Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I canceled my college subscription

joshstrange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 58 posts

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#21

Post by kenjackson »

I must admit that I actually just really enjoyed college. While I can appreciate the financial hardship it may impose on some -- if it doesn't for you, it's some of the best years of your life.

You'll be surrounded with peers that are your age. You'll enjoy a very equal male/female ratio (at least in your living quarters and some courses), and you get to study a broad diverse set of topics constantly. And for the most part you get to select what you study.

To steal a famous quote -- college is wasted on the young. ;-) I think if you were to ask most 30-50 year olds if they could drop most of their current responsibilities (with impunity) and go to college full time, the vast majority would.

As someone who has started start-ups, joined start ups, consulted, and worked for F100 companies -- you have your whole life to work. I wouldn't start into it a day earlier than necessary.

With that said, there may be things you love that you can do as a job and things you can do to become very rich very young. I think those opportunities are fewer and rarer than most here believe, but they do exist.

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#22

Post by dougws »

Pent wrote: post #14

I'm of the impression, that for the most part, college is about networking. The material is a side benefit that you could pick up on your own. It feels like he picked up on that(joining the fraternity) and decided the rest wasn't worth the debt.

How on earth did you end up with that impression? While it's true that it's possible to pick up the material on your own, it's the rare individual (I know one) who is actually able to do so completely--and I think this particular guy would say that he would have been much better off had he studied it in school. Teaching yourself CS (and by "CS" I definitely don't mean "building a website in PHP") is really, really hard, and learning it from an expert (in college we call them "professors") is a much more efficient way to go about it unless you're so overwhelmingly brilliant that it's easy for you.

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#23

Post by krschultz »

I agree with him on one thing: if you are getting less than a 2.5 GPA, college is definitely not worth your time or money.

Much like I never urge anyone to vote who doesn't want to, I will never tell people to stay in school if they don't want to. For those that do go to college the experience is far better if your peers want to be there as much as you. People who go 'because that's what you are supposed to do' drag down the class.

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#24

Post by yummyfajitas »

kenjackson wrote: post #16
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...anti-intellectual sentiment growing in the US. The feeling that you can learn it all on your own without anyone telling or anyone's help... How is the idea that you can use your own intellect and educate yourself anti-intellectual?

I think the anti-intellectual sentiment is a bit broader. I'd define it as, "Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do." The anti-intellectual movement is the belief that everyone is biased, and since everyone is biased their scientific position is no more correct than mine. This started more than a decade ago, and I used to joke…

"Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do."

Insofar as it pertains to this conversation, that isn't the belief. The belief regarding college is "I can learn just as well by reading books written by the top experts as I can from listening to third rate experts talk about the topic in person."

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#25

Post by kenjackson »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #24
kenjackson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the anti-intellectual sentiment is a bit broader. I'd define it as, "Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do." The anti-intellectual movement is the belief that everyone is biased, and since everyone is biased their scientific position is no more correct than mine. This started more than a decade ago, and I used to joke…

"Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do." Insofar as it pertains to this conversation, that isn't the belief. The belief regarding college is "I can learn just as well by reading books written by the top experts as I can from listening to third rate experts talk about the topic in person."

I'm not really sure what you mean. The person who posted the anti-intellectual comment was speaking about the growing tide in the US, which is very much about what I posted.

With respect to the article directly, it's really not about reading books written by top experts vs lectures from third rate experts -- unless he's reading CLR or Papadimitriou or Ullman.

Really the article is about vocational education vs a liberal arts education. The complaint isn't, "My harmonic analysis professor clearly doesn't have the understanding of a Terrence Tao". The argument is more like, "In school I'm learning about organic chemistry and b-trees, but what I really want to learn is how to use this new framework to talk to this NoSQL store to display data in this web view. Where's that class?"

