
Ask HN: Which degrees give the best intellectual returns? - ehudla
Which degree makes the greatest contribution to your overall &quot;intelligence&quot; or intellectual toolkit?
======
Ultimatt
The one where you don't think of a degree as an intellectual commodity, and
instead realise the intellectual returns come from yourself and your own work.
You could do an English degree in the worst university and still come out
knowing higher Maths. Anyone doing just the set work from lectures hoping for
a quick intellectuql fix completely misses the finer points of going to
university. It's an environment of self learning. If you bury yourself in that
and dedicate your time to learning whatever you want, any degree and any
university is equally worthwhile. Some it's just a more pleasant experience to
do that, given what you want to put in and get out. Chemistry for example is a
lot better provided for at rich universities. Making contacts in the world of
academia if you wish to begin an academic career is one of the few other
reasons to choose a specific degree and location. If you aren't interested in
academia, choice of university and course is a lot more irrelevant... other
than prestige and tuition fees. Unless you plan on getting in to the most
prestigious univsersity in the land an employer wont care too much. A
vocational degree title like "Software Engineer" matters more for many jobs.
Even if what you learnt far outstrips that role, or you avoided learning half
of what is necessary to be any use. Ultimately the best degree with highest
return will fit your interests and life goals enabling you to engage with self
learning, no one can tell you what that is, or suggest it without a lot more
info. For me I did three different degrees in three different subjects at two
different universities. There wasnt method to the madness ibfollowed my
interests. Now I work in a job that uses a broad set of my skills I otherwise
couldnt have done with the time only learning a single subject. I managed to
jump degree subjects through learning a lot of foundational knowledge for the
next during the time of whatever course I was working through. It didnt feel
like hard work because I was having too much fun learning new stuff, and
interacting with cool people along the way. Once you live for learning any
university dept becomes a great environment, but any prescriptive degree
course is highly limiting to your intellectual return. Engage with learning
and thebuni environment not with course soecifics, treat modules like a box
ticking exercise, the minimum knowledge in areas others identified as
important to learn.

------
mindcrime
Looking back on it, I think you can never have too much maths/statistics
knowledge, and coding is a skill akin to a superpower in some ways. I think if
I were giving someone advice today, who was about to embark on their
undergraduate career, I'd suggest something like "major in math or statistics
and do a minor in computer science" (or the other way around).

But really I agree with Ultimatt. And you shouldn't think of finishing a
degree (whether it's an associates, bachelors, masters or phd) as "the end" of
ones education. Especially in the era we live in with so much knowledge freely
available on the 'net, there's no reason to not make learning a lifelong
thing.

Heck, I'm 42 and I'm taking a handful of Coursera classes right now (I am
literally taking a break from homework right now to stop and check HN). And if
I had nothing but free time, I'd spend half my time doing classes through
Coursera, Edx, etc., or doing something on Khan Academy, etc. That or
downloading papers from arXiv and reading them, or watching deep learning
videos on Youtube, etc.

