Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

Just to offer a counter-point to the others here, I've personally noticed that quite a few people who study philosophy (either formally or via self-study) tend to become "disembodied". Formal reason becomes king, even when informal methods are more appropriate for solving the task at hand, and the intangible becomes irrelevant, even when it matters deeply.

Perhaps things would be different for someone in their 40s, who has a wealth of real world experience to draw on, philosophy would be valuable. But for the average 18 year old kid, studying it seems to create a set of terrible habits that take years to undo before the student can become a properly integrated adult.

I did from 34 to 39. It corrected my thinking in a few ways, it changed me, made me more honest, and lead me to enjoy rest of my life because of one of my previous life desires was fulfilled.

I think you need to be clear on your time commitment and reasons for studying. I'm studying a part-time MBA (online, remote) while working full-time (although thankfully my day job has been quiet for the last few months due to cock-ups in project planning, etc.).

I'm allowed up to 5 years to finish, but I'm cramming it in to 2.5 years altogether. I could take fewer modules and spin it out, but I don't want to be studying forever. The workload this last 6 months has been insane. If I'd had kids or had had to do any real work in my day job there's no way I'd have managed. The last 3 months especially have just involved pretty much constant studying, coursework and revising.

While they pitched the course as being flexible, the reality is there's limited flexibility once you've started a module with my uni. I asked whether I could postpone one of my 3 pieces of coursework by extending one module by 3 months and was told no. The online support from the university has been, frankly, shit. Any questions beyond the most basic (such as being able to see high-scoring past exam submissions to try to improve my marks) were met with delays of several months. I've had multiple instances where my questions have only been answered after contacting the formal complaints team. However, support from tutors/teaching assistants has been good, although I've rarely needed to contact them.

So my advice is to be clear about how much time you're willing to give to studying, what your motivation is, and to do your research on how good any support is likely to be. Related to the first point is how much of an impact you mind it taking on your social life.

In my case, studying online means I won't build any kind of network, which is one of the most touted benefits of an in-person MBA. Still, it's costing me £20k all in. Full-time for 2 years isn't really an option since it'd cost me so much in lost income, so I'll have to build a network later.

Having said all that, as a senior developer, I've found the MBA to be very interesting. I've tried starting multiple side projects in the past and haven't really got anywhere. I now have a much greater understanding of business and am confident that my odds of being able to start a successful business have massively improved. It's helped me clarify my life goals, understand the world more, will make me a better investor and open the doors to more interesting work if I decide not to start my own business. The combination of top-tier technical skills and an MBA will inevitably be powerful and give me more options. I'm looking forward to it all being over this time next year though.

In my experience, philosophers make great software engineers. I’ve worked with a few and always been happy to work with them.

For my Bachelors I was in one of these programs. You get some accelerated credit for experience and classes outside my major (CS) were available at night or on weekends. Many CS classes were available at night as well.

In terms of people talking about debt - I went to a decent state school, took one class a semester or much of it and paid as I went - so there was not much financial strain. I work in IT and am in a higher tax bracket after all. On the other side of finance, during interviews I can talk about my college experience if asked about it. Also Leetcode interviews and the like seems to be a test if I remember what I learned in college - dynamic programming, big O notation, how to implement a stack etc. So you pay in terms of time and money but you get paid back in terms of possibly greater opportunities.

Insofar as people talking about learning on your own - as far as I see, most self-taught people tend to have gaps in knowing more theoretical stuff like pushdown automata, or concurrent critical sections, or abstract syntax trees or Goedel numbers or second normal form or that kind of thing. You're supposed to spend at least three times as much time studying as in class, so if a Bachelors is four years, those three years are similar to self-study, minus things like the chance at the chance of questions during and after class and during office hours. So the only difference from self-study is not four years but one year, minus the benefits of classmates, professors and the rigor of a more theoretical curriculum than most self-taught people do, if they even know they should learn about things like the pumping lemma.