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Silicon Valley is wrong about college

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Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#51

Post by jpdevereaux »

schwabacher wrote: post #29
jpdevereaux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "income ceiling" you mention brings up a potentially interesting idea - why not scale the cost of college according to the expected value of your major? I know that in a broader sense this happens already, as "better" schools tend to be more expensive, but perhaps (to use a cliché example) an English degree and a CS degree shouldn't cost the same.

I think this is a bad idea - salaries paid to different fields are a good (although imperfect) way of measuring the value of those skills to society. If we subsidize education towards less valuable skills at the expense of the most valuable, we end up discouraging people from going into the most needed professions.

Very good point, it seems like a perverse reverse incentive. However I don't think that the earnings of a given field speak to its "value" - as I'm sure any teacher would agree.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#52

Post by roopeshv »

newishuser wrote: post #32
pg wrote: post #25

"Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste." This is false. I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley, and I know no one who says that. Even Peter Thiel, who is arguably the iconic college skeptic, only says that college might not be optimal for everyone.

Silicon Valley is not a thing that can have opinions. He's just being inflammatory.

so then westboro baptist church is not a hate group, thanks for the clarification

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#53

Post by newishuser »

roopeshv wrote: post #52
newishuser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley is not a thing that can have opinions. He's just being inflammatory.

so then westboro baptist church is not a hate group, thanks for the clarification

I have no ability to downvote, so instead I leave my intention. Please try not to be so reactionary. Silicon Valley is a region in California. The Westboro Baptist Church is a private organization.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#54

Post by jmohsenin »

I recently decided not to attend UC Berkeley in favor of starting my career in product design. A lot has already been covered here, but a couple points:

> Got a chance to reboot my education, which was something I really needed to do.

Your entire personal anecdote is based off of you dropping out of high school. One could argue that if you had completed high school, there would be less value in college for you.

> I don't think Gates and Zuckerberg are good role models for young people.

You don't think Bill Gates is a good role model for young people? What's a better role model then one of the world's richest people trying to solve giant social issues? Gates should be a role model to all rich people! Zuck's not there yet, but his recent charitable giving suggests that later in his life he'll follow the same path.

> Most kids who try to be the next billionaire entrepreneur will fail.

When did being an entrepreneur become all about making money? Of all the college dropouts-turned SV kids I know (including myself) money is never the primary driver.

> And if we push the kids toward that, we will lead them to believe, mistakenly, that it's enough to create a massive fortune. It is not enough. And if they fail to create the fortune, according to this standard, they will have failed in life.

What 'standard' are you referring to? I think a lot college students these days understand that money doesn't equal happiness.

I think the author is a bit misguided as to the reasons behind some kids choose not to attend college. Personally, I'm devoted to product design, learn better on my own/with a small team, and affiliate strongly with SV culture. I'm not worried that I'm not going to be 'educated' – I see that as a ten-year, twenty-year, or even lifetime goal.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#55

Post by yummyfajitas »

dullcrisp wrote: post #47
yummyfajitas wrote: post #41

The idea that education will address the problem of the low information voter is nonsensical. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is too low to be represented in double precision arithmetic (last time I did the calculation). Therefore, you have no incentive to vote correctly. Even if education gives you the tools to become a high information voter, why would you bother? Just vote for whichever candidat…

I'm not sure I understand your point. What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%? One votes for the same reasons one refrains from littering in a public park, or gives a few dollars to a charity, or donates blood, or contributes to a Kickstarter campaign, or volunteers to go to war, or pays taxes. Not mainly because of the chance that your i…

What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%?

You need P(affecting outcome) x (value of positive outcome) > cost of voting.

Even assuming the value of a positive outcome is vastly bigger than the size of the world economy (e.g. $10^15, maybe $10^20), P(affecting outcome) is so fantastically low in any state with political leanings that you might as well not bother.

Littering in a public park is a separate issue - the effect of littering is cumulative, whereas the effect of voting is based on a threshold. Your litter makes the park incrementally worse. Donating blood does make a significant measurable difference - one particular person gets your unit of blood, and this helps them avoid death.

A dollar value can be assigned to all the things we've mentioned. Donating blood is worth multiple dollars, littering in a park is probably harmful to the tune of a few pennies. The dollar value of your vote is so small that double precision floats treat it as 0.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#56

Post by ChuckMcM »

davewiner wrote: post #44
pg wrote: post #25

"Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste." This is false. I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley, and I know no one who says that. Even Peter Thiel, who is arguably the iconic college skeptic, only says that college might not be optimal for everyone.

