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College was my biggest mistake

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Re: College was my biggest mistake

#141

Post by maigret »

chmike wrote: post #101
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…

I am European, so I really don't get that. Why don't you try to make education cheaper? Why are you taking it as granted that university must cost x 10000's dollars a year? Out here outside of UK it is mostly around 1000 Eur max a year.

Having free higher ed changes the picture. When you are from a middle class family it is your ticket to maintain or even climb the social ladder. Even if for some people, the education content is less useful, then you get a huge lots of social interactions that you don't get elsewhere, and probably not out of a online learning offering.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#142

Post by RealGeek »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #114
RealGeek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_t... and http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/thestory.htm... > How are kids that can't read going A picture is worth a thousand words.

No. :) That's interesting and wonderful but does not prove anything about this discussion. I haven't watched the whole but I saw the description, learn to use a PC. OK, there is a big difference between learning to use something and that designed with "usability" in mind and learning CS, physics, chemistry, law, medicine, whatever.

I learned most of what I know from Internet. Not just programming; but arts, science, mathematics etc.

I agree, basic schooling is very important; there is no replacement for it. College / University education is nice to have, but it is not must.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#143

Post by dasil003 »

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…

Well the poster failed out. There's no proof that he even was able to learn the material at all, let alone in an afternoon.

This whole attitude that you are above college is just ridiculous. You get out of college what you put in. If it's really so easy, and you are so self-motivated, then you would put in your 15 mins a week to get your degree with the understanding of the benefit of the diploma, and then pursue your own self studies / startup / career on the side. Or if the cost-benefit isn't there you just don't go. You don't go, and then fail out, and then make excuses about how you were too good for it. That's not to say you can't game the system what with grade inflation and easy classes, but that's not a true indication of the potential value of college.

I found the early CS classes extremely easy as well, you know why? Because I've been programming since I was 10, so of course the class is going to have to move a little slow to allow beginners to grok pointers and recursion. It doesn't matter how smart you are, you have to turn it over in your head for a while, which some of us happened to do before college. On the other hand, by year 3 when I was taking 5000-level Networking, Graphics, and Compilers it was definitely not so easy, and I guarantee neither you nor any of your brilliant friends would be plowing through that material 10 times faster than the course was designed.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#144

Post by junto »

For me personally, college wasn't about academic learning. It was about personal growth and making a lot of mistakes (and learning from them).

Before university I programmed for the love of coding. My four years at university ripped the programming soul out of me. A year after university I regained that love again and started learning on the job as an apprentice programmer.

Everything since then has been learnt off my own back, via the internet, or from my peers and work colleagues.

Education, especially learning how to develop software applications, is not taught well in traditional "red-brick" British universities. That may well have changed since my days some 20 years ago, but back then it was all theoretical lectures and very little practice. I was not inspired by anyone nor aspired to become anything better during those four years (from an academic perspective).

Don't get me wrong, university isn't a place where you get you should expect to be hand held through your studies. Personal drive is absolutely required. College isn't high school where you get hassled for your home work submissions. However, good mentors and inspirational tutors would have made the whole thing much more attractive.

That aside, there is one thing I have learnt that I would happily pass on; it is to never assume someone that didn't go to college isn't as smart as you are. I work with several very smart people. Regarding two in particular, one went to Oxford and the other didn't go to university at all. Both amaze me every day with their abilities to tackle hard technical problems.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#145

Post by ninguem2 »

maigret wrote: post #141
chmike wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am European, so I really don't get that. Why don't you try to make education cheaper? Why are you taking it as granted that university must cost x 10000's dollars a year? Out here outside of UK it is mostly around 1000 Eur max a year. Having free higher ed changes the picture. When you are from a middle class family it is your ticket to maintain or even climb the social ladder. Even if for some people, the educatio…

European universities are cheap because they are government subsidized. The US has state schools that, once upon a time, were partially subsidized and cheaper, but not quite free. State governments have stopped giving money to these universities forcing them to raise tuition. This is a political decision, is what the voters want, even though it might not be in their best interest. It would be nice to have low cost universities in the US but is not going to happen in the near future.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#146

Post by leoedin »

I studied aerospace engineering at college. I think it was great.

When faced with a large amount of work to do, it's easy to dismiss it. It's not so easy to actually do it. When I realised that (unlike high school) I actually had to do work to pass (and letting down extended family by failing wasn't really an option), I managed to work out how to apply myself to things that I didn't necessarily enjoy. Interestingly, when you actually apply yourself to a course what once seemed like a pile of uninteresting work to slog through starts to become interesting.

I've had plenty of courses that I wouldn't have learnt about myself. It's not until you force yourself to spend a semester studying something that you realise just how useful it can be in other areas of your life.

It was only really the last two years of my degree that I went from sort-of enjoying it to truly enjoying it. Sometimes there's a bit of a slog to get through before you can do interesting things. Engineering degrees (and probably computer science degrees) are like that. You have to learn the (often dull) basics before you learn the interesting things. The author makes the mistake of assuming that their experience (one year of OK performance followed by a year of not going to classes) is indicative of the college experience. That's not necessarily true.

Beyond academics, I got so much out of college in many ways. The ability to spend a year studying in another country, the wide range of people I met, the opportunities that I had to work with lots of people on interesting projects. College isn't just about going to classes and doing exams.

My degree didn't cost nearly as much as the authors one would have. I don't think I would have paid $40,000/year for my degree. However, there's plenty of options that don't cost that much that offer the same (or similar) teaching experience. I completely agree that college isn't for everyone, but I don't think the author really addresses why. What the article really says is that they didn't apply themselves very well to hard topics that they weren't interested in. Unfortunately not everything is instantly fun.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#147

Post by evilissimo »

I actually have never been in college nor in 'high school'. I have attended a secondary school in germany and continued with being chef. Later I started learning to program on my own, because computers have been always fascinating to me, especially writing software. By the age of 24 I applied for a free lance job. The company I have been working for has employed me after two months and let go all other freelancers :D Now 6 years later I am team leader in the development department of AVG Technologies. However now going to RedHat to pursue new paths :)

I can second that it is not really necessary to have a degree in computer science, maths or physics or anything to get a job. If you are good and you show passion you might get a job easier than you might think :-)

A little advice to Recruiters/HR people: Stop filtering out people based on their degrees, you're missing out on good opportunities by doing so.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#148

Post by wccrawford »

I ended up paying $23k for a piece of paper that I'm pretty sure hasn't done me any good. I learned a little, but not much, and I could have learned it on my own anyhow. Most of it I already knew.

Yet I'm still not willing to say I wasted that time and money. There's still some chance that it'll turn out to be really valuable, and getting through the system helped with some of my issues with valuation of my own abilities.

When I eventually got a job, they didn't care about my paperwork. In fact, my resume was worse than the other candidate's, and they said so. What got me the job was the BrainBench tests they put me through. Without those, I would not have gotten that first job. (Actually, it was the second, but the first was rather non-traditional and before college.)

Anyhow, I think the value of these anecdotes is to let people know that there are alternatives to traditional education. It's not right for everyone, or even most people, but you shouldn't feel railroaded into it. If you have the skills to do the job already, you should consider just going and getting a job, instead.

Re: College was my biggest mistake

#150

Post by jetti »

Like most things, you get what you put into college. If you aren't going into it with the idea that you want to be there, chances are you won't come away with as positive an outlook as somebody who did want to be there. With that in mind, I think the title should be "Don't spend money on things you don't want to do" but then, I guess nobody would click on the link...
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