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#26

Post by njs12345 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #7
tseabrooks wrote: post #3

I'm not sure I'm ready to get on the Anti-College bandwagon. There's been a rash of Anti-College sentiment around this place lately and while part of me agrees another part of me mourns for all of these students leaving college. I know it may be an unpopular opinion but I doubt most people can get the tools they need for success in many fields (Even software) without a college degree. I'm in no way making the claim t…

Thing is, outside of the US how many computer science people will get a chance to study "the liberal arts" at college? In the UK the idea is that you do all of your academic exploration in the 16-18 bracket and once you start college you already know what you want to do. If you take a CS degree you will get the chance to do maybe 2 outside-of-CS modules in year 3 and most likely these will be something about IT manag…

At my uni (Cambridge) you do your first year of CS in conjunction with another subject, for exactly this reason.

FWIW, I did Physics, but I definitely regretted not picking Psychology or Economics..

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#27

Post by paulhauggis »

kenjackson wrote: post #16
yummyfajitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...anti-intellectual sentiment growing in the US. The feeling that you can learn it all on your own without anyone telling or anyone's help... How is the idea that you can use your own intellect and educate yourself anti-intellectual?

I think the anti-intellectual sentiment is a bit broader. I'd define it as, "Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do." The anti-intellectual movement is the belief that everyone is biased, and since everyone is biased their scientific position is no more correct than mine. This started more than a decade ago, and I used to joke…

"Those people who studied this their whole lives and have degrees and papers in journals don't know more about this topic than I do."

Just because you've studied something your entire life doesn't make you right 100% of the time.

"All those papers published in science journals are by Democrats!"

The problem? Many scientific studies are also political in nature and slant to one way, which is why I start to question many of them. I can see the bias 10 miles away and most people just read it as fact.

You make it sound almost like a religion: I'm not to question the supreme leader (people who are smarter than I am because they've studied a topic their entire lives), I just need to follow it. I will never think this way. Sorry.

I am in no way anti-intellectual. I just refuse to be force-fed things by people claiming to be smarter than me.

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#28

Post by AndrewNCarr »

kenjackson wrote: post #21

I must admit that I actually just really enjoyed college. While I can appreciate the financial hardship it may impose on some -- if it doesn't for you, it's some of the best years of your life. You'll be surrounded with peers that are your age. You'll enjoy a very equal male/female ratio (at least in your living quarters and some courses), and you get to study a broad diverse set of topics constantly. And for the mos…

>I think if you were to ask most 30-50 year olds if they could drop most of their current responsibilities (with impunity) and go to college full time, the vast majority would.

No. Especially not in the "Information Age". This from someone who continues to learn every day, to steal a quote "a day without learning is like a day without sunshine". When you ignore the social-club elements of college and focus on academia, there is never a moment I would drop everything and go back to college full time (or any level of time).

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#29

Post by kylemaxwell »

AndrewNCarr wrote: post #28
kenjackson wrote: post #21

I must admit that I actually just really enjoyed college. While I can appreciate the financial hardship it may impose on some -- if it doesn't for you, it's some of the best years of your life. You'll be surrounded with peers that are your age. You'll enjoy a very equal male/female ratio (at least in your living quarters and some courses), and you get to study a broad diverse set of topics constantly. And for the mos…

>I think if you were to ask most 30-50 year olds if they could drop most of their current responsibilities (with impunity) and go to college full time, the vast majority would. No. Especially not in the "Information Age". This from someone who continues to learn every day, to steal a quote "a day without learning is like a day without sunshine". When you ignore the social-club elements of college and focus on academi…

The only reason I don't quit and go back to grad school full-time for a few years is that I can't afford it. I have a family to support now, and so doing that would be the height of irresponsibility.

It's not that I don't learn every single day now, because I do and I love that. But I can't focus single-mindedly on learning stuff because it's either cool or a stepping stone to learning cool stuff. That's what I miss.

Re: Why I canceled my college subscription

#30

Post by kylemaxwell »

If you treat your time in university as job training, then maybe it's not worth doing. But if you treat it as a time to learn about a whole lot of new things - including all those core subjects that so many 19-year-olds gripe about - and a time to dabble socially in environments you might not otherwise have, then it's a different matter.

The post makes reference to the author enjoying being part of a fraternity. Indeed, his blog subtitle is "the musings of an undergrad fraternity man". This is part of his identity for the moment, and now he wants to walk away from it because it's not helping him careerwise.

TL;DR: if you think education is just about your career, then you missed the point somewhere along the way.

Post reply on HN