Well, it didn't say "Everyone Paul Graham knows in Silicon Valley says that, exactly." In an attention-deprived environment, we write in shorthand sometimes. I don't have to tell you everything I read that led me to that belief, you can use your own judgement and look it up yourself. You know I sat in the audience when you interviewed Zuck a couple of months ago, and I listened carefully to what you and he said about…

Dave, it would be more accurate to say that a lot has been written about the relative merits of a college education with respect to startups, but that is not evidence for a claim that "Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste."

It would be accurate to say that the question has come up, and been answered many times. As a simple exercise, scan CrunchBase, take the founders, scrape LinkedIn, and find the ones without college degrees. The bulk of people who are funded have college degrees, and if you assume that 'funding' is a proxy for 'values' then by that simple experiment your claim would be disproved.

It would be accurate to say that certain investment agencies, of which Peter Thiel is perhaps the most visible, have decided to weight the value a college education less than other investors, but Peter doesn't represent the "Silicon Valley" any more than Paul does.

The article you link [1] doesn't say anything about not valuing a college education, rather it says a lot about a college trying to maximize its endowment. Your comment about Harvard wanting to "participate in the success of the next Gates ..." isn't even in the linked text, you called it out of some other unmentioned source.

It is a perfectly reasonable argument to make that the people who advocate that a college degree has no value, are wrong. But "Silicon Valley" is not those people.

[1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/experiment-fund-...

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#57

Post by yummyfajitas »

japhyr wrote: post #48
schwabacher wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bad idea - salaries paid to different fields are a good (although imperfect) way of measuring the value of those skills to society. If we subsidize education towards less valuable skills at the expense of the most valuable, we end up discouraging people from going into the most needed professions.

"less valuable skills" That's a pretty loaded statement. Teacher pay is based on years in the system because it is so difficult to measure individual teacher effectiveness, without incentivizing people to pay more attention to the "good" students and marginalize those who are difficult to teach. Salaries are largely dependent on how much economic return the position provides to the employer, not on how valuable the s…

Teacher pay is based on years in the system because it is so difficult to measure individual teacher effectiveness, without incentivizing people to pay more attention to the "good" students and marginalize those who are difficult to teach.

It's politically difficult, not statistically difficult. Statistically VAM does a great job.

Paying attention to the "good" students vs the difficult to teach ones is not enforced by every objective measurement system, it's purely a function of how you compute the teacher's score. There are many choices:

    # focus on the best, ignore the rest
    student_scores.max() 

    # focus on the worst, ignore the rest
    student_scores.min() 

    # Focus on the cheapest improvements possible
    # independent of whether best or worst
    student_scores.mean()

    # Somewhere in between mean and max
    pow(student_scores,K).mean() 
    # 1

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#58

Post by josinalvo »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #55
dullcrisp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your point. What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%? One votes for the same reasons one refrains from littering in a public park, or gives a few dollars to a charity, or donates blood, or contributes to a Kickstarter campaign, or volunteers to go to war, or pays taxes. Not mainly because of the chance that your i…

What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%? You need P(affecting outcome) x (value of positive outcome) > cost of voting. Even assuming the value of a positive outcome is vastly bigger than the size of the world economy (e.g. $10^15, maybe $10^20), P(affecting outcome) is so fantastically low in any state with political leanings that you mig…

We should consider that the process of choosing who to vote to has some other benefits (other than the small probability that your vote is the vote that changes the outcome)

Mostly, there are two things to do before voting: 1) decide your position on multiple issues 2) think about how much the implementation of the system allows your positions to be communicated/counted (so some positions become more important because the system will allow them to have an effect)

both of these actions can be beneficial (and much so). 1 means thinking about life in society 2 means thinking about effective ways of agregating knowledge and preferences in a society

you could think of the elections as a holiday celebrating the fact that we live in a society, and inviting to think about it

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#59

Post by tthomas48 »

It us bizarre to me since the most in demand employees are basically high tech liberal arts. A mix of engineering, art, psychology, and performance is pretty much the killer skill set right now (and I'd imagine in the future. My BA in theater and dance mixed with programming and troubleshooting skills has always been an easy sell when interviewing.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#60

Post by ethioblog »

I mostly agree with you, Dave. I wish you included one more dimension to your thought, the cost of it. Is college education something to pursue at any cost? What is the role of online, self study type of learning? My thinking is: college education is important but NOT at any cost.
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