Live data from Hacker News

A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

theatlantic.com

11–20 of 497 posts

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#11
The article spends a little time, in the middle on the headline assertion "College does not guarantee Happiness"

But spends more time on an anecdote about the author's son to demonstrate that "Happiness is possible without College", which is a different matter entirely. And one would hope the latter is true, since 2/3 of the US population does not attend college.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#12

Colleges have become massive businesses whose purpose is to jam kids through to graduation (thus maximize tuition fees). Most kids don't really want to be there. Both parties are incentivized to "get through it". When a large number of young people have degrees obtained this way, is it any wonder the value is diminished? It's a shame, because I loved (and continue to love) higher education.

Is it really true that, in the US, many college students don't want to be there but go nonetheless, despite having to pay absurd amounts of money? Where I study, uni is basically free, and I've met very few people in my degree who don't want to be there. This seems absurd to me.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#13
post #4

Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades. Successful people move to Y.

The big question is "what is Y in this case"?

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#14
post #4

Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades. Successful people move to Y.

This. Just substitute goverment with society/market/evolution. Government is too small a fish for this phenomenon.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#15
post #9

Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it. It would help people to realize any thing one does has an expiry date to it. This is why you need to have a system to remain consistent at some broad goals. Things like good eating, exercise, personal finance, relationships, reading and learning have to be done consistently, and have to be done th…

Does it follow that you see basically no value in community colleges and other "low-prestige" public institutions whose participants are predominantly from outside of any aspirationally-aristocratic subculture?

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#16
If you are facing minimum of £27k tuition debt in England which AFAIK gathers interest from day one I would probably skip it. And it's even worse in the US.

As far as webdev goes, you could do a bootcamp and be earning money within 6 months to a year. That's money that's hopefully going into your pension fund and earning interest while your peers are still in class.

Or you could learn to code using cheap and/or free resources. College isn't the only place to learn things nowadays and I think a lot of people haven't caught up with that yet.

I used to think nothing could beat the college experience for bonding but I think the formula of lots of people doing the same thing every day in a niche environment they want to be in is easily repeatable. I'm still in contact with digital nomads I hung out with in Bansko two years ago and I was only there for a month. But it was an intense month of seeing each other every day, just like college.

Oh and don't worry about not finding a dev job if you don't go to college. Employers are coming around slowly and there are lots of success stories out there: www.nocsdegree.com

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#17

If you are facing minimum of £27k tuition debt in England which AFAIK gathers interest from day one I would probably skip it. And it's even worse in the US. As far as webdev goes, you could do a bootcamp and be earning money within 6 months to a year. That's money that's hopefully going into your pension fund and earning interest while your peers are still in class. Or you could learn to code using cheap and/or free…

Oh and this article could have been written 15 years ago.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#18
post #9

Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it. It would help people to realize any thing one does has an expiry date to it. This is why you need to have a system to remain consistent at some broad goals. Things like good eating, exercise, personal finance, relationships, reading and learning have to be done consistently, and have to be done th…

Does it follow that you see basically no value in community colleges and other "low-prestige" public institutions whose participants are predominantly from outside of any aspirationally-aristocratic subculture?

Of course if you are rich you are always going to have means and mechanisms to connect with the peer rich. I'm guessing once you move out of Ivy leagues, you will always the board rooms and golf courses to continue your networking.

I'm talking more on the lines of normal people, from normal families. For people like us, education means some thing very different. Its like initial exposure to an experience we must maintain all life.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#19

Colleges have become massive businesses whose purpose is to jam kids through to graduation (thus maximize tuition fees). Most kids don't really want to be there. Both parties are incentivized to "get through it". When a large number of young people have degrees obtained this way, is it any wonder the value is diminished? It's a shame, because I loved (and continue to love) higher education.

Is it really true that, in the US, many college students don't want to be there but go nonetheless, despite having to pay absurd amounts of money? Where I study, uni is basically free, and I've met very few people in my degree who don't want to be there. This seems absurd to me.

My relevant experience is twenty years stale, but I'd say yes, absolutely, there are a lot of people who go to college in the US despite not actually wanting to. I saw it in many of my high-school cohort, even as they expressed their grave concern to me about my evident disinterest in doing likewise. (It was an interesting kind of place, the high school where I graduated. Early in my time there, the first person who took me aside to ask why, despite evident intelligence, I seemed not to apply myself in class, was the head of the cheerleading squad.)

If anything, I'd say the rate of people attending college despite not wanting to can only have increased since then. The assumption that college is an absolute necessity for a comfortable middle-class life has only in the last few years come into serious question, and still has yet to face anything like the inquisition it deserves.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#20

The article spends a little time, in the middle on the headline assertion "College does not guarantee Happiness" But spends more time on an anecdote about the author's son to demonstrate that "Happiness is possible without College", which is a different matter entirely. And one would hope the latter is true, since 2/3 of the US population does not attend college.

Hard to blame a third-generation academic for being surprised that happiness is possible without college.
Post reply on HN