
Fvck school (2012) - afshinmeh
http://byfat.xxx/ben-shahn
======
gerpsh
It comes down to this: if you're wondering whether going to/staying in college
is a good idea, you need to first examine the quality of your alternatives.
Are you an 18 year old programmer with solid skills and a job offer in hand?
College might not be worth the time or money, fair enough. Are you an 18 year
old with no transferrable skills and a weak network? Do yourself a favor and
go to college.

Bill Gates had a good alternative, so he dropped out and pursued it. Mark
Zuckerberg had a good alternative, so he dropped out and pursued it. My friend
from high school who dropped out his sophomore year and now works part-time at
Best Buy did not have a good alternative, and now he's kicking himself.

People who say "college is good" or "college is bad" as blanket statements are
oversimplifying the issue. Yes, college is still a decent way to get a good
job and it can be intellectually enriching, but it takes years out of your
life to finish and is (at least in the US) insanely expensive. Yes, college is
insanely expensive and it takes years to finish, but it may end up being a
good investment, and you may be personally better off for it in the long run.
Individuals need to decide, based on their current position, which would be
the wiser choice.

~~~
capote
This is a well balanced and fair summary. Of course if you want to go to
college for the wrong reason you won't be happy, and of course if you drop out
and get a job for the wrong reason, you still won't be happy. It's the
[expectation vs. endeavor] that needs to be considered.

------
xupybd
Do your time, get your degree it will open doors for you. It might not be the
best system, but it's the one most employers recognise. I fear arguments like
the one in this post could sabotage young careers needlessly. A friend of mine
decided he'd learn more about the real world getting a job than getting a
degree, he now works a min wage retail job in his mid 30s.

~~~
nja4
This. This. This. So many people also lack fundamental skills that you learn
formally, with structure, in a formal education system. I would also argue
that the learning process in school helps you develop your process for
learning later on, which you need to be good at to survive.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
>I would also argue that the learning process in school helps you develop your
process for learning later on, which you need to be good at to survive.

