College Is A Waste. Replace It With Y Combinator

All in all, I don't feel that the program is a total bust. Thanks to an endowment from an alumni, I have a free subscription to magazines such as Inc. and Small Business, an all-inclusive trip to an Entrepreneurship conference once a year, and access to a center for entrepreneurship that provides counseling and training from experienced professionals. If anything, my degree provides me resources similar to what is offered at YC (without the prestige, quality, and seed funding).

Imagine a car which gets 8 MPG and breaks down every day. Now, you know this car sucks, so you criticize it constantly. But then the car manufacturer hits back: "Cars are necessary. Cars help you get places faster. Cars are comfortable and private."

Of course, you know all this. You're not opposed to the idea of using a vehicle for fast transportation; you're just opposed to what passes for a car today.

And so it is with college. I oppose the standard model for universities which prevails in today's world (largely due to state support): four years, classes, lectures, A-F grades, rigid structure, and so on.

I do NOT oppose learning, education, networking, socializing, relaxing, and having fun. In fact, I think all of those things can be done better with a radically different school system. So please don't keep telling me college provides all this. Some of us do think today's colleges do such a bad job that you're better off not going even if you miss out on some things. But that doesn't mean we actually want everyone to miss out on these experiences as an ideal.

However, I stuck to it. It's only recently that I've discovered that all that set theory, automata theory, and architecture theory has actually made me a much better programmer than I would have been otherwise.

On the other hand, a CS major alone will not make you a good programmer. You must also program in your spare time, continuously, constantly learning, whether it be work or personal projects.

I am, currently, going to college. I have quite a bit of debt ($8K) and expect to get about double that by the time I'm finished. If you can show me a way to pay for college without debt, and I actually get the money, I will pay you $25 for every $100 I receive. So, if you can show me a way to get $200,000 for college (which I would have to come up with, somehow, if I weren't fortunate enough to get some scholarship money), you would get $50,000. If you can show me a way to get $20,000 to pay off my current and future debt, you'll get $5,000.

I can predict in advance, with fairly high probability (although I would obviously be delighted to be proven wrong), that you won't be able to come up with any way for me to get that sort of money, even given that you probably have more experience than I do, and even given an immediate large financial incentive. The reason why is obvious: $200,000, or even $20,000, is a crapton of money, especially when you're young, have no to little experience and are working hard as a full-time student. Most adults- people who have had full-time jobs for ten or twenty or thirty years- pay for items that cost that much on credit, because they can't afford it otherwise, even though they get socked with finance charges when they borrow.