
Dangerous Ideas: Sorry Paul Graham, I Think it Does Matter Where You Went to College - jamiequint
http://calnewport.com/blog/?p=67
======
edw519
WHAT A BUNCH OF BALONEY!!!

Let's call a spade a spade. College is another world. A vacation. Detached
from reality. Please, please, please, don't confuse success in school with
success in anything that actually matters.

"They got there because they're on the ball."

WTF?!?!?!?

Try paying a mortgage, raising children, staying healthy, caring for ailing
parents, making it to work by 8:00 am, and completing 167 other required
transactions each and every day, and still keep a smile on your face.

Versus reading books between beers, parties, and hookups.

Face it, what people in the isolated world of college call "work" is what
people who pay their bills call "time off". After another 1000 lines of code,
3 more meetings with idiots, 27 more phone calls, hell in traffic, and a deep
sigh of relief (it's Friday), I think I'll go to Barnes & Noble and read a
little Kant to relax.

Paul was right on. Now STFU.

~~~
DocSavage
Let's not get carried away and take a reasonable argument in new directions
and also to the extreme.

\--> "College is.. a vacation. Please, please, please, don't confuse success
in school with success in anything that actually matters."

There are some fields where discipline, jumping through (seemingly arbitrary)
hoops, and ability to study/capture knowledge is a reasonable indicator of
success, e.g., medicine. I'll bet that a student who can't stick through the
pre-med requirements is not going to get through the four years of mind-
numbing med school and another four to seven years of residency.

\--> "Face it, what people in the isolated world of college call 'work' is
what people who pay their bills call 'time off'."

I'm not sure if you'd be studying organic chemistry on your time off, and I'm
very sure some college students pay their own bills. (I did. I got classified
as a grad student very early and paid my way through Stanford via half-time
research & programming jobs.)

So while I'm probably going to be down-modded for sticking up for the feckless
idiots who decide to spend their time learning things in college, particularly
the "elite" ones, I figure I should point out when the anti-college viewpoint
gets taken too far. While some may view college as a "vacation", others
actually use the resources of a top institution. They get access to cutting-
edge faculty, computers, lab equipment, and research that's not being done at
smaller institutions. Not everybody is hoping to build a business. And for
some professions, there's a wide and deep knowledge base that has to be
mastered before you can start work. I know one mother who returned to college
after raising her kid and slogged through pre-med studies. It was hardly a
vacation. Her success in school mattered.

~~~
edw519
First of all, you should never be down-modded for engaging in good debate. And
if so, who cares.

You bring up many good points which are, sadly, exceptions to the rule.

I have a B.S. in mathematics and an MBA, both from supposedly "elite"
institutions, and I am convinced that almost nothing from any of my classes
has contributed to my career as an IT professional (with the exception of the
"mind" exercise). I suspect this is true for most college graduates.

As president of my undergraduate fraternity, I learned 100 times more (things
that I would need later) than from all my classes combined. Things like
managing a budget, running a project, caring for a facility, interpersonal
communication, leading others, achieving in teams, etc., etc., etc. If I knew
then what I know now, I would have skipped the classes and just joined the
fraternity.

And, yes, I do go to Barnes & Noble and read "Men of Mathematics", "GEB", and
the work of Dawkins just for fun. Funny, I didn't appreciate any of it when I
was forced to read it.

~~~
DocSavage
When I think of the things that made Stanford special, I think of the exposure
to world-class researchers. Some classes were simply not available at other
institutions. For example, I took "Medical Artificial Intelligence" from the
guy who was the pioneer in expert systems for medicine. I remember a two-
quarter sophomore seminar with class size limited to six undergrads. We were
taught plate tectonics by the Dean of Earth Sciences and worked with a grad
student to develop a simulation in C. Then there were all the opportunities to
join research labs because there is so much world-class research going on at
Stanford. (This was back in the 80s.) I am convinced that (1) you get out of
college what you put into it, and (2) the main advantages of big research
universities, aside from the diploma, is tapping into what makes them unique.

When I think of "success in school," I don't immediately think of GPA. It's
not all about the courses, and in the debate of name-brand schools, I think
it's rarely about the standard classes.

~~~
edw519
"you get out of college what you put into it"

I guess I'd be a fool to argue with that.

Funny, I only remember 2 things a professor every said in class:

1\. A degree in business is a degree in nothing. 2\. Never put a lit pipe in
your jacket pocket.

Maybe I should have paid more attention.

------
bluishgreen
"The student who got an 'A' on her Kant essay is, quite simply, someone who
really understands Kant"

This is the point where my bull shit meter hit the red area and then went on
to roll on the floor and laugh :)

~~~
aswanson
Ditto. Can any subject require more subservience to a teacher than the
'Kantian interpretive' type he uses here?

