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College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

nytimes.com

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Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#351

Post by aarongough »

awalton wrote: post #200
aarongough wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a degree and honestly have never had any issues with recruiters or interviews for intermediate/senior 'software engineering' positions. I never represent myself as having a degree, but I don't go out of my way to point out my lack of degree either. Never once in an interview have I been asked about my education. One nice thing about software development positions is the interview process tends to be meri…

Because, of course, your experiences are universal to all of humanity. My own personal anecdotal evidence is contrary; I had to get a college degree before anyone would give me so much as a callback (and the one time I got more than that, it ended with a pathetic offer - with the justification given that "You don't have a college degree"). All of this despite having years of proven open source contributions.

I think it's fairly obvious that I didn't mean this situation would apply to everyone, I just wanted to supply another view/data-point.

Out of curiosity, what does your github look like? I know you said you have a lot of open source contributions, but what about personal projects on your github?

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#352

Post by Andre_Wanglin »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #277

The statistics in this opinion piece are cherry picked to hell. "People who have dropped out of college — about 40 percent of all who attend — earn only a bit more than do people with only a high school education: $38,376 a year versus $35,256." A small difference between college drop out salary vs high school diploma salary only says that the key is to actually get a degree. half of a degree is worth much less than…

>A small difference between college drop out salary vs high school diploma salary only says that the key is to actually get a degree. half of a degree is worth much less than half of what a full degree is worth. That doesn't say anything about how much a degree is worth really.

But the debt remains whether you attain a degree or not. For marginal students, this is useful information as it should give them even greater pause before matriculation.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#353

Post by gaius »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #324
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ...they even went so far as to say it didn’t even matter what you studied!... > ...They weren't wrong. The sheer number of people who have had their resumes ignored simply because they don't have a degree of some sort attests to that. This doesn't imply that having any degree would have gotten their resumes looked at, or secured them an interview.

The amount of people working as programmers with degrees in non computer science related fields does kind of imply that, though.

The amount of people working as programmers with degrees in non computer science related fields does kind of imply that, though

My first degree is in Mech Eng, I think there are very few people in that field without a relevant degree. Computing is the exception, not the rule!

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#354

Post by gaius »

SilasX wrote: post #203
gaius wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, they even went so far as to say it didn’t even matter what you studied! That is why you should never take career advice from someone who ended up as a careers adviser....

Not sure if joking, but I agree, in a general sense. For skills above a certain level/specialization, I don't like the idea of a "full time, career teacher". In order to really ground the lessons/advice they're giving, they need to be a practicioner[1] too -- otherwise, your questions will get answered with "... that's what the book says" or some rationalization of some idiosyncratic ritual they favor. That doesn't i…

I don't like the idea of a "full time, career teacher".

This one - I still remember her name but I won't doxx her obv - I happen to know had gone from school to university to teacher training to my school. She had never been outside the education system in her entire life. But her job was to advise 16- and 18-year olds on how to set themselves up for career success...

(I think she also taught Home Ec or some similar fluffy subject)

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#355

Post by Andre_Wanglin »

chasing wrote: post #8

The issue isn't that college is pointless, it's that tuition is too high and wages too low. You should support politicians with a plan to counter this trend. Education is important. Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.

>Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.

I envision a day where everyone enjoys the "right" to a PhD. We will be very smart then, won't we?

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#356

Post by tropo »

jacquesm wrote: post #57

There are two ways to interpret that, one way is 'let's not go to college' but the better way to interpret it is 'let's make going to college cheaper (or even free)'.

Colleges are not interested in that.

Accreditation won't allow the required changes. Of course, accreditation is controlled by the existing members of the club; colleges don't want accreditation to allow radical change.

Aside from that political difficulty, cutting the cost of a degree in half is trivial: get rid of the non-major classes. I suppose this applies even to non-STEM majors; there is little justification for making an English major take a class on differential equations.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#357

Post by akhilcacharya »

SilasX wrote: post #94
awalton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is probably a good thing, since it will slowly beat into the minds of upper-levels at corps and recruiters that a College Degree shouldn't be the minimum bar applicants need to reach, and maybe some of these companies will start removing the "has degree" band reject filter.

Yes, my HS counselor, in speeches to students at assemblies (c.1999), was constantly saying "It doesn't matter which college you go to, but you absolutely must get a degree."

This is such awful advice. In my mind, your university matters as much if not more than what you study.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#358

Post by s73v3r_ »

refurb wrote: post #346
s73v3r_ wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is not at all under attack at universities. What's happening is that shitty people are no longer able to say shitty things without being called out on it. That's what they're upset about.

Your first sentence and last two are contradictory.

No, they absolutely are not. One person using their free speech to call out another person for something shitty they said is not "attacking" their free speech. It's exercising free speech. The only way you can believe those sentences are contradictory is if you believe that only some people have free speech, and everyone else just has to sit there and listen to it.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#359

Post by learc83 »

replicatorblog wrote: post #331
blueseaadmin wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My own daughter will be going into the Air Force in a couple of years. She's not one that would do well in the college environment. She fits in best where she is a part of something bigger than herself where there is guidance and discipline (like most kids). If she goes in at 18 after high school, she can earn a degree in 2.5 years at night in the Air Force. After her first 4 years she can choose to get out,…

I 100% agree with this advice. I think one challenge is that now that the military has essentially become a soldierly caste in American culture, and one that's heavily concentrated in specific geographies, many don't know about what's involved with a career in the armed forces. It's not for everyone, but it would likely be a better decision for some major chunk of the population who'd otherwise flail in a college env…

>some major chunk of the population

There's about 1.3 million active service members.

There are more than 200 million Americans of military age.

I wouldn't call that a major chunk.

Even if you look at the number of people who've served for any length of time at all, the number is very low. It's not a viable option for a significant portion of the population, because personel numbers are capped.

Re: College May Not Be Worth It Anymore

#360

Post by verisimilitude »

Frondo wrote: post #115
mtberatwork wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that there was a time when you could have worked that factory job during the summer to pay for the next year's tuition. I'm sure you would concede that this is much more reasonable than working a full time job on top of a full time university load.

An ex had a grandfather who put himself through school, including dental school and the extra 3 years for a specialty in orthodontics, working a summer job. And he complains about his grandkids needing to go into debt. They don't realize how the world's changed in the last 50 years...

That's super-interesting to me because I came out of undergrad with $0 in debt... and I came out of dental school with $280,000 in debt.
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