this is only true for a few subjects (maths and entry level
physics/engineering). I unfortunately have to rely on the lectures provided
for the more specialist modules I'm being assessed on (such as heat transfer
and chemical engineering principles). This is mainly so that I can comply with
the teacher's specific assessment criteria and the
terminology/definitions/textbook/ordering they use. I may be able to find heat
transfer explanations somewhere else online, and they probably would explain
things better, but they wouldn't help much when it came time to use the
terminology that the lecturer expects you to use during an assessment, or if
you're expected to use the equation sheet that the teacher made for you and
expects you to use.

~~~
cyberdr8gon
I think part of your argument about learning from Khan Academy or 3blue1brown
is highly predicated upon being in subjects that are widely known and studied,
particularly introductory mathematics/physics/engineering. I personally cannot
speak for physicists, but I imagine it is similar as follows.

One of the most valuable parts of a Engineering/Mathematics Degree (Both at
the BS and the MS levels) is that of the upper division elective courses for
specialization. At research universities, these classes often contain lots of
information/techniques that can't be found in a textbook, let alone in a
youtube video. At best, there might be a very cursory blog post, or a
collection of research papers that you really aren't ready to explore on your
own. Often, these classes result in final projects which can be expanded into
research papers or portfolio projects with the professor teaching the class,
both of which are valuable learning opportunities for the student and
effective signaling mechanisms post-graduation.

These classes are where the real technical value of a college education is
found.

In addition, there a quite a few classes which are offered if not required for
such Engineering/Mathematics students which are pretty difficult to approach
on your own and surmise in a short period of time. For examples, I point
towards Analysis 1/2/Complex, PDEs, Dynamics, and Probabilistic Robotics.

I personally got a lot from my undergrad, I (and this may only apply to me)
strictly would not have succeeded in learning all the topics I did if my only
motivation was my personal learning in my free time, particularly in the short
time horizon I did. The pressure cooker ( _cough_ engineering school) I went
through was very formative, built a number of professional/personal
connections, and taught me almost all the personal and professional skills I
have.

This is just my 2 cents though.

------
fr2null
I am 18 year old, I'm already working as a developer, and they have offered me
a very nice full time job offer. I have been thinking about whether or not to
go to university for most of the past year.

In the end, I did choose to go to university. I will be working part-time to
pay about 90% of it (including housing) which means I'll have practically no
debt. The main reason for me to go, was that I don't want to de a developer
for the rest of my life. I think that having a degree will make a eventual
career switch a lot easier.

~~~
sdan
Shopfiy intern?

~~~
fr2null
I'm not a Shopify intern. I work at a relatively small company, which is not
internationally known. We are mainly a white label ISP, but also have both
managed and unmanaged servers for companies and government entities which can
not or will not use public cloud providers.

------
tersers
I had a conversation with my dad about the purpose of university when I wasn't
really learning anything I couldn't learn myself, and I was saddled with
courses I have long since forgotten. He told me that yes, times have changed
and you can learn a lot more online now than you ever could in school. But he
also said that a university degree proves you can commit to something for an
extended period of time, and endure its highs and lows. He told me it builds
character and helps teach you how to socialize with people.

Nowadays in a hiring position, I don't care too much about the degree, but I
do look more for commitment to something. The interview is an indicator of
socialization as well and the deciding factor of wanting to work with someone.

------
binarysolo
Stanford double dropout (undergrad + grad) reporting in - one piece of
anecdata:

Middle class Taiwanese family of white collar parents. Went to undergrad,
dabbled in a few side projects and dropped out to work at a game company, a
startup as an employee, and my own startup, in that order.

Learnings: found out I knew very little, and the branding/network/advice I
could get from school would save me from reinventing the wheel over and over
as a unvetted/newbie entrepreneur. This is hugely important and people don't
assign enough value to it. For things where you need someone to hire you: you
need to convince them somehow, and getting that piece of paper helps cover
their butt and makes their life easier. I went back to school to have a bit of
optionality.

Graduated and was planning on doing grad school. Spent first quarter basically
playing D&D and League and barely scraped by academically, spent a few
weekends hanging out with fellow Burners at a theme camp and collaborated on a
few projects. I dropped out (for good this time) and pursued them -- all of
them failed in the next 2 years, but what was useful was that I learned who
were the good cofounder/advisors and how this kinda opaque process worked. Hit
both a good startup as an advisor/early employee, then cofounded a cashflow
business that I then bought out and proceeded to run for a decade.

Learnings: Knowledge and network are filled with plenty of opportunity costs
-- and there's ways to make it both as a generalist and a specialist...
ideally you can optimize for the intersect of what you want and what the world
wants, and that ends up being the hard part. My own path was largely unplanned
and opportunistic -- by hanging around an area of opportunity long enough and
being ready I was able to access enough things to mildly succeed (didn't hit
the stock jackpot, but I have a reasonable business).

Back to the question: the article answers it in the first few paragraphs - it
depends on the person but is usually the "harder way". I only took the path
because I had the priviledge/luxury to chase what I wanted, despite the vague
expected value.

------
petargyurov
I have a degree in Theoretical Physics. During my second year I started to
realise that I don't want to stay in academia, and at the same time I started
to do a lot programming. I finished my Bachelors and got a job as a backend
dev.

The way I see it, altough I learned a lot in uni, it's basically a "VIP" token
to get yourself a job. And that's sad. Lots of companies will hire physics and
math grads _just because_. They think they have "problem solving skills" \-
let me tell you - there are a tonne of STEM grads that do not have these
skills (putting it politely) but get hired anyway.

