
Eric Schmidt on Critics Who Say College Isn’t Worth It - ugwigr
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/16/googles-eric-schmidt-on-critics-who-say-college-isnt-worth-it-theyre-just-wrong/
======
gkoberger
I once spoke at a conference for teens, where I was literally the only pro-
college speaker. My original talk wasn't even about college; I made up a talk
on the spot after hearing how anti-college everyone else was. Some speakers
were even advocating dropping out of High School (!?!?) to work on your
startup.

Sure, Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg/etc didn't graduate college. However, you have to
remember three important facts: they all at least started college, they all
stayed until they had an insane success on their hands and they all met (or at
least worked with) their cofounders in college.

College isn't for everyone, and it's definitely a broken system. However, it's
about more than just about the classes -- spending 4 years on a campus with
thousands of other young people who are all there to learn and explore is
transformative. You don't get that once you hit the real world.

~~~
zavi
> spending 4 years on a campus with thousands of other young people who are
> all there to learn and explore is transformative. You don't get that once
> you hit the real world.

It depends on the school. Most colleges aren't exactly an intellectual
environment where people talk about singularity and high tech over lunch. I'll
have much better luck finding a qualified cofounder just living in the Bay
Area and going to meetups than at your average college that's not Harvard or
Stanford.

~~~
michaelochurch
_your average college that 's not Harvard or Stanford_

I don't know why you think the intellectual tenor would be different at those
colleges. My respect for Stanford took a major hit when I saw this:
[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1907908-stanford-band-
for...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1907908-stanford-band-forms-
snapchat-logo-during-rose-bowl-halftime-show)

There are pockets of intellectualism at any college, but the truth is that
American culture is just not very intellectual, and among the business elite
there's a pronounced _anti_ intellectualism. You're going to find more
philistines than intellectuals at _any_ college in the U.S. and, yes, that
includes the top ones. Technology people aren't an exception to this. The old
Silicon Valley nerds had at least an interest in history and literature and
art. They weren't experts, but they agreed that it was important. The new
business-oriented pseudonerds? Narrowly specialized in one technical field
("social graph logistics") and complete ignoramuses about everything else.

Does that mean one shouldn't go to Harvard or Stanford? Of course not. It's
great for the resume and there are a lot of connections to be made. But if you
think that you're going to be discussing high intellectual concepts with most
people meet-- or that the people bringing the connections and the people with
high intellectual interests will have _any_ overlap whatsoever-- you'll be
disappointed.

~~~
misingnoglic
That's the Stanford marching back, they're basically known for fucking around
on stage and being edgy/controversial.

------
Aqueous
Thankfully we have another, wiser tech giant to push back against the bad
advice of Thiel and Altucher, who seem to think that what happened to them -
effectively, winning the lottery, even if they are talented - ought to happen
to everybody.

~~~
commandar
This is where it falls apart, in my opinion:

>Schmidt vehemently disagrees. “The economic return to higher education over a
lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.” It’s true, on
average, economists find that college raises wages by about 15-30 percent.
Despite the debt, it’s a wise investment for many students.

>When asked about the difficulty in paying for college, Schmidt was adamant:
“I appreciate it’s expensive and we need to fix that,” he said, but “figure
out a way to do it.”

College is expensive _because_ we tell kids that it's going to be this huge
windfall so people "figure out a way to do it." The problem is that it's a
correlation/causation argument that's turned into an out-of-control feedback
loop.

College graduates traditionally earned far more because fields that needed a
degree were higher-earning. College degrees are absolutely useful for some
fields, and, in fact, I lean toward the argument against college being weaker
for the more technical fields like typically get discussed here.

But the real problem is that we've been telling kids that the only way to do
anything with your life is by going to get a four year degree, and as a result
we have more graduates and employers are starting to require four year degrees
for jobs that have traditionally -- and should be -- vocational in nature.

As a society, I think it's absolutely insane to expect these sorts of jobs to
suddenly begin creating more value, and thus have higher compensation, simply
because the person working it has more outside education.

My stance is that we need to sort this out now before it gets any worse. We
need to destigmatize vocational education. We need to realize that while
_some_ form of higher education is almost always a good thing, a four year
degree is complete overkill for many.

~~~
danielweber
Schmidt really needs to segment out that "average" rise of 15 to 30 percent.

1\. A few fields clearly need education, like medicine or law. Break those out
separately.

2\. Getting admitted and graduating from college is a strong signal of your
employability. Even if college adds absolutely nothing to your skillset, it
can increase your value. (Think of getting a perfect score on the SAT.)

3\. Being able to put off earning for 4 years is partly a signal of your
socioeconomic status.

4\. It ignores the people who try to attend college and fail. They are left
with debt, the opportunity cost of wages for their time in, and no degree to
show to employers.

This is separate from the fact that as we have pushed more people to get
better degrees, employers have simply increased their job requirements, so you
need a college degree to be an office manager. A credential race is a zero-sum
game for society as a whole.

------
RexRollman
The problem isn't that college isn't worth doing, it's just too fucking
expensive. The amount of debt we are asking people to assume is simply too
great.

