Where there is a will , there is a way!!1
The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
11–20 of 93 posts
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#12At 22, he must have his B.Tech. Pretending to not have gone ... is this some hipster/ironic brand-building shtick?
Your unwillingness to accept reality doesn't make reality any less real.
Plenty of talented people who have been fortunate enough to have parents that didn't trample their dreams (and potential) have gone one to become successful in their own right without the aid of a degree.
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#13This isn't specific to Indian culture. There are several cultures that will emphasize college degrees over entrepreneurship. I know this is hard to understand from a fairly successful entrepreneur's perspective but the cold hard truth is that most entrepreneurs fail. This is what causes the whole 'it's safer to get a college degree' mentality. I've been an entrepreneur (fairly successful) since I was 13. Yet my folks…
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Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#14Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…
>> Getting a decent "education" is the easiest way to get a job
The traditional education system WAS the easiest way to get a job. Nowadays, it is the easiest way NOT to get a job.
Step 1: Download the 10 books x 4 (years) = 40 books of the average university degree. Step 2: Unless it's mathematics, it is just literature. Read it. Step 3: Sit the 10 x 4 exams at an online college.
In most developed countries, you have just managed NOT to spend 100 000 USD and NOT to waste 4 years of your life. All of this sounds useless, and it probably is equally useless, but at least it is not as time-consuming nor as expensive as the traditional alternative.
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#15University is not a way to give people jobs. It is a way to prevent people from getting jobs. These universities have a problem now. They were not capable of preventing the poster from getting a job in computing, game platforms and other such enterpreneurial fields, because there is no "Medical association of game programmers" demanding that you first waste a decade of your life. They cannot control the internet and prevent people from leading their own lives as they please. So, now they are frustrated ...
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#16Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…
I agree. It's hard to see the usefullness of a degree in a poor 3rd world country if you wasn't born in one. Nowadays it's possible to be an entrepeneur with somebody elses money, the internet, kickstater and the apple app-store, but all those things are unavailable in india.
In a huge 3rd world country, a degree is obviously useful. It's a gov-issued certification, a way to transfer trust from the person having the degree to the government. You don't need to trust the guy because the government says he can code. If you don't see why that's useful probably you never had 10000 applications sent to you.
The problem with degree inflation is the same as any other kind of inflation, it lowers (devaluates?) the value of the degree.
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#17Firstly being entrepreneur and going to college are not orthogonal goals. Secondly for any poor person in India, without any funding or support. No infrastructure, no exposure and having to fight a historic burden of poverty in the family. Not getting a college education means, the guy will eventually end up working at a tailor's shop or a garage or driver. Working whole life only to hope his son breaks of the cycle…
>> Getting a decent "education" is the easiest way to get a job The traditional education system WAS the easiest way to get a job. Nowadays, it is the easiest way NOT to get a job. Step 1: Download the 10 books x 4 (years) = 40 books of the average university degree. Step 2: Unless it's mathematics, it is just literature. Read it. Step 3: Sit the 10 x 4 exams at an online college. In most developed countries, you hav…
You might not learn much by going to college, but looking at it that way you might not learn it anywhere. To learn you need many things. Things like interest, ability to spend time and effort doing and learning things. This is not just restricted to college. There must be some motivation to learn. For us, learning is tied to money in a very direct sense. For students, their motivation might be curiosity.
Let me ask every one a simple question. If you believe you didn't learn much at college. Now that you are out of college why haven't you turned into a knowledge bank? If you ponder at that question long enough you will eventually realize there is nothing really wrong with college anyway.
Coming to your original point, unfortunately degrees matter in our society. Like you I believe that we must do away with that system and look at learning and the ability to perform instead.
Here in India, you can't even get a job interview if you don't have a degree. So we are stuck in this degree system, and probably will be decades to come.
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#18[deleted]
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#19I agree it's perfectly possible to get somewhere as an entrepreneur without a college degree. But it's hardly detrimental to have one either.
And I'm kind of sick of the US-centric view that all college degrees cost $100,000+ -- many high quality degrees in other western countries cost as little as 10-20% of this figure (and often are paid for in a deferred payment scheme). As with so many things (like healthcare) it's just another area the US seems to have gone insane with.
Re: The Indian and his insatiable appetite for the college degree
#20Just like you even I wanted to dropout and start something I wanted or wished to do. My parents aren't too conservative. But my dad told me something which I believe is very true - "Getting a degree is highly rewarding. If tomorrow your business crashes, you'd at least have a degree to back you up with a job. Degree is for your secure future not to please the society around you". No doubt this is true. And as my dad said, its more for you than anyone else. But again its more than that, getting a degree pays more than just societal status and a more savvy future. That being said, I personally want to know each and every specific topic in full depth. And I believe that can only happen with a proper mentor over me and like-minded peers around me. In other words, in a "university". Plus college helps you with many other things in "life" and not just academically. But then it depends on what you want to do and accordingly it matters if a degree is worth it or not.
I hope students (especially) take this post in the right gesture. Dropping out is not the best solution always. Doesn't work for everyone. Its not cool to dropout because Zuck, Gates and Jobs did. You "have to have" a strong reason why university isnt the best option for you.
+1 otherwise for the post. Good to know you had the support you needed. Doesn't happen with everyone. All the best ;)