~~~
jimbokun
Once I completed an essay assignment for a college Shakespeare class, filling
in everything I knew the teacher wanted me to say. At the end however, I wrote
something like "However, I don't actually believe what I wrote above."

When I got the marked essay back, there were lots of positive comments in the
margins, until the last paragraph. There the comment was, "Jim, I think we
should discuss this."

I got an A in that class.

------
pg
This guy not not only misunderstood what I was saying, but literally made up
quotes; e.g. "obedience to authority."

~~~
brlewis
Predictably, yes.

I've learned at least two things watching people misunderstand essays. First,
when an essay touches on a polarizing issue, people tend to peg it as one end
or the other of that polarization. Second, once people peg an essay as making
an argument that they disagree with, they stop paying attention, if they keep
reading at all.

I'm not trying to be critical of anyone; I tend to do the same thing.

Quote: I hear variations of this same tired argument probably once or twice a
month. (It comes with the territory when you write a book titled _How to
Become a Straight-A Student_ ).

He has you lumped in with the rest of his critics. "Obedience to authority" is
a collective quote from the lot of you, with your words "index of obedience"
as just one fuzzy part.

What's funny is in the end he agrees with your last three paragraphs. Quote:
It's fine to make the point that college and grades aren't everything. In fact
it's important.... I'll be the first say it: _College is not necessary for
success!_

------
jey
> _Whatever the reason, however, don't put down the kids that got the A's.
> They didn't get there because of obedience to authority. They got there
> because they're on the ball. They can process multiple streams of
> information, and they have trained their mind to think hard, produce subtle,
> nuanced arguments, and find deep connections between ideas -- all traits,
> ironically, that most entrepreneurs would say are important._

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

------
davidw
PG wasn't putting anyone down, just saying that there's very little
correlation between startup success and where someone went to school. That's a
narrow enough statement, and he has enough data on it, that I think it's
convincing.

~~~
hello_moto
Enough data?

1) keyword #1: startup 2) keyword #2: software (80% www, 20% shrink-wrap)

what about other fields? commerce, business, law, agriculture, medical,
dental, pharmacy, etc.

------
eusman
if I am not mistaken pg's point was that where you got your education doesn't
contribute to the success of your company, not that if you are a Harvard
student its meaningless like this guy sais!

Philip Greenspun made a similar point in a shorter fashion not many days ago,

"What about homework? Students would do homework either in the library or at
home. In 1865 both places lacked television, video games, email, etc. In 2007,
the students who do best may be the ones with the best study habits, not those
who are the most able. Companies do not rely on lecture+homework for getting
work done; they create an environment with limited distractions and keep
workers there for most of each day."
([http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/08/23/improving-
unde...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/08/23/improving-
undergraduate-computer-science-education/))

, and overall it's a notion that meets acceptance from great hackers and
successful people who recognize quality in people, because being early self-
taughts gives them this inner understanding.

do these people actually read something before they reply to it?!

if we all look outside our windows we will see that not everyone wants to risk
their ass for starting up. So, yes there is also need for colleges, a system
to rank individuals abilities.

------
damon
Let's get Don Dodge (Microsoft is dead hater), this person, and we'll all PG
hate for flash-in-the-pan attention.

My favorite:

"Let us not then, Paul, put her (straight-A student) down. She too, just as
much as any homegrown entrepreneur, has worked hard and made use of her
talents."

Or she drinks with the TA, or her Dad plays golf with the dean, or she's book
smart, none of whom I'd probably want to hack with.

------
rwebb
in my experience, the school you go to has a huge impact on what jobs you can
apply/get recruited for - i definitely could see it having little impact on
startup success...also doubt it has much impact on people who go into sales.
both are sink or swim scenarios. but, the education you receive at harvard or
mit might be no different from what you get at bunker hill cc, and if you go
launch a company you may be no worse off coming out of bhcc, but if you are
going into the mainstream workforce, the average MIT/Harvard/Stanford grad has
a massively better shot at getting a job at NASA, Goldman, Citadel, Google,
etc. Not because the students are necessarily better at those schools
(although many would argue that they are) but simply because the alumni base
is already embedded in those institutions. i think it is under emphasized for
undergrad, but in large part matriculation choice is a decision of what alumni
base you want to "buy into".

~~~
vlad
"but, the education you receive at harvard or mit might be no different from
what you get at bunker hill cc"

There is no way that is true.

~~~
rwebb
haven't you seen good will hunting?!

seriously though, one dedicated teacher at bhcc might give you way more than
all the TAs you get at harvard. of course the same student that gets a lot out
of bhcc would probably soak even more out of harvard. who knows

------
jgamman
hhmmm, guy who makes his living selling books about how to do well at college
blasts essay from guy who says 'college... meh'. nuff said.

~~~
mwerty
doesn't that count as ad hominem?