~~~
bane
College isn't all that expensive. Private and out of state college is. There's
a prejudice that you have to go to Stanford or Harvard or whatever to do well
in life, and places like Google have perpetuated this problem for a long time
by not only just hiring people who went to the more expensive options, they've
only done job fairs and hiring outreach at these places. It's a vicious cycle.

So people who could be spending $40k on their local state university are
spending $200k just to get a crack at a place like Google. $40k over 4 years
is not that much, and the earning potential of people after that more than
makes up for it.

And then guess what? Google, in a moment of stark reflection, looks at the
data and realizes that the performance of the few folks who went to the
cheaper school and still managed to get hired is about the same as the folks
who sold a kidney to get through <preferred tier-1 school>.

This image, that you need to get into a top-20 school to make it in life
perpetuates all the way down into high school and it needs to stop. Kids need
to focus on just getting into college, not getting into an Ivy League school,
and companies need to start hiring from the local state universities, not just
the approved list of top schools the founders went to.

~~~
jiggy2011
But if the founders/companies are selecting for people from top schools,
regardless of whether or not that is rational in itself then it still makes
sense for students to try and go to top schools.

~~~
snowwrestler
That's true, but this particular problem is not representative of the value of
college in general.

I would have no objection if Peter Thiel and others were saying "hey maybe
it's not worth all that debt for you to go to a top school." But that's not
what they are saying. The message is "college is not worth it at all."

And Thiel might be right that some people don't need college--and those are
the people he wants to fund. But that is a tiny tiny slice of humanity.

Do we really want tech to be like pro sports or music, where millions of kids
make bad life decisions because they assume they'll make the big time? If Jay
Z told high school kids they don't need college because they can become hip
hop superstars like him, you would probably mock him. But that is exactly the
same as saying that kids don't need college because Zuckerberg.

~~~
jiggy2011
Didn't Zuckerberg attend Harvard? I think that part of the appeal of these
elite schools is the filtering system that you have to go through in order to
be even offered a place there, very high grades and extra curricula
achievements.

It wouldn't surprise me much if "Dropped out of Harvard" is better to have on
a resume than "Graduated top of class in community college".

~~~
bane
But isn't that kind of the problem? Somebody like Zuck doesn't bother
finishing, but FB culls mostly kids who graduated top-tier.

And Dropped out of Harvard probably is better than graduated top of class in a
CC, because these aren't fully comparable places. I'd much rather hire a
person who finished their education in local state school than the person who
couldn't be bothered with 4 whole years in one of the most competitive
admissions schools in the country.

------
jokoon
The real answer is not so simple.

Overall, for society, it's always better to have an education.

But if the price goes up, it means you won't get the education you might want,
so you'll get something less expensive, but if you go for it, it's hard to say
that might suit you, and if it doesn't, you will lose interest and drop out.

It's always better to keep on, but if you get an education because of economic
pressure, it has its ups and downs. It fulfills the concept of supply and
demand, but not your dreams.

I don't think education, like healthcare, should be applied the principles of
a market. And again, education is a very tricky social problem to solve.

You want it, but it's not distributed in the best fashion.

~~~
nilved
Education and college aren't synonymous. People are learning to avoid college
because it's just one inefficient method of education: it requires a large
investment of time, a monumental investment of cash, and very often doesn't
provide satisfactory instruction. You're not asking me, but I would say that
contemporary colleges are less about education and more about unloading debt
on students.

~~~
adamors
> Education and college aren't synonymous

Especially now, when you can cover a lot of ground on your own. As a
programmer at least. And I'm not even talking about MOOCs, but other resources
that are available to a lot of people for either free or for a fraction of the
price.