~~~
WalterBright
Some universities teach formula plugging, and some teach fundamentals. I've
worked with the graduates of both, and the former can't solve any problem that
doesn't have a book answer, and they'll misapply that.

------
motohagiography
Telling people they don't "need" to go to university is an act of personal
sabotage. The person giving you that advice is either an idiot, or wants to
keep you in your place for other reasons.

This is an urgent view.

The post-hoc justifications of people who either didn't go, or people who did
go but want to believe their other accomplishments are more defining - are not
valuable to someone who has the means and opportunity to make the investment.
The more arbitrary and meaningless having a degree seems, the more important
it is to actually get one, because without one, you are subject to the even
more arbitrary and meaningless barriers that it will otherwise unlock. You
don't know them because you don't get to them until 10y+ after you graduate. A
"degree," is in effect the degree of trajectory for the compounding rate of
the value of your experience to others, where you don't see the effects until
much later.

Look at the rate of occurrence of non-degreed people above a certain level of
financial success, property ownership, executive management, assets, and
opportunity, and then compare them to the very long tail of the hundreds-of-
millions other non-degreed people you are in a labour market with. The
distribution of that curve looks a lot like lottery winners. Given outcomes
are exponentially distributed, should you make an investment, or just play the
lottery? Get a degree, or always work for people who have one when you don't.

People who think education is mainly about skills and training don't
understand what education is. Suffice it to say that a degree is a strategic
investment. If you don't know what that means, I recommend investing in your
education.

~~~
Dumblydorr
I don't disagree that degrees and college education are important, but I don't
think pointing to wealthy people is good evidence. Many of the wealthiest
billionaires dropped out of school, didn't even go, or didn't consider it
important. There are also many wealthy via inheritance. So, looking at the
wealthy is not the demographic cohort that reveals the value of higher
education.

The reasons to attend college are more than moneymaking. Social networking,
maturation, shared experience, opportunities to expand your knowledge beyond
online tutorials, college offers many interesting experiences that going
straight to work will not.

~~~
koonsolo
> Many of the wealthiest billionaires dropped out of school

It's of course a very nice story that they "dropped out of school", but the
truth is more nuanced than that. For example Bill Gates and Elon Musk had
school as a backup plan in case their business would fail.

So it's not that they dropped out of school to pursue their business, they
suspended their school for their business, and still had it as a backup plan.
Very different! If their business wouldn't have worked, they would continue
their school (which at that point was already an investment, 3 years for Bill
Gates if I remember correctly).

~~~
chadash
Agree completely, but just wanted to point out that Elon Musk has an ivy
league bachelor's degree. What he dropped out of was his Ph.D. program, which
is more akin to quitting a job than "dropping out of school".

------
tjpnz
Can't speak for other professions but as a dev I've got no regrets in getting
a CS degree. There's nothing you'll learn there that you couldn't maybe teach
yourself but that's exactly the point. Unless you're a gifted autodidact
you'll face considerable difficulty and will likely end up skipping through
the important stuff coming away with a very flawed understanding indeed.

~~~
clarry
What's the important stuff? Where do I check my understanding?

~~~
sanxiyn
I don't have a CS degree (or any degree for that matter), but I did review a
CS degree program requirement and class materials. They do cover important
stuffs. It's just that it doesn't take 4 years to learn them.

Required classes for a CS curriculum I reviewed were: discrete math, data
structure, algorithm, computer architecture, programming language, operating
system.

~~~
GoblinSlayer
Error analysis is important stuff and there's no easily accessible description
of it, mostly because it's not a small stuff as opposed to some algorithm.

------
glangdale
It's clearly possible to do pretty well without a university degree, and I
think there's a few slam-dunk cases where you shouldn't get a degree:

1) You don't actually want to do the work to finish a degree, 2) your only
options are to get an extremely mediocre degree, or 3) you will have to go
into savage debt to get a degree.

Then there are the exceptional folks who could do well anywhere (who,
presumably, would also be the high-flyers if they _went_ to a university).

For everyone else, getting a decent degree should almost be a no-brainer. It
will be useful. HR will like it, pretty much forever. The "lost years" of work
experience will rapidly converge to insignificance (a point that seems lost on
the folks who think that it's only university degrees become less significant
as you get older).

You can do a range of subjects - some of them, shock horror, not narrowly
vocational (a lot of the discussion here seems to imply that the sum total of
what we should learn after high school somehow begins and ends with
"programming and computer science"). Further, you can do these subjects at a
much higher level and with greater intensity than the whole "hey, I read a
couple books on Philosophy or did the first level of Duolingo in Spanish" or
some such.

It should be a pleasant time where you get to try some new activities, meet a
lot of people - maybe including a life partner, but maybe just good friends
and some "early-adult romantic" relationships (which IMO are likely to greatly
increase your chance of learning what you really want and how to get along in
the real grown-up world).

The whole tertiary sector is pretty messed up right now (even pre COVID), so
buyer beware. Don't do a crappy degree.

~~~
non-entity
Honestly 2 and 3 are the reason I probably wont go back outside of CS (and
even then, a lot of what I've seen is mediocre at best) most of the online
degrees I've seen are absolute garbage. And I make too much money to he able
to afford full time in-person school, but not enough to self fund a bachelors
degree at what it would cost me.

------
moksly
I think it depends a lot on where you are in the world. In my country where
access to education is paid for by the government, and the state pays you $850
a month to study for 5 years once reach educations beyond “High School”, work
places kind of expect you to have a degree. You can’t even really be a sales
person at a supermarket if you haven’t spent a few years getting a degree, or
are under the age of 18 (less pay). Crafty professions takes you through a mix
of bookish education and apprenticeship for 4 years, but they too lead to a
degree.

Programming is one of the few fields, that isn’t packing boxes of frozen fish,
where a career without a degree is possible here, and even on that field time
is running out for people without degrees because so many young people have
been getting them for the past decade.

But that is my country, here you’d be absolutely crazy (or perhaps challenged
in some way) to not finish an education.

