
Ask HN: What is the value of a degree now? - dminzi
I am a college student. I take courses in math and computer science with the latter being my real area of interest. I go to a large public university.<p>When the crisis began, the quality of my education took a massive hit. This was expected because it was sudden and it was the week before finals. Professors were scrambling and using any quick solutions they could find. Now, I am a month into a new quarter and nothing has improved. With the exception of a single class, all of my professors have switched to a completely useless powerpoint&#x2F;zoom combination. I have already paid for this quarter, so I am stuck. Luckily, I am okay at learning from textbooks&#x2F;wikis.<p>My parents and I have been discussing whether it even makes sense for me to enroll next year. It seems unlikely that they will cram us into 400+ person lecture halls come fall. Paying 60k for zoom powerpoints seems absurd. I am at the point where most of my classes are electives and project based (both in math and cs). I feel that I could accomplish a decent amount of that learning independently. In fact, the most concentrated period of learning I had this year was working on a personal project. I&#x27;ve got of other projects I want to pursue, but that I&#x27;ve sidelined because of coursework.<p>What would you do if you were in my position? Is the value of a college degree now the same as what it was? Should I enroll next year? If not, the year after? Will I be unable to find work unless I finish?
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coryalthoff
I recently wrote an essay about this. [https://selftaught.blog/the-end-of-
college/](https://selftaught.blog/the-end-of-college/)

In it, I talked about how when schools embrace remote learning people will
start questioning why they should pay tens of thousands of dollars for a
professor teaching them online when they could just take a Udemy class, so it
is interesting you said that.

Are you majoring in computer science?

Yes, many companies use degrees to quickly filter applicants. But tons of
companies don't.

In my experience, once I got my first job as a software engineer without a CS
degree, no one asked about it again later.

You could also consider going to an online programming boot camp like App
Academy. It would be much less expensive and they have a great track record of
getting their student's jobs.

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anbende
I have a small company developing software in the mental health area. College
degree provides a convenient filter for us in hiring. The percentage of
quality applicants without a degree is just so low we don't even look at their
applications at all.

Are there tech companies that do things differently? Absolutely. But you'd
never get an interview with us or anyone like us without a degree. And there
are a lot of businesses like us. It's up to you whether passing that filter
for certain kinds of jobs is worth finishing your degree.

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dminzi
What would the difference be for an applicant who took a year in the middle?
Would you still consider them in the degree bunch? Also, if schools are all
online next year, do you expect the quality of college applicants to go down?

~~~
anbende
I wouldn’t care at all if they took a year off. Not one bit. I don’t
particularly care about gaps in employment either. I only use college degree
as a filter, because if I don’t I end up with a landslide of unqualified
applicants to sort through. I haven’t found that with gap periods so far.

I don’t actually expect quality to go down from online offerings. I’ll be
keeping an eye on it though, for sure.