I couldn't disagree more with this. The way school taught me to learn was one
of the most egregious things I've ever had to unlearn. You are taught to
remember facts instead of exploring concepts.

~~~
nja4
"If you really can't see the value in a scientific degree, I think you either
didn't work hard enough, pay attention, or go to the right institution." from
another comment would apply here. I am learning so much better than I ever
could from hacking together solutions from tutorials, reference docs, and
examples. At least for me, this is how I learn.

------
capote
I agree with the comments from fny and xupybd here. I'd also like to say that
I think his categorical dismissal of a CS degree is pushing it:

> more over I don’t think these successes owe their brilliance to the
> institution which awarded them their document.

Yeah, their professional brilliance can be attributed a lot to things other
than school--programming knowledge itself is more frequently learned on the
job or a programming school, but this isn't the point of a CS degree. But
anyone who's been to enough theoretic/scientific classes at a University to
study something really interesting, or to meet a truly amazing professor will
say that they owe a lot to the institution for adding to their mind new ways
to think, see things, and learn things. If you really can't see the value in a
scientific degree, I think you either didn't work hard enough, pay attention,
or go to the right institution.

It's not all about your job. If all you're concerned about is a job and
programming knowledge, by all means, self-teach yourself or go to dev
bootcamp. University is about intellectual stimulation (for lack of less
pretentious terminology). This is the reason we've been going to universities
for hundreds of years now, and maybe they're not perfect, but if you go for
the right reason you definitely won't regret it.

------
fny
For "softer" subjects, I couldn't agree more, but good luck playing with
rockets, brains, buildings, and quanta without school. For the "hard"
subjects, a student gains a certain expertise and rigor in an academic
environment needed before she can create her works of art.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There used to be a not-quite joke that the UK's art colleges produced the UK's
top pop talent.

It was a not-quite joke because it was true. Art schools were much better at
producing creative musicians than the music colleges, because they taught
creativity and experimentation, not just mechanical technique.

>a student gains a certain expertise and rigor in an academic environment
needed before she can create her works of art.

It's more usual for students to learn a stock set of academic techniques and
philosophies, which are really just there as a form of social signalling that
qualifies them for tenure or adjunct track professorships making academic art.

Unfortunately academic art values theory, technique, and philosophy over
direct expression, so it's rare for academic art to have much of an audience
outside academia.

CS has a similar problem. I think it would be incredibly valuable for everyone
doing a CS degree to combine with it a non-technical creative minor,
preferably working on a collaborative project with someone with an arts
background. It would highlight how brittle code is, and how attempting to
model an open problem domain with relatively trivial code constructs can miss
a lot of important detail and subtlety.

------
bpchaps
I dropped out after two years of college and don't regret it even for a
second. These days, I'm:

-Doing data analysis with pandas on parking tickets just because it's fun and it helps people.

-Freelancing for HFT firms and doing low level performance tuning.

-Playing the drums.

-Suing Chicago's mayor.

-In the running for an amazing security engineer job.

-In the works to start algorithmic trading.

-Helping setup a giant LAN party as one of four cofounders.

A huge part of me thinks that if I'd continued college, I wouldn't have had a
chance to do even a single one of these. My mental model would have just been
too hyper focused towards Getting Paid to allow the mental flexibility to say
"I can do/learn that!" in most scenarios. I seriously don't consider myself
particularly smart/intelligent - most of what I know these days is just
learned through hard work and genuine curiosity, which college hugely
inhibited.

One of the other comments mentioned that degrees open the door for you. Yes
they do, but the places I've seen and worked at where that matters are
incidentally the worst I've worked at. Self education goes a long way as long
as you teach yourself how to learn before you start learning. Employers are
often very impressed by that quality, so it's still definitely possible.

That said, many folk don't like the fact that I didn't to go college. There's
often a lot of animosity with mentions of student loans and knowledge depth
over width. "Jealousy" comes close, but it's more seething and exclusionary
than that.

College is useful if you want to learn things, but often a quicker and more
holistic way to learn is to skip college altogether and teach yourself and
save your future self from asinine student loans. This goes for folks who're
able to get their student loans paid, too. Maybe especially, since you have
the money to get an apartment to learn your desired subjects, but also about
life. :)

(edit: if this sounds arrogant, please let me know. I'm trying to better
myself and humility's a strong one I need to work on.)

~~~
nja4
Anecdotal evidence doesn't work though. The majority of "good" software jobs
don't just want anyone. The average person can't do all the things you just
listed. The average person can't market his/herself without a degree
effectively.

I feel like we all know success stories, but I would say I have worked with a
lot more phds than I have people without a degree. Does that mean that
everyone needs to get a phd? No. You can be successful with any level of
education, but it's unwise to advise any student to go for this without being
exceptional.

EDIT: I have worked/am working at 3 companies, a non-profit, Tableau, and
Intentional Software. I'm 21. I'm a student. Across the ~100-200 engineers
I've met, I've been the least educated.

~~~
bpchaps
Replying to your edit -

It sounds like you're an exception and a smart person, then. No sarcasm there.

The problem with being exceptional is that you tend to think of everybody else
as exceptional, so the ones who'll naturally fail don't really have a
fallback. One fallback can be self learning, but the crazy culture of "College
dropouts only work at Best Buy"[0] prevents them from being able to get back
on their feet.

(Of the 1,500 or so engineers I've worked with, I've only known one other
person with less education. He dropped out of high school and started worked
directly for Wolfram ;).)

[0] It's funny how earlier I was accused of using myself as anecdata earlier,
but that same user emphatically agreed with someone who used their friend's
dropout failure story as evidence that college dropouts will fail. It's so one
sided... Editedit: oh, it was you. Yeah, check it out. It's kinda funny.

~~~
nja4
I just meant that despite the exceptions like you that are doing awesome, the
typical high school educated person makes less than a college educated person.

