351–360 of 463 posts
The article reads like the “crabs in a barrel” only applied to family circumstances. Despite obvious talent, the father doesn’t want his child to succeed and has systematically destroyed her dreams. It’s very sad.
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I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. It's hard to justify the ROI on college. At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M. At more expe…
> I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. College has other benefits like signalling and networking though.
1 year of working in Silicon Valley got me dozens of quality connections that turned into meaningful long-term projects.
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Not all doctors. Not all lawyers. Only the cream of the crop in those respective fields, and only after 20+ years in the field. Of course, that assumes a normal mortgage, with no “payments go to interest only” or other malarkey.
But to be able to play at the top of the field you'll have to have attended something like Penn Law or Yale Medicine. SUNY Downstate won't cut it.
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My girlfriend and I have had this discussion a lot, because she went to a top tier art school. I think you might be underrating three factors in your reasoning: One is the value of very direct feedback and guidance from seasoned, respected professionals. The class sizes in top art programs are very small, and most classes have a frequent, intense “critique” portion where the professor and students tear apart each oth…
So yeah, I graduated from a top-tier art school which had very high tuition but I also had considerable grants and scholarships so I was able to pay off my student loans in a few years after graduating working a blue-collar job. I experienced four years of group critiques, and really value that as an activity. Unfortunately very few people understand or can appreciate how directly that maps to software development. M…
I was really jealous of that aspect of my girlfriend’s education. Some companies and incubators (recurse center?) are really good at creating this kind of learning, but I don’t know of many traditional universities experimenting with this approach at either the BS or MS level; which IMO a shame.
Also, the skill of receiving and responding constructively to criticism is incredibly underrated, and is something that the good art schools seem to be unusually good at.
The way my girlfriend tells it, it was a tortuous time (for many of the reasons you describe), but it was also very formative and it accelerated her growth dramatically.
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There is no free. Free means Janet's dad who didn't go to college get to pay additional so Bill's son goes for free. When resources are free, they become either worthless or completely over-utilized. If you make college free, that means colleges will still charge for classes, still charge for books, still charge for dorm rooms, etc. They'll send their bills to the government, to pay with increased tax dollars. They'l…
You should realize that primary and secondary school are already provided "free" to anyone, and the reasons that works are just as valid for college. There's nothing magically impossible about using taxpayer money to provide 16 years of education instead of 12.
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It benefits us as a country to have an electorate who can read and write and have a basic understanding of civics and history. It doesn't necessarily appear to benefit us the same way to have a bunch of folks spend 4 years getting English degrees to make mom and dad happy. There are a lot of benefits to college, but a lot of those benefits go away when college stops becoming a choice and starts becoming mandated stat…
How about if a bunch of folks spend 4 years getting English degrees because sophisticated communication is a critical skill when your entire economy is based on information? It's really striking to me how the arguments against college for all today mirror the arguments against secondary school for all 120 years ago. Hopefully the parallel continues and our great grandkids can take their advanced education for granted…
This is an argument for teaching Communications or Rhetoric. It fails completely as an argument for English, which is mostly an exercise in poorly imitating literary analysis in some style from the 50’s or later. Even if we did want better communicators a year of focused effort on communications/rhetoric would be enough rather than spending four.
> Hopefully the parallel continues and our great grandkids can take their advanced education for granted the way we take secondary school for granted today.
If tertiary education is expanded massively it will only be by the same mechanism as secondary education was, dramatic lowering of standards.
My sister and I basically copied what our parents did. I got a degree in engineering like my dad (but pivoted to data science), and my sister got a degree in elementary education like my mom. She works much harder than me but earns significantly less and frequently comments about how massive of a mistake it was to go into teaching. I'm not really sure what the lesson is here other than that the world isn't fair. From…
Still time to get out. There are data science and other boot camps.
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I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. It's hard to justify the ROI on college. At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M. At more expe…
What if you don't plan to start your life at 63? I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the majority of my life is between now and then. These kinds of "responsible financial actions" are a bit silly imho. Invest in yourself now, and spend your time well now. College pays for itself, if you spent $100k on a decent degree I guarantee you'll earn that a…
This isn’t clever, it’s irresponsible especially given that just putting a little money away now literally pays dividends later.
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List of probable truths when studying in Europe as an American at 18: - You've never left home for more than a month. - There will be few (if any) Americans in a European bachelor's program. - There is a 6 to 9 hours timezone difference with home. - You don't have an easy time getting information compared to with American universities. - The country will not speak English (UK aside). I know they speak english in Fren…
Ireland is also a solution, with several excellent universities.
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You are already footing the bill for the art history student to go through over 12 years of education, what's 4 more?
honestly not quite sure how to respond to this. the obvious response to "what's 4 more?" is that it's a lot more money than zero more, and each of those last four years is going to be considerably more expensive than a year of grade school. I don't mind having my tax dollars go towards helping young people establish stable careers so they can become self-sufficient. I also don't mind paying to educate them so the can…
The benefits of a degree in social sciences or humanities are ways of thinking that can be applied in various fields of practice. Students in these programs literally learn how to think and argue effectively, especially about social issues and social systems. This goes way beyond the first year sociology class that computer science students are 'forced' to take as an elective. Techies without social science or humanities backgrounds are notoriously bad at thinking about social systems, and end up developing extremely problematic socially-embedded tools and technologies. If we consider many of the problematic tech of the past decade (intrusive surveillance tech, under-moderated social media, crispr genetic modification, etc), they were all designed without such considerations in mind, and have had detrimental effects on society. It's sad that we continue to not 'get it', that thinking properly about human experiences and systems, as informed by specialists who deal with this specifically, is crucial.
This is not only true about tech fields. When social science and humanities graduates enter post-grad programs that actually recognize the value of such prior education (i.e. medical schools that accept students with bachelor or arts, which is surprisingly rare) these students actually tend to perform better. Public policy designed by social scientists and humanists also works more effectively, but instead we have huge lobbies funded by the tech industry and management firms pushing for de-regulation or regulation designed by those technocrats themselves (i.e. sidewalk labs in toronto).