~~~
wingerlang
Scandinavia I assume?

I’m from there and I never finished my degree. The reason was that I took some
time off to travel, found a job during this time and I simply have not been
back since. Almost a decade now.

Only recently have I looked into finishing it off through online courses but
even then it is hard to motivate myself, not once have I been asked for it. I
even ask recruiters and they also say I don’t need it to be hired (at least:
Singapore, UK, Thailand, Sweden) and I’m talking about major companies. I
can’t speak for countries other than where I am employed but here I am not
underpaid due to lack of degree.

I did go through 3 years of university and I do agree that the experience
itself is useful (even though it might seem otherwise at times).

(Edit: to be clear I’m working in software development)

------
geomark
Lots of anecdotes here. So I will add mine.

I did a 2 year technical diploma program and went to work as an electronics
technician. I was good, got promoted fast, started fixing a lot of mistakes
the degreed engineers were making. I got pretty far without a degree but
eventually hit a ceiling because credentialism was strong at the company. So I
went back to college, a good private college, paid for by my employer. It was
_hard_ , because I was working longer and longer hours since I was good and
they counted on me, while taking classes part time. The classes I took taught
very little and did nothing for me _except_ that finally getting my degree I
could break through the credentials ceiling.

So...if you are going to work for a company that values credentials then you
need the degree and I think it is better to go straight from high school to
college instead of doing it the hard way like I did.

~~~
toyg
You were also lucky to have an understanding employer who was happy to invest
on your growth. A lot of people can't get approval to do a one-week, job-
relevant, practical training course, let alone sponsor years of higher
education.

~~~
geomark
Very true. I had several bosses who really fought for me, both for promotions
to positions that a non-degreed person never held, and for approval of
educational reimbursement. Although regarding the latter, it was a defense
contractor and they get reimbursed by the government for those costs. So there
were really no cases where someone pursuing a relevant degree would be turned
down for reimbursement.

------
bshimmin
_There 's also a weird flip side to all these downsides. Once you establish
yourself as competent there is this kind of threshold effect where not having
a university degree can suddenly start causing people to actually take you
more seriously. This kind of countersignalling effect seems to be common when
you do non-traditional things._

I'm not sure this is a real thing unless you're, say, Richard Branson. I also
can't really imagine many circumstances in which you're doing something non-
traditional and you can't just pretend you don't have a degree by neglecting
to mention it... and if you've already reached a level of "significance" in a
non-traditional thing where someone might actually check, well, you've
probably already done better than most.

------
ryanmjacobs
Man, props for this post and the subsequent discussions. It's eye-opening to
read through everything. As a current university student, the COVID situation
is awful. We're paying full tuition ($15k/year) for recorded Zoom lectures.
I'm seriously considering taking a gap year. I wanted to complete research
during my 4th year, but it's hard to get close to professors over sporadic
interactions.

------
arijun
For context, the author Chris Olah is a researcher at Open AI, who I think is
one of the most clear and thoughtful writers in the space. He has a lot of
articles on understanding ML models, and pioneers new methods of
visualizations and interactivity to improve understandability of these models.
If you're interested in the field I would highly recommend reading some of his
articles on his blog or on distill.pub, a publication that he helped found
with the express purpose of improving clarity of ML research.

~~~
sdan
Not to mention he got the Thiel Fellowship. That right there would make a good
majority of undergrads drop out (I would at least). Thiel Fellowship is
basically security in the valley because of the network it gives.

~~~
ForHackernews
Isn't the whole point of the Thiel Fellowship to pay kids to drop out? Thiel
is trying to prove some point about academia, but, as you say, it stacks the
deck because the fellowship includes a lot of the connections and foot-in-the-
door help that its recipients would otherwise get in university.

------
fimdomeio
You should have some experiences that move you out (even if temporarily) from
the bubble you live in. University is a easy choice for that. If you have more
experiences you will also have more ways to think about the world and more
ways to deal with life and it's problems. My university experience in terms of
learning could have been a lot better, but the experience as a whole and all
the people I would not have met otherwise are still very valuable more than a
decade after it ended.

------
cameronbrown
I'm taking the degree apprenticeship route (19 yo). From a purely educational
point of view, there wasn't much University could teach me that I wasn't
prepared to learn on my own, so making money and shipping real stuff is far
more valuable for me. Of course, this highly depends on the individual.

There is also downsides, like the fact it is a job at the end of the day, and
that comes with politics as well as technical challenges.

I'd again make the decision (over University) in a heartbeat.

------
throwaway391003
I did a coding bootcamp in Austin TX at the age of 18, instead of going to
college, and got a job right after at a startup making $40k USD/year, which
became $50k USD/year in a few months after getting a raise, and then after
working there for a year I switched jobs to a top tech company many of you
know, and by 21 I was making $75k USD/year

I got a lot of socializing at both companies, got to hang out with guys my own
age and guys older than me, got to have some fun (maybe not as much as my
peers in university), got to grow up, etc.

I think university back in the day used to mean a lot more, and I would have
enjoyed it, but now it's so watered down cause everyone goes, and political /
cultural movements have made the university programs require much more effort
and much less thought

Just my 2 cents

Edit: also, to add to this, at the same time I also learned a lot of stuff
completely outside of the domain of software through books on my own.
philosophy books, history books, sociology books, etc. etc. I really liked
that I was able to carefully select the authors and books and topics to the
ones that grabbed my eye.

edit 2: oh ya! i also got a lot of fun socializing at the bootcamp too.

