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Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

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Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#91

Post by mulmen »

tptacek wrote: post #70
sanderjd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the connection between the first part of your response and the second part. Yes, it was designed as a luxury for rich kids to get a leg up in adulthood in all the ways your parent mentioned, and then society realized that maybe it shouldn't just be the rich kids getting that luxury, maybe smart and / or hard working but not rich kids should also have a chance at that luxury. Of course it turns out to be e…

It's worth keeping in mind in these discussions that tuition and expenses aren't the only cost of college attendance; four years of opportunity cost in earning are also involved. We can drive tuition costs to zero and still the overwhelming majority of selective school attendees will be from high-earning families.

I'm not sure I follow, are you assuming poor college students are expected to help support their families while in school?

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#92

Post by sanderjd »

tptacek wrote: post #73
eropple wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't care if your surgeon has been exposed to the idea of opportunity costs and given a framework for thinking about them structurally? That's pretty weird, Doc.

I sure don't. First-line health care is way too expensive, and everyone suffers from it, both patients and prospective caregivers. I don't really believe exposure to gen-ed requirements makes my internal medicine doctor any more effective at diagnosing and treating illness.

I think this is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree about. Cost is definitely a problem, but I believe another problem is doctors being a sort of "human body engineer" rather than a personal care provider. I personally believe that going straight to technical school would exacerbate that issue.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#93

Post by sanderjd »

nylonstrung wrote: post #83
sanderjd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also not the most efficient way to achieve the required training for those jobs. We could have future doctors and lawyers go straight to trade schools focused solely on those professions, and likely shave a couple years off their total education. But most people in our society agree that we like our doctors and lawyers to have the breadth that an undergraduate degree is intended to provide.

Only in America. In Europe, as I understand it, people generally study law right out of secondary school.

Both models seem reasonable, but I'll just now that America has been pretty successful with this model.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#94

Post by DeBraid »

goldfeld wrote: post #30

Sounds like a horrible idea full of assumptions and pressure, as opposed to offering an exploratory period of life that is college (socially and intellectually), a nice option for those who can afford it. Not everyone has to be coaxed into entrepreneurship, it's an evil of our consumerist age. Your kid would probably rather participate in society at large than in your suicidal runway idea of a romanticized youth of m…

> a bunch of hard lessons

That is the gamble. If your 19 year old kid burns $100,000 over 1 year trying to start a business, or, pays another form of "tuition" at a traditional university?

Probably good cases to be made either way.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#95

Post by sanderjd »

mulmen wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth keeping in mind in these discussions that tuition and expenses aren't the only cost of college attendance; four years of opportunity cost in earning are also involved. We can drive tuition costs to zero and still the overwhelming majority of selective school attendees will be from high-earning families.

I'm not sure I follow, are you assuming poor college students are expected to help support their families while in school?

He's saying that they give up the opportunity to help support their family during those years if they choose to go to college.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#96

Post by eropple »

sanderjd wrote: post #92
tptacek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure don't. First-line health care is way too expensive, and everyone suffers from it, both patients and prospective caregivers. I don't really believe exposure to gen-ed requirements makes my internal medicine doctor any more effective at diagnosing and treating illness.

I think this is one of those things that reasonable people can disagree about. Cost is definitely a problem, but I believe another problem is doctors being a sort of "human body engineer" rather than a personal care provider. I personally believe that going straight to technical school would exacerbate that issue.

I agree with you, but one quibble--I would suggest "human body technician" more than "engineer". I've met doctors who understood the practice of medicine; I've met more who treat it as an if-then by rote (and who believe some real cockamamie stuff on top of that).

You see this in tech too, of course. Knowing the "what to do" and knowing the "why you do it" are different things. I don't think enabling the latter is helped by rushing straight into technical education, either.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#97

Post by tprice7 »

learc83 wrote: post #37
bitJericho wrote: post #29

There's a third option. Self educate. Take 200,000. Buy all the tools and equipment you need to do what you love. Do what you love for 5 to 10 years and you'll have more than enough experience to be successful in your industry.