~~~
portLAN
Yes; and conflict of interest is a perfectly valid basis for questioning
impartiality as a matter of jurisprudence.

------
chaostheory
I guess the only reason people upmodded this crappy article is so that other
ppl on yc can see their own posts?

There are good arguments for college, but this isn't one of them...

------
jadagul
Paul: I think the problem is that you're measuring something slightly
different from what everyone else wants to measure, and thus the claim in your
first paragraph winds up being too strong.

One way attending an elite college helps is that it makes it easier to learn--
both in that the resources are more obviously available, and in that the
institution is pushing you to do work. You can graduate from Northwester
Louisiana University going out drinking six nights a week and never really
doing the work; you can't pull that off at Harvard. But if you're driven
enough, 'easier' doesn't matter all that much; if you're determined enough,
you can learn to the limits of your own abilities at Harvard or at NLU. Or,
hell, you could pull a Ramanujan and teach yourself entirely out of books.

The problem is that most people aren't that driven; most people will get a lot
more out of the college where it's easier to learn (I know I've needed the
push more than once to keep going aggressively). But those people aren't the
ones you're looking for at Y Combinator. If you need that kind of push, you're
not going to succeed at a startup, because a startup requires drive and
determination more than almost anything else. So your evidence says something
like, "in the set of people to whom the institution matters the least, the
institution doesn't matter very much." Which is probably true, but doesn't say
much about the people who are going to settle down into a nice comfortable job
when they graduate (doctor, lawyer, middle management), and aren't driven
enough to go for broke the way you did.

Also, institution matters much more when you're doing something where letters
of recommendation make a huge difference (say, applying to grad schools, like
I am). When my profs write a grad school and say I'm in the top 25% of the
math majors here, or whatever they wind up saying, that tells programs
something; they've accepted students from my college before, and they can
compare me to those other students to get an idea of how good I am. Sometimes
this is explicit; I think one of my profs has written a rec letter along the
lines of, "this student is about as good as student X whom you accepted three
years ago." This gives them very precise data about whether they want me. But
if I were going to a weaker institution, they wouldn't be able to get that
sort of gauge of my ability; this makes me a riskier pick, and so I'm less
likely to be accepted. But once again, this shouldn't factor much into your
particular dataset.

------
falsestprophet
I think it may have been better to say that the more capable you are, the less
it matters where you go to school. (Use your best judgment to apply boundaries
to that statement.)

------
euccastro
_[UPDATE 9/7/07: Welcome new readers. Before continuing, I want to point out
that the "Dangerous Ideas" series on this blog aim to be purposefully over the
top. The idea is to push an argument to its extreme to generate interesting
discussion. So take what follows with a grain of salt]_

I had a better idea: just not reading what follows. Thanks at least for being
upfront about your trolling intentions.

------
Alex3917
Rule of thumb: When empirically testable statements are framed as
philosophical arguments it's because they aren't supported by the numbers.

------
allenbrunson
ugh. what is this doing here? this is the kind of stuff i expect hacker news
to be free from. why can't i have a "vote down" button?

~~~
jamiequint
Its here to provide another viewpoint for people to discuss (criticize) in
(supposedly) intelligent debate.

~~~
allenbrunson
yeah, i totally don't agree with that. this is just noise and distraction,
which fritters away the coherency of this site.

if paul graham is able to create a site such as this one that is NOT
eventually destroyed by its own popularity, then it may well be a first. noise
like this article isn't helping in the least.

~~~
jamiequint
You're arguing that opposing viewpoints are noise and shouldn't be allowed?
Sorry, but I don't want to live in that type of world/community.

------
nanijoe
The author was obviously looking for attention.Sadly, he got it.

~~~
aston
Cal's a pretty smart dude (grad student at MIT) with a couple of books under
his belt (both about doing well at college). I think this essay isn't a fish
for attention; it's his worldview. It's actually not so far divorced from what
Paul Graham is saying anyway, since he readily admits that you don't need a
good college nor good grades to be successful.

------
portLAN
_Cal Newport graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 2004, and is
currently a Computer Science Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology._

Something about a buck fifty in late fees at the public library.

------
jsmcgd
I love it when PG riles the internet because he's normally right.

~~~
hello_moto
To you he is. Not to others.

------
blored
Paul Graham has his own Valleywag.

------
jimbokun
I think there was a study that showed that Ivies, MIT, Stanford, etc. are
really good at finding and admitting very talented, driven people.

However, that same study found that equally talented, driven people who chose
to attend a less prestigious school did just as well in their careers as the
people who went to the big name schools.

So there probably is a correlation between "I went to Harvard." and "I will be
successful." But not necessarily causation.

------
ratsbane
But does it matter what college you DIDN'T graduate from?