------
asutekku
If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then
there’s almost zero reasons to not go.

Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a degree
is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side projects in
github.

~~~
barry-cotter
> If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then
> there’s almost zero reasons to not go.

The entire point of the article was that if you have something better to do
than university and good reason to believe you can actually do it you might at
least consider it. Also, three to four years of foregone earnings are a
powerful reason not to go to university if you’re already capable of earning a
living in your chosen field. That is very far from zero reasons, especially
when you consider the professional development you can fit into those years if
that’s something you value.

> Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a
> degree is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side
> projects in github.

When you’re 40 no one but bureaucrats is going to give a crap what university
you went to, compared to your actual accomplishments. If all you’ve got is
side projects on GitHub no one will care whether you went to Oxford or
University of Southern Florida or dropped out of high school. _Actual
accomplishments_

~~~
glangdale
Even at age 48, I see people getting on the inside track because they have
degrees from name brand universities, including myself (I have a PhD from
CMU). A degree from a good place signals (rightly or wrongly) that you were
academically strong enough to get in and to finish.

As for career development - 3-4 years of career development "forgone" isn't
really that much relative to the sum total of an entire career. One could just
as easily say that when you're 40, no-one but bureaucrats is going to give a
crap whether you have 19-20 years of experience or 23.

There are always exceptions - the whole "dropped out of university to found X
or invent Y" thing - but 95% of people's _actual accomplishments_ (as you so
excitedly put it) are going to be a bunch of 'turned up, did pretty good'
lines on a resume. All other things being equal, I'll hire the person who
passed university-level calculus at a good school, thanks.

------
toomanybeersies
I don't regret going to university in the slightest in regards to my job as a
software developer. I don't regret the $30k it cost me. Some days I do
question if I should've become an electrician instead, but that was never an
option for me growing up, it was more or less expected that I went to
university.

University was so much more than learning how to program a computer so that I
could get a job, I knew how to that that before I started. Almost none of what
I learned at university I've ended up using in my career. But it was good to
scratch that intellectual itch, I enjoyed learning what I learned, which is
why I chose software development as a career, even if it isn't knowledge I use
in everyday life. It was also an opportunity for me to move to a new city and
become an independent adult and grow as a person, while meeting and
socialising with people I would've never met had I stayed in my home town or
even moved to a different city to attend a coding bootcamp.

~~~
mywittyname
Why electrician? My father is a licensed (but not union) electrician and I
used to work as his assistant when I was a teenager. The job was pretty
boring, mostly driving to job sites, running cables, wiring them up, etc. It
never struck me as an intellectually stimulating job. He had a book with a
bunch of formulas in it (called Ugly's, iirc) that I would read while driving
to sites sometimes, but it was plug-and-chug algebra.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I wouldn't want to be an on-call electrician, driving out and fixing ovens and
light switches. Most of my tradie mates try to avoid those kinds of jobs too,
ideally a job doing fit out on a large commercial worksite is what you want,
office buildings and that kind of thing, even better if it's a union worksite.

I've always enjoyed construction work though (electrical and other), sure it's
not intellectually stimulating, but it's rewarding. Sometimes I actually
regret having such an intellectually demanding day job, after 8 hours of work
often I'm too mentally drained to do what I want in the evening. There's also
a certain sense of satisfaction from seeing your physical finished work that
you just don't get as a software developer.

Working as an industrial electrician would be more my kind of thing,
performing maintenance on machinery, programming PLCs, that kind of thing.
Repairing equipment requires a lot of the same mental processes as debugging
code, I enjoy doing both. It's a good cross between physical and mental work.
The money is very reasonable, up to $50 an hour.

------
parenthesis
There are four areas in which to benefit from going to university:

The academic side: the opportunity to study in depth a subject you love or
that will be useful to you, from (hopefully) great academics of the field.

The social side: meet people who might become your friends for life, or your
future spouse. Have a rich and intense social life before career and family
take over.

The networking side: meet people, whether students or academics, who will be
useful to you in your future career.

The extra-curricular side: student journalism, debating, politics, music,
drama, sports etc. Follow your hobby like never before. It might even become
your career instead of your major.

Obviously the four are not disconnected. But you can probably only go all in
on one or two.

But then the cost. You need to decide whether it is worth it for what you will
get out of it (that being some combination of the four areas above).

------
bashwizard
I have no regrets of not going to university. I've never been asked about my
education and during the time I was an employee I've always been paid the same
as people with a degree and similiar work experience. So in my personal
experience a degree would have been a complete waste of time.

------
chadash
I personally don't really give too much weight to education credentials when
I'm screening resumes. However, I'd recommend that everyone looking to be a
developer go to university:

A) it's a great time to get a broad education, learn from experts in many
fields

B) it will most likely affect your compensation throughout your life. Yes, you
can find jobs without it. But if you limit yourself to jobs that don't care
about a college degree, you will find your options limited. I may not care,
but I know that the CEO of my company does, and that will likely affect your
bonus and/or salary.

Yes, there are some people whose technical skills are so good that it's
obvious to the world. But most people don't fall in that bucket. Whether it's
true or not, a college degree will make people _think_ you are better.

------
yawboakye
What’s missing from the conversation is the nature of the university. It makes
this piece uniquely applicable to, say, the top 100 universities in the world.
Let me throw in an African perspective, a hand grenade depending on who you
ask.

I’d argue that in the current economy where global mobility should be an
intentional goal of any education, they (most African universities) pay
negative dividends in both power in their name and quality of education. I’d
rather spend my tuition on online courses offered by MIT and Stanford. So,
should I go to the university? In order to be able to answer, we should ask,
which university. The answer is a definite yes for the top 100, maybe until
the 1000th, and a no after that: there are non-university institutions that
can give you the higher quality signal you need.