Almost no 18 year olds are self disciplined enough to do that without structure. That's the point of college. If you spend 5 years only playing your favorite parts of your favorite songs on a guitar, you're not going to be a good musician. Just like if you spend five years doing the fun parts of programming or engineering or history, you won't be a good programmer, engineer, or historian. College (or an apprenticeshi…

Ok, so you are saying that, since people in general like to do fun things, it takes a lot of self discipline to make yourself learn programming, history, etc, which in general requires doing things that aren't fun. I think you are overlooking something however: people don't just like to do fun things, they also like to make things that are cool (maybe not all people but this is very common in my estimation). And making things that are cool often requires doing boring work and learning boring things, even though the end result is not boring. I find this can be a very powerful source of motivation, so it actually might not take so much discipline as you think.

I would even speculate that how interesting / boring you find something is not static, but that otherwise boring things can start to seem interesting once it's clear that they are relevant to something you want to achieve.

Personally I learnt math mostly from self-study, and I've learnt it well enough that I now have published research (see [1], also [2] is in review and has been recommended for acceptance with revisions by the referee), have been invited to give talks about my research [3][4][5], and have stayed for a few months as a visiting researcher at University of Muenster [6]. I don't consider myself as having a lot of self-discipline; I have a tendency to hit the snooze button many times, to overeat, to let my room get messy, etc. But once I have an idea, I want to flesh it out and share it with other people, which motivates me to do the things that are necessary for this, which are sometimes boring.

[1] http://content.algebraicgeometry.nl/2017-2/2017-2-007.pdf

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07306

[3] https://www.uni-muenster.de/FB10srvi/HotNews/show_artikel.ph...

[4] http://www2.math.binghamton.edu/p/seminars/arit/arit_spring2...

[5] http://www2.math.binghamton.edu/p/seminars/arit/arit_fall201...

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20170121000748/https://wwwmath.u...

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#98

Post by caseysoftware »

solatic wrote: post #52
caseysoftware wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite often investment is delivered in tranches where a chunk of the funds are delivered at different stages as milestones are met. Just like you don't get all the entire student loans at once, you get them year by year assuming your grades/extracurriculars meet the criteria.

But it's not like the children of rich parents end up less spoiled just because their inheritances are released to them over time in a trust fund. And would you really want your parents to be your venture capitalists? Your parents may not be focused on getting to a quick exit like most traditional VC investors, but if the whole point of them releasing the money in tranches is because they don't trust your inexperienc…

If you're waiting until they're ~18 to teach them how to fail, YOU have failed.

There are hundreds of cheaper, safer, and more responsible ways of doing that long before then.

Re: Replacing My Kid’s College Fund with a “Start Something” Fund

#99

Post by Chathamization »

goldfeld wrote: post #30

Sounds like a horrible idea full of assumptions and pressure, as opposed to offering an exploratory period of life that is college (socially and intellectually), a nice option for those who can afford it. Not everyone has to be coaxed into entrepreneurship, it's an evil of our consumerist age. Your kid would probably rather participate in society at large than in your suicidal runway idea of a romanticized youth of m…

> Not everyone has to be coaxed into entrepreneurship

Not everyone has to go to college, either. It's always interesting that these discussions often have people both saying that college made them much more open minded, and heaping derision on unorthodox approaches like these. It's great that some people find college useful for their personal growth. It would be even greater if college also impressed upon those who attended the fact that not everyone is like them and not everyone is going to find it as useful as they did.

When I compare my personal growth, I've found that non-college experiences were much more effective for myself. People talk about learning as a group and having their ideas challenged - I've found that (again, for myself) this is much more effective in groups outside of college, where you get a much greater diversity in terms of age and experience (the relative homogeneity of college might be part of the reason why some of its graduates extol it's virtues as a homogeneous solution). College is also highly structured and hierarchical compared to many other experiences, and I wonder if that's one of the reason why some of its graduates don't see similar opportunities in less structured experiences.

Again, if college works for you, great. But we should stop acting like it works for anyone, or that it's the only approach (or even a particularly good approach) for personal exploration and enrichment.

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