Hahah sorry, I'm not crazy smart or exceptional! I work really hard, and
that's it. I mean to say that for most people, they aren't like you. They
can't succeed like you. I got incensed over the article and wanted to tear it
down because I'm so disenfranchised with European "dream education" and see
anything against conventional us education similar. Anyway, I think you made
the right choice presented with what I have. You seem to have had the skills
to make it without a degree, and that's amazing. I'm not sure I would have
made it without having UW get me noticed by companies and tell me what I need
to know. I feel like most students are more like me. Anyway, I don't want to
tear you down in a fit of passion. You seem like a cool, successful, guy, and
best luck with your court case and even more with drumming (I'm in marching
band at my uni hahah).

------
d33
"Here English should be understood as a stand-in for any field which could be
held in dialectical opposition to Computer Science: anthropology, criminal
forensics, art history… Pursuing knowledge in this way, much like learning a
new language, not only introduces you to, but installs you within, new diverse
cycles of thought and promotes a creativity which I think is essential to
excelling, dominating, or “winning” at Software Development."

I think I agree with him. In my university, most of the staff was kind of
dilettants - I always reasoned that it's because a good teacher should master
his subject and once you master it, you probably won't want to settle for
1/5th of the regular wage...

~~~
ahazred8ta
diametrical (FTFY) #GN

------
draw_down
I really liked learning in school. Many of my intellectual interests today
would not be so if I didn't learn, for example, a bunch of stuff about
linguistics. I don't know if a college education is worth its cost these days,
but I think there is a lot of value in it.

There will always be time to work, and to be good at your job. School can be
more than that. Pretty much everyone shits on college these days, and I
certainly understand why, but this shouldn't be looked at as anything other
than conventional wisdom at this point. It's not a cutting-edge take or
anything of the sort.

------
JacksonGariety
If you drop out you'll probably learn more but life will get harder.

School is a wonderful soap bubble and the trouble is not so much "drop out or
don't" as much as it is "do we have a place for aspies in our English
programs?"

Computer Science departments are _not_ a safe compromise. The conflict @fat is
trying to articulate is between those with a place in the school system and
those without.

------
r3bl
As a (former) non-U.S. CS student (although I still haven't officially dropped
out) from a European country (but _not_ a part of the EU), college was a huge
waste of time in my case.

There were a couple of hints all over my two years in college, but the biggest
one was when I managed to convince my professor that our college FTP server is
not secure by showing her a Wireshark packet in which I have submitted the
password to the FTP server and convincing her that the server replied to my
connection with a password (which, of course, doesn't make any sense what so
ever).

Plus I was not able to convince the college staff that a self-signed
certificate in our online learning platform is not a good solution. And I
found one security exploit in the custom CMS they were using (privilege
escalation just by tweaking the URL).

When I got to the point where I had a server administration course taught with
the Windows server explicitly, I've decided to freeze my education.

I got into a good tech internship and now I finally have the chance of
actually learning something useful (Python / Linux administration / a bit of
front end programming / whatever is necessary since it's not a tech
organization, but a journalistic organization with a highly skilled tech team)
by actually doing some interesting things.

~~~
jqm
College is a huge waste of time. But then again so are a lot of jobs.

If you don't care about college because of all the bullshit and dumb people,
just wait until you enter the workforce!

Probably best to go ahead and go for most ambitious people. Besides, those
years are a lot of fun if you do them right. It's not a great system and
certainly not the best way to learn, but for the foreseeable future it is the
most sure path toward increased financial success. But I do understand your
frustration... I barely got out myself because of similar experiences (in a
different field but same type of nonsense).

------
erikpukinskis
Before I went to university I did a lot of UI and web design with very light
programming here and there.

In school I studied computer science because I knew I liked computers and I
didn't know what else to do.