~~~
nostrebored
As someone who has interviewed applicants in Africa, I would double down on
this. There are certain universities that may signal quality (e.g. University
of Cape Town), but a lot of universities seem to have graduates that do well
in spite of them.

I have lost track of the number of candidates I interviewed (and voted to
hire!) who couldn't answer questions about their completed coursework, but
could give in depth rundowns of the inner workings of something like embedded
system software because of their extra curricular work.

After a while, I could notice trends from universities that were actually
teaching their students incorrect information, providing the negative
dividends you were talking about.

It's sad and frustrating. In an African context I think you're spot on that
self taught candidates have often used their time more effectively.

------
lspears
Dropping out of college was the hardest and best decision I ever made. It
literally never came up that I didn’t have a degree and i started my career
without debt. But have a plan and don’t drop out until you are making money
from something else.

------
raviisoccupied
I just graduated (this summer). Previously I wasn't sold on university and did
a year long internship with IBM in the UK. They offered me a full time
'degree-apprenticeship' in cyber security or consulting, but I instead left
and studied literature at a UK University instead.

I often think the biggest difference between a graduate and non graduate is
three years. As an 18 year old there is no way I would have been able to
withstand the culture for another three years at IBM without it significantly
affecting me (positively or negatively), but at 21 I feel much more mature and
ready for a career. In many cases, does University just function as a waiting
room in which young people can mature?

~~~
person_of_color
Yes. And meet people outside of the tech bubble.

Do you really want to be engulfed by a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture
for 4 formative years?

~~~
LudwigNagasena
>a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture

I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem. Statistically, I would
even probably have more shared interests with them.

~~~
michaelt
_> I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem._

If you feel you need a few more skill-points in talking to women in order to
find a girlfriend or wife. College is a much easier and more forgiving
environment to learn that sort of thing.

Of course, that's not a concern for everyone. Some people know all they need
to know already, or aren't looking for a hetero relationship!

------
BoysenberryPi
I'm in my mid 20s, dropped out of college 3-4 years ago and have managed to
get an average paying development job. I would go back to college and get my
degree but there are two things that hold me back.

1) Dealing with college admissions is literally one of the most frustrating
things I have ever done. The IRS has given me less run around than most
college admissions I talk to.

2) Money. It all comes down to money. I'm having a very hard time justifying
the cost at the end of the day.

With that being said, if someone comes up to me and ask me if they should go
to college my answer is absolutely.

------
Ellipsis753
I'm in the UK. 24 years old. Programmer. Did A-levels but not Uni.

It's never been very hard to find jobs, and my pay is above average for the UK
(it's £60k).

Programming is pretty easy to teach yourself and it's a super employable field
right now. Programmers are in so high a demand no one seems to mind if you
don't have any qualifications.

Would things have been better if I'd gone to university instead? Who knows?
But it's super possible to be a programmer without going.

------
spinlock_
I think apart of what has been already said, it depends on the kind of person
you are. I see people with and without a degree in CS that thrive and some
that do the opposite. Personally, I have been working as a software developer
for the last five years. And during that time I have had a couple of phases
were I suffered from some kind of imposter syndrome. I have a master degree in
International Business and hence lacked some fundamental CS skills (e.g.
Algos, Compilers, Operating Systems). So during the last few years I worked my
ass off to learn all this stuff, because every time I read something about
software engineering and it mentioned any of these things I felt less value
because I knew I don't have a CS degree. I also felt intimidated by some of
these topics. So, I sat down and learnt all the stuff I thought I needed to
know in order to feel better. Now, after going through this period of studying
in order to get rid of this stupid imposter syndrome, I feel kind of burnt
out. It's funny, because I finally have the self-confidence I was looking for
during the last five years, yet I kind of lost the creativity and motivation
that I need in order to enjoy what I'm doing.

So, I can only recommend to find out what kind of person you are. But tbh,
even though I got a degree that is unrelated to CS, I'm glad I went to
university. I would had been a very different person without that experience.
And in the end of the day, you will have to work for a veeeery long time
(well, at least that is the reality for the most of us). So, what are 3-5
years spent doing something that gives you the opportunity to experience stuff
you won't be able to find at work (well, except for the sunk cost, but I
reject to think about education in this way)?

------
rvz
Depends on the profession. Generally if the goal is to be a qualified medical
/ legal professional, it is required to get a university degree from either
medical school / law school respectively. Researcher? Maybe, Maybe not. But I
won't be surprised if many research positions will ask for a degree.

Software Developer? Not really. FAANMG SWE Job? I won't risk it if I'm not
famous with 10K other people applying.

------
scottishcow
Lots of great resources here, but as mentioned in the essay signaling based on
external validation is still crucial. (OP seems to have won a Thiel
Fellowship, I’d assume that has a stronger signaling value than your typical
college degree.) As much as I hate it, the world runs on limited resources and
people and organizations have no choice but to rely on some sort of signaling
scheme as a filtering mechanism.

~~~
sanxiyn
I agree, but the signal can be pretty small. I contributed to Firefox and it
was good enough to be hired by web browser company without a degree. After
that, work experience was good enough for pretty much anything.

------
idoby
Disagree with the overall "do I have anything more compelling to do" notion.

You can have a perfectly good and valid life as a human on earth without
having set foot in a university. When you decide to attend a university, you
always do so at the expense or other perfectly valid things.

