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College was my biggest mistake

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Re: College was my biggest mistake

#101

Post by chmike »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #78

Oh come on. I just feel like this is another in a series of "let's indict education" posts. I take issue with everything in here. $44,000 a year for tuition, why? Why did you choose that school if you had no intention of studying? You can teach yourself more in an afternoon than in a 10-week class? Really, let's prove it. I want to see it. You made basically all Fs but yet you can teach yourself more in an afternoon…

The autor is clearly talking of his own experience. He is not generalizing and trying to convince everybody to drop out of college.

My experience is that after 5 years of professionnal activity college is not relevant anymore as long as one kept learning and gaining experience.

It is what you've done and accomplished that will make the difference and get you closer to success.

Beside 44k$/year + interests is far too expensive for what cellege gives you. I fully agree with the OP. This puts you in the rat race from the start. It will be very hard to get out of it. That's not a path to success.

The idea that a college degre is a step closer to success is plain wrong.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#102

Post by kyberias »

It's kinda sad that you have to pay that much for an education. In other countries, for example in Scandinavia, higher education is free (with the cost of higher taxes of course). Although, some people in IT still choose to skip it. It shows.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#104

Post by luu »

ipince wrote: post #73

"I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former. Don't do this. You think you're gaining respect or credibility, but in actuality you're losing it.

This thread is full of people who think this is impossible, but it's not. I pretty much did that when I was in school, and I had about a 60% chance of an A and a 30% chance of a B, according to my GPA.

I wasn't quite as quick as the poster -- the total amount of effort I put into a course probably amounted to 2-3 days of work, including time spent in classes and exams. But, I knew people who were easily an order of magnitude more productive than I was; for them, it would have been an afternoon of work. If you read quickly, you can finish reading a textbook in an afternoon. The extra time I burned was the time it took to work through enough exercises to convince myself that I really got the material. For some really easy classes, I only had to do one exercise per section to convince myself that I knew it, so it ended up being just one afternoon. There are plenty of people who are smarter than I am, who could do every class that way. I don't know if the writer of the original article is one of those people, but it doesn't sound implausible to me.

Just for reference, I went to Wisconsin, which is approximately as rigorous as RIT, and I double majored in math and computer engineering, which are both comparable to CS. But, I graduated in three years and my tuition was a few thousand a year, so the total was was easily covered by an engineering internship. At a place like Wisconsin, you might as well stick around and get the degree -- after all, it's only a month or two of total effort, and you can easily make enough to cover the degree from doing internships, or working as an RA on campus or even at Starbucks. If the price tag were $44k a year, I probably would have dropped out, too.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#105

Post by lsc »

aik wrote: post #80
sp332 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job lead I got from my college advisor alone was worth the opportunity cost. And the humanities classes opened my mind up in ways wikipedia just can't dream of.

Yeah that's exactly the part that is so hard to quantify -- the liberal arts component. The purpose of all gen eds is basically to "open your mind", ie. to refine you as a human being. But what high school student goes to college for this purpose? Or a better question, what high school student truly knows that, or understands what that means? The only thing ever discussed seems to be how job-ready you are at graduati…

I love how so many liberals that would never dream of insulting someone for being poor have this attitude that if you didn't go to college, you are some kind of uncultured hick. Somehow beneath all those baristas with hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt.

>The only thing ever discussed seems to be how job-ready you are at graduation time.

This is the opposite of what I saw before the recession. Maybe I am hanging out with wealthier people than you are? or maybe you are just too young to remember a time before the recession. I don't know. As far as I can tell, at least until the recession hit, considering how much money you'd make when you got out of college was considered extremely déclassé. College was all about finding yourself and becoming a better-educated person. Only the uneducated, uncouth hicks actually thought about money. How gauche!

Of course, now with the recession on, a whole lot more people find it impossible to pretend to not be poor, and actually taking steps to see to it that you can feed yourself later in life are gaining some social acceptance.