------
mbrameld
Are there any studies available on the difference in career earnings of grads
vs non-grads in the same career? I don't doubt that a random college graduate
earns 30% more over their lifetime than a random non-college graduate, but
what about a random software developer with a degree vs one without?

~~~
svenkatesh
>what about a random software developer with a degree vs one without?

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your question, but the way you phrased it, there's
already some survivorship bias -- the ones who don't have a degree but got a
job have been through some sort of selection filter; this ignores people who
don't have a degree but want to get a job in programming.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> the ones who don't have a degree but got a job have been through some sort
> of selection filter

Very true. Its all about signaling (hence "or equivalent experience" although
I believe that to be bullshit; each year of experience should count as 2-3
years in school).

I have no college education, and dropped out of high school in 1999/2000 to
pursue my career. I had to sell myself hard to get in the door, but once
there, I've never been asked for a degree after my first job (junior
admin->senior admin->built/sold webhosting company->managed hosting division
for consulting company->data taking for LHC->director of technology->news
network startup).

I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime where companies value experience more
than a piece of paper when the amount of experience is <5 years. The whole
education process, at least for the technology field, should be revamped
towards apprenticeship.

~~~
rjbwork
>The whole education process, at least for the technology field, should be
revamped towards apprenticeship.

Disagree, at least in the case of developers, and possibly ops/sysadmins. I
simply don't want to work with people who don't understand the basic
underpinnings of our work. I expect my co-workers to understand things like
the relational model and relation algebra/calculus, SQL, OOP, DRY, writing
reusable libraries, the OSI stack/model, some basic data structure/algorithms
(trees, searches/sorts, graphs, Djikstra's algo, TFIDF, etc), complexity
analysis, some basic design patterns (pub/sub, consumer/producer, MVC, DI/IOC,
and various other Computer Science and Software Engineering concepts. I
haven't learned the most abstract stuff in my time in industry thus far, and I
certainly don't think most devs/engineers have either. We learn things like
frameworks, languages, platforms, and sometimes a design pattern here or
there, but the basic underpinnings were all learned under formal study in a
university CS (and sometimes math) program.

In the end though, maybe this is just my subconscious "elitist CS grad that
wants to believe his time in university was worth it and well spent" speaking.

~~~
unschooledkid
> algebra/calculus, SQL, OOP, DRY, writing reusable libraries, the OSI
> stack/model, some basic data structure/algorithms (trees, searches/sorts,
> graphs, Djikstra's algo, TFIDF, etc), complexity analysis, some basic design
> patterns (pub/sub, consumer/producer, MVC, DI/IOC

The stereotypical 18-year-old nerd has at least some high-level understanding
of _all_ of this from web sites, magazines, pet projects and now from MOOC's.
As a teen, you may not get things right the first time and move at a
relatively slow pace but refactoring code in different languages and learning
from various online resources add up over the years. At least a few fresh high
school grads get full-time programming jobs at respectable companies.

> "elitist CS grad that wants to believe his time in university was worth it
> and well spent"

Efficiency isn't all-or-nothing and I think open credit-granting exams would
make college much better (disclosure: I'm in France where the situation is
much worse than in the US).

~~~
rjbwork
I would genuinely like to meet this high school grad you speak of, because
only the most talented of students in my freshman year even knew a fraction of
that stuff. Maybe MOOC's will change it, but not before the "learn to hack on
javascript" classes aren't most of the offerings. The only theory focused
course I've done that seemed good was Stanford's DB course. Hopefully the
Georgia Techs and Stanfords of the world can change that soon enough.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> algebra/calculus, SQL, OOP, DRY, writing reusable libraries, the OSI
> stack/model, some basic data structure/algorithms (trees, searches/sorts,
> graphs, Djikstra's algo, TFIDF, etc), complexity analysis, some basic design
> patterns (pub/sub, consumer/producer, MVC, DI/IOC

Want to grab coffee? I only have a GED (and I'm OP), but I learned almost
everything you commented about in your post from on the job experience or
learning on my own time.

I also spent 4 years building/selling a startup instead of spending time
getting a degree. The education I received doing that is priceless to me.