I think everyone should go if they can, and simultaneously I think three- and
four- year degrees are too long for most people. We need to establish a
program to get degrees in shorter installments, say 1.5 years each.

In other words, tech companies should seriously start considering hiring
people with Associate's Degrees (or equivalent) where applicable, to turn this
degree into a real viable option. I can take anyone with a brain from zero to
working coder in 1.5 years of full-time study, including the maths.

I can't speak for other fields, but for tech I'm pretty confident this will be
great.

Anyone should be able to sacrifice a year and a half and a reasonable tuition
to be able to get the college experience. I think we can make it much more
accessible.

------
jusmakingapost
I always read these threads and have very mixed thoughts on this argument of
being for or against Universities. I believe the pros of spending four years
at a college outweigh a lot of the bad (loans, bad professors, etc) but only
if you know what you want to do when you're done.

A lot of people go to Universities hoping to find themselves and never do.

------
NightlyDev
As someone who is 27 yo and dropped out of school when already having a job
offshore(oil) lined up, I certainly can agree with a lot of this.

I had been doing software development for 4 years and I figured I'd rather
work with that than automation and electronics. I had a side project(game)
that was earning some money.

Note that this was in Norway so I could have (and still can) go to university
for free.

My girlfriend ended up getting a masters degree in software development and is
currently working in a consultant firm. She's currently tanking another
masters degree in entrepreneurship, mostly for fun.

I've always doubted my skills, but after helping her out every now and then
I've realized that 10+ years of experience really can't be matched by going to
school.

On the other hand I've also learned that university is a great way to kick off
your learning. Some things they're learning are things I often ended up with
too, on my own, with trial and error. At least I really understand why some
things are what they are because of it.

I started very young and was quite successful with my first project. People
has spent thousands of years(combined) actively using my first project.

But even though I have done well, I still feel like I'm taken less serious
than those with a full education, cause I've just created a strange game.

I'm considering going to university now just to get cheaper insurance and the
degree, but I don't expect I'd learn a lot of new things. But I do enjoy
fiddling with stuff, so it might be fun.

Do I regret it? Not really. Am I worried? Slightly, if it all falls down then
I need to get a normal job or come up with something else.

Would I recommend it? If you're really driven and are already seeing signs of
success, sure, give it a shot.

------
sersi
The author mention the visa question and I think that bears repeating, if you
plan to live abroad, having a degree (preferably a master) will make getting a
visa in any country much easier.

I'd however recommend going to a country where education is close to free to
get a degree, even if it involves losing a year learning the local language...

------
grandinj
I tell all my younger friends to go to varsity and to take as many theory
heavy courses as possible.

Obviously, YMMV, but I find absorbing any theory-heavy knowledge alongside my
day job extremely hard, whereas I can very easily more practical skills as a I
work.

------
avmich
> Instead of asking “Is university good?”, ask “Do I have something more
> compelling to do?”

Unfortunately, the problem is harder. How to weight the possibility to reach
the state of the art, and participate in moving that state of the art, against
rather tangible possibilities or short- or middle-term gains in practical
projects? The first option may lead to better long-term wins overall.

It's a hard choice for teenagers, who aren't always able to even formulate the
problem.

I'd err on the side of getting education in all cases, while avoiding making
somebody particularly rich in the process, as that's an indication of flaws in
what I'm getting.

------
dnautics
anecdata, of course.

The company I work for is currently hiring. As the hiring manager I have
repeatedly said I don't give a damn about college education (myself not having
come from a CS background in college) and repeatedly the CTO has shot me down
and told me that we need to hire someone with an undergrad CS background.

So here is my pithy statement: There are two paths - you can either have a CS
degree. Or you can know someone and get the job that way (which is, how I -
and others on the team who don't have CS degrees - got the job). Sometimes
even if someone on the inside is rooting for you.

------
j0hnml
For me, a lot of the value in university was the experience of living
independent, being thrown into a relatively unknown place with new
responsibilities, and figuring out how to cope with it all. I would say that
was far more valuable than the coursework itself. I went to undergrad at the
typical age (18) and had the opportunity to solely focus on that. I think a
lot of this question depends on your age and what you want to do. Adults going
back to college won’t get this experience, and if you can self-study enough to
prove you have what it takes, there are definitely diminishing returns in
going to university.

------
dejv
I was born in post-communist country to the familly of blue collar workers,
where nobody around me didn't even finished high school (fun fact, those more
distant family members who actually had university degree or even hold
profesorship position spent many years mining for uranus in political prison
and then decades sweeping streets).

Anyway, I already had fulltime position working as software developer since
the age of 17 (it was a bit of necessity, but I also like it very much) and
after finishing my highschool diploma I decided to not apply and continue
working.

I went to study CS at the age of 23, while still working fulltime. Being a bit
older and more experienced, but also time constrained changed my perspective a
bit. I was in there just to get knowledge that I decided are relevant for me,
there was close to zero time to be spent on social time or taking some filler
classes that might be interesting.

I spent three years in university, taking all the classes that sound
interesting to me in areas of math, compilers, machine learning and
computational logic. At that point I depleted the pool for both bachelor and
masters classes and for the rest of the time I would have to go through
fillers and decided to quit without graduating.

I am glad about both of my choices: both having break between high school and
university and quiting early. I feel like spending time in university is very
valuable for both professional and personal growth and everybody should
probably took it if they can afford it, but I don't think that this is your
only valid choice.

It should be ok to spend few years wandering around to find what you want to
do with your life instead of spending rest of your life paying for debt you
acquired just because you can't see any other viable path.

