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Dropping out is probably not for you

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Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#41

Post by mkr-hn »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #35
kiba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep deprivation. Drunk people. Final exam stress. Sleep deprivation and final exam stress is mostly our own making. If you use SRS and study regularly, I am sure the college life is no problem.

Oh, I don't know about that. I don't want to get all Kanye about highed ed, but I never understood why university teaching methods are so dependent on the final exam. All the work students do throughout the year is worth very little compared to the final exam. Its a system, imho, that encourages skipping class and binge studying. It rewards people who can cram well and have good memories, but punishes those who do go…

The technical school I went to gave finals a low weight. You could phone it in and not change much, or you could do really well and bump your course average up a point.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#42

Post by vaksel »

frankly I think dropping out is retarded.

1. You get your food paid for, you get your housing paid for, you have 0 expenses.

2. Schoolwork doesn't take up a lot of effort...hell you can throw it to the wind, and coast by to get all Cs, and still graduate with a decent GPA...it might not be stellar, but at least you'll have something to fall back on

3. Dropping out is fine if you are profitable and the startup is paying for itself. But if you are still at the idea stage, or aren't making serious coin...then you are frankly an idiot for dropping out when you aren't ready.

4. Startups are a case of hurry up and wait, you can launch, and 99% of the chance, a month in, you'll be getting a few hundred hits a month. Don't throw away your backup plan for nothing.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#43

Post by dpritchett »

keiferski wrote: post #36
abyssknight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. A college education costs about $26,000 for Florida residents here in Orlando for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Compare that to my first year's salary which was roughly double that, and the cost begins to look minimal. The opportunity cost is relative, since the people you meet in college may very well be the best resources you have for maintaining your drive, innovative spirit, and w…

Unfortunately Florida is much, much less expensive than almost anywhere else. A college education from a decent university in Pennsylvania will run you about 15k a year (University of Pittsburgh or Penn State). Throw in living costs and tuition increases, and you're looking at 80-100k easily for 4 years.

Tuition at the University of Alabama is about $9,000/year for in-state students. It was half that when I attended in the early 2000s. It's not a highly ranked CS school but there are plenty of resources available and it's worked out well enough for me so far careerwise. I was working 40 hours a week throughout grad school, so my lifetime student loan total amount maxed out at around 1/3 of your quote.

On the flip side, my high school roommate dropped out of college as a freshman and he is doing just great working for a big-name Valley startup.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#44

Post by hack_edu »

super_mario wrote: post #38
bozho wrote: post #12

Agreed. But I'll just add one option that worked for me. I dropped out after the first semester. Then I found a job as a software engineer. In 4 years I'm a valuable senior java developer that everyone is trying to hire. Have I graduated? Yes, from the school of real-world software projects. I didn't have a startup business (well, I had one which failed, and I'm having one right now, on the side), but it was still a…

Yeah, and you will also NEVER be a computer scientist. You will never be hired by a team building a compiler, or a team building a database engine. You condemned yourself to a programmer title for the rest of your life, doing mind numbing business logic for the rest of your life (unless you decide to go back to school that it). Besides higher education is NOT about learning skills immediately useful for employment. I…

While I fully agree with your point, the guarantee of developing software for a living and NOT building compilers or such sounds actually more attractive. Solving problems and designing systems is amazing but what you idealize sounds myopic and tedious to plenty of amazing and well-educated computer scientists. We don't need to get into the Scientist vs. Programmer debate but software can mean or be most anything. That too is a conversation left for the classroom.

There are plenty of amazing, rewarding, lucrative, and challenging projects out there besides the poles of Hard CS and bland Enterprise work.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#45

Post by webwright »

edw519 wrote: post #3

The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't. I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer? Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard. I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills.…

This.

Passing college is cake. It requires very few hours of time compared to a real job-- it's a GREAT time to spin up a side business to see if you can generate/find demand for what you have. It's also a great time to experiment with co-founders.

That said, necessity is the motherhood of invention and failure isn't going to sting THAT much. It's not terribly challenging to un-drop-out of college is it?

Finally, I suppose if someone is racking up debt and getting an art history or philosophy degree, you should advise them to drop out immediately whether they have a business idea or not. The common thread I see here ( http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ ) is student loan debt.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#46

Post by chollida1 »

keiferski wrote: post #36
abyssknight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. A college education costs about $26,000 for Florida residents here in Orlando for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Compare that to my first year's salary which was roughly double that, and the cost begins to look minimal. The opportunity cost is relative, since the people you meet in college may very well be the best resources you have for maintaining your drive, innovative spirit, and w…

Unfortunately Florida is much, much less expensive than almost anywhere else. A college education from a decent university in Pennsylvania will run you about 15k a year (University of Pittsburgh or Penn State). Throw in living costs and tuition increases, and you're looking at 80-100k easily for 4 years.

> Throw in living costs

I see the point you're trying to make, but I don't see why you'd calculate living costs into the cost of school.

If I'm working I'm likely to have higher living costs as most universities have subsidized housing and meals, not to mention most students live with room mates once they move off campus. I'd guess working people have far fewer room mates and much nicer/expensive accommodations :)

Anecdotally that's how it's been for pretty much everyone I know

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#47

Post by pnathan »

abyssknight wrote: post #30
eof wrote: post #22

Surprised by the lack of support for dropping out. Is a 4 year education and a degree valuable? Of course. Is it worth $xx,000 in student debt and 4 year opportunity cost of doing something else? Rarely. Especially for this crowd. If you are a 19 year old with some programming skills, and you are paying for your own college (via loans or with cash) dropping out is a GREAT idea. Spend the next three years working on y…

I have to disagree. A college education costs about $26,000 for Florida residents here in Orlando for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Compare that to my first year's salary which was roughly double that, and the cost begins to look minimal. The opportunity cost is relative, since the people you meet in college may very well be the best resources you have for maintaining your drive, innovative spirit, and w…

In Idaho, the 4 year universities are about 3K per semester. Assuming a 4-year degree, that's 24K in tuition. If it's 5 years, that's 30K.

You can live on about 1K per month. So loosely, that's about 20K per year to get a degree here.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#48

Post by johnohara »

edw519 wrote: post #3

The simplest test of whether or not you should drop out is this one: If you have to ask someone if you should then you shouldn't. I think I have a simpler test: Do you have a customer? Of all the things that you need to do to start a successful business, I think that getting someone to pay you for your work is the hardest. Deceptively hard. I've seen it all too often: Good technical skills. Check. Good design skills.…

Don't forget the story of Bill Gates' parents telling him that if he dropped out of Harvard, he was on his own.

It didn't hurt that his mother was on The United Way's National Executive Committee along with then IBM Chairman John Opel.

I'm from Chicago, "the city that works," and that IS how it works.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#49

Post by vsl2 »

Why do most of the commenters seem to dislike college? Those were the best four years of my life, taught me real skills, programming and otherwise, that I use every day, and granted me that all-important degree which has come in handy for me and probably will for the vast majority of people who don't build the next Facebook or Apple.

Unless you're in situation #5 that the article talks about, spend a few years to get the degree (graduate early if you can because that saves time and money) while working on your projects on the side. And maybe have some college fun in the process.

Re: Dropping out is probably not for you

#50

Post by adbge »

bozho wrote: post #12

Agreed. But I'll just add one option that worked for me. I dropped out after the first semester. Then I found a job as a software engineer. In 4 years I'm a valuable senior java developer that everyone is trying to hire. Have I graduated? Yes, from the school of real-world software projects. I didn't have a startup business (well, I had one which failed, and I'm having one right now, on the side), but it was still a…

Recent drop out here. How did you find your first job?
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