a) Cost - In today's economic climate, I simply cannot justify an education that, on avg, costs over $100K. Especially when student loans are involved.
b) Time - 4 yrs is an unnecessarily long amount of time for a bachelors degree, not to mention another 1-2 yrs for a masters. The opportunity cost of this time only compounds the first problem.
Edit: Sorry, I should have been more clear. In terms of cost, I meant that there's an institutional problem within the American education system that allows for such skyhigh tuition rates.
The same reasoning applies to time. Sure, students can ramp up their classes and finish a 4 yr degree in 3 yrs, but why should they have to? Why not make it 2-3 yrs to begin with? This can easily be done by making non-relevant classes optional instead of core for a given major (for example, I had to take a course in art as part of my biology major).
I can kind of see the cost point - though most would argue that the lifetime earnings of someone with a college degree far outweigh a $100K investment.
But the time thing kind of bugs me. As driven as HN is this may be a minority position but I really don't believe you should be working (in a 9-5 career style job) between 18-24. I really don't care so much abou t college, but have fun, go out, date guys and girls, travel, there are so many things you should be doing at that age then starting a business and you'll end up better for it.
I didn't start my career until my late 20s and I don't regret that at all.
I can kind of see the cost point - though most would argue that the lifetime earnings of someone with a college degree far outweigh a $100K investment.
Do those studies on lifetime earnings really isolate for other factors?
If dropping out of the college track isn't considered a valid, supported choice, then the only people that drop out will be those that have fallen out of the system. Is it a surprise that the majority of those students then fail?
But the time thing kind of bugs me. As driven as HN is this may be a minority position but I really don't believe you should be working (in a 9-5 career style job) between 18-24. I really don't care so much abou t college, but have fun, go out, date guys and girls, travel, there are so many things you should be doing at that age then starting a business and you'll end up better for it.
I got the "having fun" and dating out of the way between 16-18 (I dropped out of high school and moved out at 16). Everyone needs time to figure things out and grow up, and there shouldn't be a rush to start a business, but avoiding significant responsibility until you're 24 is unnecessary, carries a heavy opportunity cost, and is a waste of some of your most productive and formative years.
I didn't start my career until my late 20s and I don't regret that at all.
It's great that this worked out for you, but I have to say -- starting work in my field at 16 meant I had 10 years of experience when I was 26, and that expansive lead time on my contemporaries has been invaluable and allowed me to bring a breadth and depth of knowledge to my work that most people simply don't have, has ensured that I remain well ahead of the curve, and has provided me with a considerable backstop of experience to draw on when running my own business.
Given that I still love my life's work -- and that I have a few good working decades still ahead of me -- if I were given the choice, I wouldn't trade in those initial years for any other opportunity.
How much did you work? Given how little waiters make, it seems like you'd have to work something close to full time to get by, especially with enough excess to cover travel, which makes it no more free than a real job, but making less and doing less interesting stuff.
Now, consulting 5-10 hours a week (or a few months a year) while enjoying yourself and traveling could be appealing.
It really depends on where you work but waiters make pretty decent money (for a 20 something) - and its all cash. You get payed minimum wage in CA but that just about covers the amount you need to pay in taxes. I'd work about 25 hours a week and get about $20 in a paycheck every 2 weeks. You really end up not paying much in taxes (I'd guess closer to 15% then the 30-40% you'd end up paying salaried) so the money you make goes further. I worked at Bucks in Woodside CA, which is actually a bit notorious with the Sand Hill VC crowd. If you needed to you could make rent in a weekend by picking up extra shifts. Then the rest is cash. I mainly worked nights and could pick up some other work during the day if I needed to. When I wanted to travel I'd slam out about 2 months of serious work and do fine for a few weeks of travel. You also get to know people in the industry so I could take time off and pretty easily find a job when I got back.
I definitely made more money waiting tables 25 hours a week then my first two 40hr positions salaried.
So... get it done in 3. I know many people who did, and still managed to work their way through school without loans or with minimal loans.
3 years at NC State would cost you about $50k. Save up beforehand, work during school - it's doable. Hard, but doable.
Looking at Oakland (Michigan), where I went, it's now about $10k/year - 3 years accelerated would be under $40k FWICT.
Yes, that's not peanuts, but it's not the end of the world. Scholarships/grants/working during school - it's all doable.
I'm still shocked to find people getting in to 6 figure debt for college degrees. I just don't see the payback in most cases, and likely neither will those students. :/
I have a master's and have also taken all the prereqs for, and am halfway through a 2nd master's. Even if I had paid for all this, all of my education would not have come close to 100k (I know this has been addressed in other comments). All of my coursework after undergrad (roughly 24 courses) was done while working full time. The only real opportunity cost is in undergrad. Some of the first masters and all of the additional course work I've taken have been paid by employers.
Additionally I would say that the balance of course work (requiring an artist to take biology and a biologist to take art) is the most important part of an undergrad degree. In my experience well-roundedness is extremely important in real-world problem solving. It's not entirely surprising that the guy who discovered the quark also spent time reading Finnegan's Wake.
Who the heck in their right mind spends $100k (on average) on an undergraduate degree?!
My local state university offers a decent education for <$40k. If you knock out the first 2 years at a local community college (because as an engineer does it really matter where I get my Western Civ course credits?) you can shave another $12k off for a grand total of $32k.
Hell, you can an A.S., a B.S. an M.S. and a PhD for less than $100k and have plenty of drinking money left over.
Yeah, the Good Will Hunting fantasy about how you don't need a good education, just natural intelligence and motivation. Maybe that's true for some people, but to say that a good liberal arts school is worth the same as a community college is completely absurd. And it's more true, not less true, for a class such as "Western Civ".
I wasn't aware that people go to one school for their engineering classes, then haul ass across the country to a liberal arts college for their history electives. That notion seems absurd. :)
If you want to major in History (and enjoy the really bad pay-scale that comes with that), you'll probably get the best education at a liberal arts school, but the cost-benefit analysis is even worse.
I don't think there are any good engineering colleges or universities that are not also liberal arts schools, and many good liberal arts schools offer engineering.
a harvard (or UIUC, stanford, cornell, MIT, UCB) CS grad can easily make 70k$ a year right out of college and much more in future. 100k$ tuition might be an issue for liberal arts and communication majors, but surely not for a CS major (assuming he is good enough to have a successful startup in first place).
a) Cost - In today's economic climate, I simply cannot justify an education that, on avg, costs over $100K. Especially when student loans are involved.
b) Time - 4 yrs is an unnecessarily long amount of time for a bachelors degree, not to mention another 1-2 yrs for a masters. The opportunity cost of this time only compounds the first problem.
Edit: Sorry, I should have been more clear. In terms of cost, I meant that there's an institutional problem within the American education system that allows for such skyhigh tuition rates.
The same reasoning applies to time. Sure, students can ramp up their classes and finish a 4 yr degree in 3 yrs, but why should they have to? Why not make it 2-3 yrs to begin with? This can easily be done by making non-relevant classes optional instead of core for a given major (for example, I had to take a course in art as part of my biology major).