------
zerubeus
Unfortunately we are in the only profession where you have to see this
question every other day, you'll never even think about this if you plan to
become a Doctor an architect or civil engineer, but welcome to tech

------
Daub
A huge amount of your future networking is done at uni. Also... you are more
likely to marry somone you find at uni than most other institutions.

That being said, a PhD is probably only required if you wish to go into
teaching.

------
rezeroed
For the CV - yes. For the job - depends on the uni; many are 80% java which is
pointless if you already have tech skills. Having might also save you from
dwelling on "what if i had?".

------
VMisTheWay
30 year old here, I'm considering a new degree in computer science to add to
my chem Engineering degree. I have 12 years casual programming experience.

My work experience has been design Engineering, which is a low 6 figure job. I
also live in an area with an old industry that's getting Engineers outsourced.

I'm considering a comp sci degree so I can get into embedded, or electrical
engineering, AI, or pretty much any 180k/yr job. I'm okay with taking a pay
cut for a few years.

~~~
toyg
I don’t think you need a degree for that sort of career shift. Just get a
short training course and start building stuff and applying for jobs.

University degrees are, fundamentally, a mark of status and patience: “this
guy had enough money and willpower to sit through years of drudgery, so it’s
safe to hire him to do the same for us”. After a few years nobody cares what
the degree was actually about, particularly in IT where everything gets redone
every few years.

~~~
VMisTheWay
I have projects that people consider impressive already. Here is what I've
been told from various managers-

>Only hire computer scientists

>I don't have relevant work experience (which means taking a 60k/yr web dev
job to begin my career?)

>My projects are good, but I need to contribute to open source projects.

The reason for the degree is to get access to high quality programming jobs
rather than 60k/yr web dev. Not to mention, I imagine I'll learn everything
about security and algorithms which I'm sure are weaknesses.

~~~
toyg
You can fix two of those with some solid effort in a high-profile FOSS project
for a few months.

As for the first, you don't want to be in an environment that values
credentials so strictly, imho - it poisons the air. There is always a chance
they would then say "we only hire CS _from Stanford /MIT_" \- sometimes stuff
like this is just a polite way of saying "we don't think you can cut it".

 _> I imagine I'll learn everything about security and algorithms_

Algos yeah, plenty - and I agree it's where universities really make a
difference (I'm weak there too, and part of the reason for dropping out, and
more recently changing career, was that I'm not really interested in that part
of the job).

Security... eh. It really depends on the program.

------
BrandoElFollito
It depends on the country.

In France yes. We are still very much into Ivy League (Grandes Écoles)
schools, they really look good on a CV in a large company.

Sure, some startup may not care but it depends where you want to work. Look at
the CVs of large French companies boards and you will see a lot of the same
schools.

In Germany having a higher education title is great or important. Your PhD
counts.

------
CalChris
If your own answer to your own question isn't absolutely YES then take a gap
year or years. Join the Navy. See the world. When you're done with that you'll
be much much more ready than if you indifferently do what you suppose you're
supposed to do.

But yes, you do need to go to university, a good one. And you need to
graduate.

~~~
toyg
Can’t upvote this enough. I wish I had taken a gap year back then, and I will
insist that my kids do it. More than a decade of schooling inevitably takes a
toll, and optimizing for highschool success can mislead one’s choice for
university.

------
cosmodisk
I had a discussion about this years ago and I remember a good question being
thrown into it: 'what happens if you don't do it?',as opposed to 'what happens
if you do it?'. For an average person, in a lot of countries, not having a
degree equals to crappy jobs for the rest of their lives. Average person+
degree= slightly better prospects and maybe some easier office job.if a person
is very intelligent, motivated,and is a bit streetwise,so to speak, they'd
succeeded irrespectively. The main problem is that when you 18-20 years old,
the perspective on the world is kind of limited,unless you grew up in a rich
family doing all sorts of businesses ventures and they show you some aspects
of it. Personally, growing up in small town,where pretty much nobody was doing
some very interesting things,it was an eye opener when I moved to London and
because of the work and the city itself, I did realise how much money there's
in the world, that people are ready to pay stupid money for the most absurd
things and so on. It opens your eyes in terms of what other people do and
what's possible,gives you all sorts of ideas and etc.

------
farnerup
From reading the title, I though this had something to do with golang being
used in university classes. Is there a point to the custom of capitalizing
most words in headings in English? It doesn't seem to improve legibility and
you can normally tell it is a heading from the size and weight of the font.

~~~
sradman
I’m guessing that Title Case in English is a logical extension of the European
norm of capitalizing proper nouns; a title is the proper noun used to identify
a written work.

~~~
rjsw
This doesn't seem like a European norm to me, maybe it is done in German but I
don't see it in English or French publications.

~~~
sradman
I was making a comparison between European proper nouns (like Jacques and
Hans) and English title case. I was speculating why the English title case
practice arose.

------
bluedino
The worst part is when you hear people bring up the fact that "Gates and Jobs
dropped out of college!"

~~~
imtringued
One could argue that this is an argument in favor of university. You can
always drop out when you find a better opportunity.

