Even if you look at Zuckerberg, he hedged his bets quite a bit. He went to Harvard, started facebook, then worked on it full time for a summer, and even when he decided he wasn't going to go back in the fall, it could easily have been just a year off.
Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
31–40 of 123 posts
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#32It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational backgro…
"Some of the comments go so far as to claim that higher education is this era's biggest scam, which is an extremely ignorant view."
There is a gigantic difference between medical school and University of Phoenix.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#33It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational backgro…
Out of the 3 pursuits you mentioned explicitly, I think only one of them actually truly benefits from the education system: medicine. With finance, the fundamentals are easily learned by self study, and to excel really depends more on personality type and drive than stuff that's taught in school. Law you can absolutely self study, there's plenty who've passed the bar exam without a degree in the past, though it's harder these days now that a lot of bar associations require a degree before you can sit for the test. That's likely due to favors to law schools rather than any real qualification reason.
Some other fields do certainly benefit from the resources a university provide though. With many engineering and science subjects, lab work is pretty key to understanding, and you're not going to have to resources to do that on your own general. Computer science is an exception here, since computers are pretty readily available.
However, with the rise of grade inflation and the general dumbing down of university curricula, for a lot of subjects your average school just doesn't confer much actual value.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#34There's just 2 problems with Vivek's position - 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…
Who the heck in their right mind spends $100k (on average) on an undergraduate degree?!
My local state university offers a decent education for 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.
$100k for an education...ridiculous.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#35It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational backgro…
"Some of the comments go so far as to claim that higher education is this era's biggest scam, which is an extremely ignorant view." There is a gigantic difference between medical school and University of Phoenix.
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Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#36It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational backgro…
"Some of the comments go so far as to claim that higher education is this era's biggest scam, which is an extremely ignorant view." There is a gigantic difference between medical school and University of Phoenix.
I don't think anyone is arguing (on HN at least) that U of P is at all a legitimate education, but surely you can appreciate that even someone who gets a degree from a state school would develop some critical thinking skills, regardless of their major. Going to college just teaches you how to learn and illustrates that you can. Some majors are definitely more valuable/productive than others, but I still think all of them are beneficial. Of course, you need to way the cost vs. benefit ratio on an individual basis because it's probably not useful to take out $130,000 in debt for say a Sociology degree.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#37I think that saying something like "dropping out of college increases your chance of success in a startup, just look at the Forbes 'Richest People in America' list" is a huge fallacy. Let's face it, most college dropouts will not become billionaires.
But, there are exceptions.
I recently went through the Forbes billionaire list and picked out everyone that made their fortune through technology. I found that about ~35% had no Bachelor's degrees and ~55% had no Master's degrees. Then I looked at the top 7 on the list and saw that more than 50% did not have Bachelor's degrees. It is also interesting to note that billionaire college dropouts are worth $9bn on average, compared to billionaires with Ph.D.'s, worth an average of $3bn.
Most college dropouts don't become billionaires. But, an overwhelming number of tech billionaires are college dropouts. Interesting...
Why is there such a high percentage of tech billionaires that are college dropouts? My theory is that there are people that are born entrepreneurs and will become billionaires whichever path they take in life. Most of these people are very smart, and, as a result, end up going to Ivy Leagues. But, a time comes (usually around age 19 or sophomore year in college), when something just wakes up in them and they decide to drop out and take the plunge. These are the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.
Dropping out of college does not increase your chances of success. If you look at statistics, it decreases your chances. It's just that the born entrepreneurs "wake up" right around age 19-20 (which happens to be right in the middle of college), and end up dropping out. Only if you are in this tiny group of born entrepreneurs would it make sense for you to drop out of college.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#38I think that saying something like "dropping out of college increases your chance of success in a startup, just look at the Forbes 'Richest People in America' list" is a huge fallacy. Let's face it, most college dropouts will not become billionaires. But, there are exceptions. I recently went through the Forbes billionaire list and picked out everyone that made their fortune through technology. I found that about ~35…
This successful entrepreneur probably would have ended up somewhere else if he had been able to get a job with a criminal record. Sometimes life happens and people are forced to become entrepreneurs.
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#39It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational backgro…
"Some of the comments go so far as to claim that higher education is this era's biggest scam, which is an extremely ignorant view." There is a gigantic difference between medical school and University of Phoenix.
And between getting training on a job where you actually do the work involved and "watching videos online".
Re: Students: You Are Probably Not Mark Zuckerberg, So Stay In School
#40An under-emphasized detail is what your college's policy is on leave-of-absences, or allowing dropouts to return. For me, dropping out to try my first startup and returning to school after it failed was literally filling out a single-sided form when I left and filling out a similar single-sided form when I wanted to return. If it's that easy at your college, the risk of dropping out is extremely small, so if you have an idea you are passionate about and the opportunity to execute on it, you may as well try. I'll bet somebody told Mark Zuckerberg that he was probably not Bill Gates, so he should probably stay in school.