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A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

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Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#41

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jkmcf wrote: post #25
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #13

By the time it is fall, this professor's advice will be obsolete. The death rate is already slowing down in NYC and Italy. The curve is flattened in South Korea and China, and there, many are going outside to cafes and the Han River park. San Francisco has had a grand total of 20 deaths. US is already planning to gradually reopen the economy.

The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention said it's trying to understand why the patients retested positive for COVID-19 despite previous negative tests. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/04/18/COVID-19-Survivor... Not to mention: Denver had a significant spike in 1918 when interventions were removed. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVHzq2AWkAEhbJo.jpg Note: I didn't locate this image on WashPo's site.

I'm sure you see why a graph of just Denver is suspicious. It strongly suggests that the rest of the country saw a smaller second hump or no second hump at all, so the graph makers had to exclude it.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#42

Post by benkuhn »

collegeburner wrote: post #20

I'm looking at college this fall and seriously wondering about this. I'll have to spend a lot of money if I go to an "elite" school, and the point of doing that is to make connections with my peers and with professors. I don't see the point of paying that kind of money for that sort of experience. That aside, not starting college may not be a good idea, either. Does anyone with more experience have advice on this? I…

I think this depends a lot on what peers you have access to through your work and whether you'd expect them to be comparably awesome (both in their competence and the depth of relationship you're able to build with them) to whoever you'd meet in college.

Even if you do decide to go to college, I think you'd get a lot more out of it after having worked in the real world for some amount of time--in college it really helps to be good at deciding what to spend your time on, and exposure to what non-college life is like will help a lot with that. I know lots of people who got a ton out of gap years and no one who regrets it.

(I wrote more advice here: https://www.benkuhn.net/college/ )

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#43

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

downerending wrote: post #11

Arguing in the other direction, if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy time to get one. Personally, my college experience was mainly useful for discovering that my college experience wasn't going to be very useful for me. (Mildly interesting: The author seems to be this woman. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seek... )

That article was Tiger-King-esque in that by the end of it I hated pretty much all the characters involved.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#44

Post by einpoklum »

baggy_trough wrote: post #33
einpoklum wrote: post #23

> Don’t like any candidates? Then get engaged in issue activism. Recommendations to be politically active regardless of the cause and position sound rather vacuous. Or rather - sound like someone has an opinion, but not the guts to voice their opinion. Anyway, the main problem is the debt issue. If students going into the first year of University (or "college") did not have to pay for it, it wouldn't be such a gamble…

Far too many people go to college as it is. More subsidies to go to college only make that problem worse.

1. These are (mostly) independent issues. Many countries have free universities, but not many of them.

2. I don't know what US colleges are like; but - higher education is to a great extent its own rewards. Of course, if you're doing it for the diploma and the chance to score a better job, then it's a different kettle of fish.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#45

Post by scott_s »

glofish wrote: post #6

perhaps a little bit premature advice college students are not at risk to begin with - I'd recommend waiting closer to mid summer it might be the best time to attend college, fewer people enrolled, getting more attention from educators etc

Everyone is at risk from Covid-19. Younger people are at less risk, but they are still at risk, both from suffering a severe case, and from death.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#46

Post by AnimalMuppet »

perl4ever wrote: post #27
wikibob wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges. There is vastly less academic support available. The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you. Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4 year university. Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is cheaper, or go where you get the best financial a…

What exactly is the negative consequence you are envisioning from 2 years at community college and 2 years at your in-state 4-year school, vs. all four years at the latter? The typical alternative that people need to be guided away from is one of the for-profit "career" schools that doesn't have transferable credits and is way more expensive than community college.

I think they envision a lack of support and encouragement, and therefore the student dropping out or not finishing a degree.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#47

Post by non-entity »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
t-writescode wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do have a job at a cybersecurity firm where I'm a part-time developer, and my boss would probably convert me to full-time. You already have a job and your boss has made you a developer. One thing you'll get in school that you won't get on the job, in general, is algorithm training. This is an important step for developing the best code you can and being exposed to weird and different ways to write things. This is…

I have no college education because decades ago, I was in the same situation as OP: had a job in hand, so I went to work instead of college. It was the best choice I ever made. I never worked somewhere that required a degree, three years into my career was making six figures, and have made at least that for the next ~20 years of my career. I had no student debt, or school expenses. I have had employers offer reimburs…

> You probably also don’t want to work someplace that prioritizes a degree over experience.

No but I want to work on the things they're working on.

As much as I despise the absolute scam that's peddled by universities, and dont think they're for everyone, they can still open up a lot of opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible or highly difficult to access. OTOH If all you're worried about is money, then yeah no, you probably don't want to waste your time there

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#49

Post by ForHackernews »

collegeburner wrote: post #20

I'm looking at college this fall and seriously wondering about this. I'll have to spend a lot of money if I go to an "elite" school, and the point of doing that is to make connections with my peers and with professors. I don't see the point of paying that kind of money for that sort of experience. That aside, not starting college may not be a good idea, either. Does anyone with more experience have advice on this? I…

I think it really depends how "elite" the schools you've been admitted to are. If you're accepted to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. you'd be a fool not to go, IMHO. Not only will they give you loads of generous financial aid, but you'll get a signalling stamp on your CV that will follow you for a lifetime.

On the other hand, if you've been accepted to some expensive private school that isn't a household name (sorry WashU, Drexel, Dukes of the world) you might be better off skipping the debt and going to a credible state school.

Re: A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

#50

Post by chadlavi »

This seems pretty out of touch. Encouraging people to go right into the jobs market as 18yos without degrees is encouraging them to trap themselves at the (already rapidly expanding) bottom of the economic ladder, unless they're from an already upper/upper-middle-class family.

And the same goes double for encouraging degreeless 18yos to skip getting paid entirely and volunteer. That's rich kid stuff.

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