------
thereyougo
Great article. I'm sure that there are plenty of people here who went to
university and also run a successful company. If any of you see this comment:

If you could change the way the university tech you, what you would do?

~~~
clarry
I would abandon the whole "cram for N years and get a degree, then never
again" scheme.

Imo education should be a lifelong thing: available at any time, part time or
full time, on-demand; for example, new requirements come up at a job and you
need new skills? grab a course. want to enter a new subfield? grab a few
relevant courses. got interested in something new all of a sudden? grab a
course and see if the interest doesn't wane. laid off? consider taking the
chance to study full time for a few months and pick up some new skills or plug
holes in prior knowledge.

It should be based more on voluntary interest ("I want to learn this thing!")
or actual concrete need ("business is looking for someone with skill X and
person Y looks like a good fit but they need to study a bit") and less on the
idea that you sit through courses and exams and demos in exchange for points
that eventually buy you a piece of paper..

University (or, rather, education in general) should be with us through the
entire life.

There are open universities that sort of go in this direction, but the last
time I looked at them, it felt like they're still rather structured around
getting a degree and all the bs that goes with it.

------
xyzal
In case you are thinking twice about getting a degree due to education costs,
please take note that many European public universities offer free education
even for foreigners.

------
ycombonator
“Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class. Expect
elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system.” - Naval Ravikant

------
curation
The most interesting work being done today is occurring at the interface
between the academy and the public. It is not the same as it was 50 years ago
to learn within universities for they are merely corporate machines fueling
capitalism. Any critique of that order is unwelcome ( I know I have a graduate
degree with a thesis attacking 'western thought' and the centralizing of the
human. But you don't have to listen to me. Just read/watch Achille Mbembe.

------
Gatsky
University seems to just be about self-edification, but it is sometimes not
about that at all, and always about a whole lot more. It is clear there are
too many people going to University. It has become a status symbol, driven
partly by the baby boomers who just seem to like the idea of their kids going
to University, and who are wealthy enough that their kids (of which I am one)
are happy to swan about getting educated for 3 - 8 years. My father's
experience was very different. He was actively criticised in his family for
wanting to go to University, and had to get up at 4am to haul fruit crates to
pay his way. His brother who went and got a job straight out of school was
considered the smart one. Nevermind that the brother later went to University
and became a lecturer, which comes to my next point.

When I was in University, I didn't really appreciate that it is mainly about
cachet. Yes there are great experiences, you meet great people, you can be
inspired, it opens your mind, you can do great work, but the thing that gets
people in the door, and the thing that Universities are primarily selling, is
cachet. It's interesting seeing how Covid19 interacts with this. Lots of
people must be worried that their university cachet will be tainted by
pandemic restrictions if they are the in the 'class of 2020'. This could be
one reason for the massive number of students deferring.

So if the cachet matters to you (and your future employers), yes you should
defintiely go to University, there is no substitute. There are also some jobs
you can't do, or even really comprehend, unless you go to University
(medicine, dentistry,
civil/mechanical/electrical/aerospace/chemical/environmental engineering). In
one sense these degrees are worth paying for up to a point, because it
actually takes a lot of effort, facilities and equipment to offer them.

------
hypertexthero
No.

------
tempodox
Yes, you do.

~~~
HenryBemis
1) Yes, you do. 2) No, you don't. 3) Depends.

2&3: I knew a guy, his father had sheep, plenty of them. He never bothered
with Uni. He has been studying/training on seminars regarding agriculture,
animal care, etc. He is set for life. He will never sit on a university
theatre and keep notes. He does use technology (I remember how he was shocked
when he discovered YouTube videos that exploded his mind and knowledge).

He picks up the phone and speaks to vets, he talks to agriculture specialists,
he watches seminars, he gets better. He stays on top/ahead of things. He never
spent 1 (pick your own currency) on University, housing, (Uni) books.

He stays in touch with his peers both in his country and abroad (he was taught
English early on and how he sees the value of that investment).

I see him though being a guest lecturer in a Uni, to speak as a professional
on this/his industry, speak on his part of the supply chain, what he would
expect of "Education" to provide for him (his industry) in the future, what he
would like to see people do for the promotion and progress of his industry.
But pay for classes? Never.

So.. 2 & 3 :)

Edit: typos

~~~
orian
Statistically, people with master earn more and it's easier to get a job
(other options are: you get aquihired, have a shit of money; your parents have
lot of great connections etc.)

~~~
barry-cotter
This is conflating the selection and treatment effects. The difference in
earnings between people who would be admitted to a Master’s programme if they
applied and those who actually apply and graduate is going to be far smaller
than the difference between a random Bachelor’s holder and a random Master’s
holder.

~~~
HenryBemis
I got the "everyday millionaire" book, by Chris Hogan (part of the Dave Ramsey
'gang')(haven't started reading it yet). From comments I've read in Reddit
about that book, it seems like the vast majority of millionaires mentioned are
lawyers/doctors, and you can't become neither without going to Uni.

They guy I was referring to in my post above, started with a certain wealth
(even if that wealth is in a form of a 200-sheep-herd), a certain skillset
(assisting his father in the business while growing up, having a 'knowledge
base' right there in his home, having connections, having the equipment). What
has gotten him to a few thousand animals since, is hard work and "invest in
knowledge as you go". He didn't start from scratch.

The benefit with his line of business, is that the wealth/skills-handover was
happening since he was 10 (experience, skills, knowledge). If one is to become
a doctor, the mental training may start early on, but the actual knowledge is
coming much later, and at a greater cost ($)(especially in the USA).

------
zvxczvxz
I know incredibly smart and wise people without a degree, and I also know
incredibly dumb people with a degree. A degree is not a guarantee for
intelligence and wisdom, but it is most often a guarantee for vanity covering
shortcomings.

Almost all knowledge (and more) can be learned for free on the internet
nowadays. I'ts only for a specific category of professions where a degree is
mandatory. I never expect a great professional to have a degree, because the
real defining quality cannot be learned at a university. You cannot express
what you are not. You cannot become an Einstein by doing 5 years of
university, but they love to make you believe that shit.

I am not against higher education at all, but the term 'degree' is pretty
worthless if you want to measure mastery.

------
mrkramer
If you want to be an entrepreneur no you don't if you don't want to be an
entrepreneur yes you do.

Either you are an employer or an employee, make your choice.