Nothing you described can't be learned with time and online resources; none if
it requires one on one time with a professor, nor a lecture hall.

~~~
rjbwork
I suppose if you've got some idea you're relentlessly devoted to enacting,
you'll either end up learning this stuff or failing. The real problem is when
you're someone like me who is long on technical chops, and short on actual
business ideas. I just don't see where all this stuff is going to be taught in
an on the job training kind of environment. Kudos to you for learning all of
the above yourself to build your business rather than in school.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I suppose if you've got some idea you're relentlessly devoted to enacting,
> you'll either end up learning this stuff or failing.

I agree with this.

> The real problem is when you're someone like me who is long on technical
> chops, and short on actual business ideas.

Its not about technical acumen, or about business ideas, its about the desire
to learn and grow beyond what you already know. Its very, very hard to select
for people like that. You have to tease it out of people over time, and few of
us have the time needed for that.

> I just don't see where all this stuff is going to be taught in an on the job
> training kind of environment.

As I previously mentioned, I think apprenticeships are the way to go
(apprenticeship/internship sort of environment, with acceptable pay). This is
how I hire and train DevOps/Systems-Network Admins; I bring people in with 1-3
years of Linux experience (or even no experience if they show the desire to
learn), and I teach/coach.

> Kudos to you for learning all of the above yourself to build your business
> rather than in school.

Thank you. We all take different paths. Some days I wish I had had the
resources to go to college (MIT was my first pick, but couldn't for family
reasons).

If you're ever in Chicago, coffee is on me. Email in profile.

------
wudf
On the spectrum of college students, the lower economic end is where the
viability of such expensive higher education comes into question. Statistics
describing the entire population do not support an argument relating to this
subset. Not only that, but the closing strawman of "all you care about" is
unrealistic. If only it were as simple as deciding to "Go to college" then I
don't think this discussion would be taking place. Eric Schmidt's words are
great for those who do have a choice, but to everyone else, he's out of touch.

------
snowwrestler
Zuckerberg and Gates did not skip college, they dropped out of college. Big
difference. Even Steve Jobs, who I'm not sure ever actually matriculated
anywhere, spoke glowingly of a college calligraphy course he audited--and was
a huge proponent of education, including college.

~~~
leoc
Jobs did matriculate at Reed. He was allowed to hang about and audit on campus
for quite a long time after he formally dropped out, though.

The problem, though, is that increasing US college costs increasingly rule out
going to college to find yourself and maybe leaving without a degree. An
increasing proportion of undergraduates _must_ graduate in a timely fashion,
with a degree that employers care for, or else they'll be crushed by
undischargeable college debt for the foreseeable future. Obviously this wasn't
a risk for Gates or el Zuck, but they're increasingly less typical in this.

------
hooda
Eric might think that college is worth it but the guys who are running those
colleges (Deans) think otherwise.

=> UC Berkeley B-School Dean:"Half of the business schools in this country
could be out of business in 10 years - or five. Source:
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-14/online-
progr...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-14/online-programs-
could-erase-half-of-u-dot-s-dot-business-schools-by-2020)

Problems with college is not only HIGH college tuition fees but also number of
years wasted in the institution. If you are 'self motivated learner' then you
can learn on web. This is especially true for software courses. Other courses
like electrical and mechanical engineering might -still- need college
education as colleges have requisite infrastructure for those fields.

~~~
leoc
Postgraduate courses like (US) law school and business school are much further
gone though; undergraduate ones aren't as bad, yet at least. If Eric Schmidt
had said that law school was worth it I think his audience might have been
incapacitated with laughter.

------
throwwit
Funny... just read this article today: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-
on-business/careers/ca...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-
business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/is-a-degree-becoming-a-
drawback/article17496365/) with the notable quote, "...recounting an exchange
with one software CEO who avoids hiring candidates with advanced software
engineering degrees since they are likely to expect higher wages."

And anecdotally from what I've seen... there seems to be a push lately to
crowd the potential pool of job applicants in a couple of fields.

------
sunseb
More and more colleges provide MOOCs : massive open online courses. It could
be a good free alternative to college : just pick courses you are interested
to and build a portfolio of certifications.

[https://www.coursera.org/](https://www.coursera.org/)
[https://www.edx.org/](https://www.edx.org/)
[http://moocs.epfl.ch/](http://moocs.epfl.ch/) (here we can find a good Scala
course, the teacher is the language creator himself)

~~~
dragonwriter
> More and more colleges provide MOOCs : massive open online courses. It could
> be a good free alternative to college : just pick courses you are interested
> to and build a portfolio of certifications.

Except actual _certifications_ attached to MOOCs generally aren't free.

------
dalek2point3
Its interesting to note that even a ton of the Thiel fellows, while dropped
out of college, came from prestigious colleges before they accepted the
fellowship. I have a friend here at MIT who accepted the Thiel fellowship, and
I dont see how she would've ended up getting access to cutting edge biological
research if she wasnt here, and being at MIT was certainly a plus for the
fellowship application, a pure signalling effect.

------
rohanpai
Google, please make up your mind

[http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-
top...](http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-
graduates/)

~~~
johnkpush
Nowhere in this article does it say "Don't go to college".

------
knappador
If you want to use Google scholar to its fullest, go to college campus.

------
shmerl
Such pricing on higher education is not a scam, it's a rip off. No matter what
Eric Schmidt says, these prices are just crazy. People should not go in debt
to gain education.