Being around a bunch of intellectually serious people (not in my program so
much, more the musicians and literature and biology students), I pushed myself
to develop a perspective as a scholar and an intellectual. I ended up studying
opera for a year and doing a minor in psychology. Both of those experiences,
plus the experience of being pushed hard in some key computer science contexts
(particularly programming language theory) were immensely formative for me. I
can't imagine doing what I'm doing now (designing platforms for software
development) without all of those experiences.

I could've easily skipped school and just gone straight into industry. I was
already earning $15/hr doing web design in high school (~1998).

I'm not sure where that would've led. If I have to guess, I would've probably
ended up a web dev in Boston and I would be a very wealthy WASPy family man in
the suburbs now at 34.

As it is I am an artist and an intellectual in California. I am actually "in
the world" in a way I don't think I would've been if I hadn't been pushed
through the intellectual ringer for so long. But it turns out the world is a
bleak place compared to the relative safety of where I started. I think I've
gone much further towards making something of myself but I am much less happy
than I would've been. The Tree of Knowledge allegory is much weightier and
more frightening to me now that I'm older. As a child knowledge seemed like a
silly thing to villify.

It's so hard to say what would've been though.

------
moron4hire
Frankly, school is going to be such a small drop in the bucket of what your
career will look like, that it shouldn't much matter whether you go or not.
Your success will be determined by a continued habit of learning forever
thereafter. This overemphasis on the importance of choices made in school
devalues that.

~~~
elsurudo
Yup. I find it strange that this comment is at the very bottom currently.

Anyways, I've been a freelancer right after a somewhat prestigious CS school,
and I've never needed to show my degree.

That being said, I did learn some concepts that I doubt I'd have gotten too
far into had I not been forced (OS, compilers, AI), which give me the edge
when I need to learn more in those subjects in my gigs.

Also, I feel it gave me some confidence in what I do – an ego boost, if you
will. Some may not need it, but I always have that degree to fall back on, if
need be.

Overall, I don't regret it.

------
nja4
I am a junior at a target CS school in the US. I'm currently studying in
Europe at Sweden's KTH, reputed as one of the top engineering schools in
Europe/Scand. I loathe all the "EUROPE IS SO MUCH BETTER!111!!!!!" posts
everyone makes because I always feel like it's out of touch and hip to say to.
The culture here in Sweden is way more relaxed. This is definitely NOT a
catchall, but a catch-some, sort of statement, even if I do interact with
mostly Masters students from across Europe, probably >50% of my classmates.
It's not as rigorous here, and it's not as if the students are still "killin'
it!" because I have been in exclusively project classes, and the projects
presented have been pretty mediocre. Most students aim to pass. Few students
in my MASTERS LEVEL classes (bear in mind it's 4/5 year students unlike in the
US) have NEARLY the chops of any kid in my undergrad CSE program, and I've
been in 4 groups now with around 30 students and obviously talk to many more.
I'm frustrated because everyone hates on this system, but it's allowed me to
perform so much better technically than any of my classmates here that I've
interacted with. Also, His comment that "you may need to reinvent the wheel
sometimes" applies to so few. I am going to be designing REST APIs or similar
for years, I bet. I am going to need to know reasonable HCI for years, I bet.
So many people don't learn the right idioms. The right design patterns. Every
internship I've had has "man, sucks that we taught ourselves this technology
instead of learned formally" or "man, this stack was built by non-engineers
and is an un-maintainable monolith." I can't take these statements seriously.
You can learn programming by yourself. You can be way better than I'll ever be
through self teaching, but I feel like this is similar (but to a much less
extent) logic to, "Bill Gates dropped out of college!!!11!!!!", and it's just
NOT true for MOST people. The comments before me are SO right that it's career
jeopardizing.

------
d33
I find that relevant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0)

~~~
odonnellryan
That brings up a pretty good point. Are there any schools currently teaching
these types of curriculum?

~~~
d33
I think that the singer said in some other video that he made some influence -
not directly this kind of curriculum, but an improvement towards that.