Personally, I'd say that I learned a very similar lesson to the barista when I bought a BMW during the first dot-com. You see, pretending to be rich is really expensive.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#106

Post by smsm42 »

In my experience, I almost never look into "education" part of the CV when interviewing. I do ask questions which are taught in decent CS courses, but I couldn't care less, if the answer is right, about where it came from. Degree is just a piece of paper, it is knowledge and skills that matter.

I have a CS degree and I think it gave me a lot and helped a lot in my professional advancement. However, this way of learning is not for everybody, and I do see how somebody could have acquired the same knowledge and skills without any formal framework. I probably could not - and I know that if I join any formal framework, even free no-commitment one like Coursera - I learn much more effectively than if I just try to do it by myself. But for many people it is the opposite, and these people can be and often are more successful than I am.

So formal education is very useful - for some. For some it is not, so I completely understand why OP thinks it was his biggest mistake and I think he has made the right decision for him. I'd suggest him to try some free education though - like Coursera or many other major colleges have now free online course. You don't get the degree, but you do get the knowledge, and that's IMHO much more valuable.

OTOH, the formal degree may also be usable for some big companies and some other things (e.g. immigration, for those that want to live in different country than they were born in) - but one can do without it too.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#107

Post by re_todd »

marknutter wrote: post #45
rmk2 wrote: post #13

The most interesting thing about this is the feedback loop. These kind of stories seem to strike a chord and in turn more people will post about this. Yet the discussion always goes along the same lines. The problem is that all of these are unavoidably anecdotal in nature and thus something that is basically impossible to discuss. Sure, it might have worked out for some and might not have worked out for others. The p…

I think these types of posts are becoming popular because we all grew up under the belief that college was the only way to become successful, and it's becoming increasingly clear that not only is that not true, it can be harmful in some cases. This is a big shift from the thinking of previous generations and probably amplified by the current looming student loan crisis and poor economy. Yes, college works for some an…

I think you have a good point. I grew up never hearing anything negative about college, only positive things. All the adults I knew, when I was young, who went to college had nice houses, cars, vacations, etc. Then me and some friends went to college, and many of us were not so fortunate. Bearing large debt that keeps us close to poverty, seeing people that have almost half our IQ, half our discipline, half our ethics making more money than us ... it was a shockingly rude awakening. And when people have such a shift in thinking, we are drawn to articles that try to explain and make sense of our shattered perceptions (kind of like a Phillip K. Dick novel).

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#108

Post by greesil »

College rocked! I dorked out with some really smart people, learned a fuckton, got laid somehow, and after paying teh dues got a fabulous job. At the time, state school didn't cost so much, so no debt! Blah dee blah, good for you no-college man.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#109

Post by agibsonccc »

There is always an opportunity cost. I did a startup over last summer and dropped out to focus on it, and I have learned exponentially more since being out. I still advocate an education, because I wouldn't have had the base to learn on my own after that. Being a self funded scientist rather than a student has been more more interesting/beneficial. I still learn every day (business and tech side..)

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#110

Post by hack_edu »

luu wrote: post #104
ipince wrote: post #73

"I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week class." This is either outright bullshit, or your college was complete crap. Most likely the former. Don't do this. You think you're gaining respect or credibility, but in actuality you're losing it.

This thread is full of people who think this is impossible, but it's not. I pretty much did that when I was in school, and I had about a 60% chance of an A and a 30% chance of a B, according to my GPA. I wasn't quite as quick as the poster -- the total amount of effort I put into a course probably amounted to 2-3 days of work, including time spent in classes and exams. But, I knew people who were easily an order of m…

No, its still not possible. There is a big difference between dedicating 10 weeks of thought and consideration to plumb the depths of a subject and simply being able to fake that effort in order to pass a test for a grade. You and the OP did the latter. Nothing wrong with it but in the end you're just fooling yourself, your professors, and anyone who puts value in your degree.
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