Paul Graham: News from the Front

See also: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/07/why-you-need-degree-to-w...

As always, a convincing case, well edited. :) Paul's point probably plays even better among Hacker News readers, who are probably more suspicious than the average bear of college in general.

Seems to me there's an extra factor contributing to the longevity of the "which school" criterion. There are other roles in the business (especially larger businesses) such as biz dev, M&A, etc. where attending an elite school might enhance success considerably - not for the academic content learned, but for the network of friends and colleagues you gain at that school. It's the English Grammar School model of corporate success.

s Paul points out, hiring decisions are often made by HR types: but HR is a very extroverted, business process focussed profession. As personalities, and in job description, the HR folks have more in common with the people and roles that do benefit from elite school connections than with technical people for whom the elite school is irrelevant. Like all of us, they apply lessons from familiar situations to more unfamiliar situations. And so the Stanford Screen lives on.

When I was in college, I figured out that the education you get doesn't really change. However, what does change is the people that you are associating with.

At the "elite" colleges, there is a greater percentage of smart students, which lends itself to more productive discussions and more difficult tests that force you to challenge yourself. Also, it is like the difference between the regular classes in high school and advanced classes -- in the advanced classes you cover the same material, but with greater breadth and a deeper understanding.

And the number 1 biggest advantage of going to an elite college is that you have a much better chance of meeting the world's future movers and shakers -- the people that will be the educational and business leaders of the next generation. That alone is a good reason to go to an elite college.

So I have to disagree, and say that there are indeed advantages to going to an elite college, just not the advantages that most people think.

I did my D.Phil. at Oxford University, and my B.Sc. at Simon Fraser University; while SFU is one of Canada's best universities, it clearly doesn't have the stature of Oxford or Harvard. Were the students at Oxford more intelligent than the students at SFU? No. Were they more motivated? No. Are there jobs for which I'd rather hire an Oxford alumnus than an SFU alumnus? Absolutely.

The largest advantage of a great university like Oxford is in increasing the range and depth of ideas presented to students. It's impossible to completely separate the teaching role of a university from its research role: Teaching (and inconvenient questions asked by irritating students, like yours truly, in class) informs research, and research informs teaching. And quite apart from the "indigenous" research, if you're at a minor university without a strong reputation for research, you don't have Knuth dropping by for a few months, or Rivest visiting to give a lecture (albeit about the rather odd notion of obtaining forward security by using a stream of broadcasted random numbers which is too fast to be stored).

There are undeniable advantages to being at a great university in being exposed to new ideas. Why haven't PG et al. noticed this? Probably because their measurement -- can someone create a successful startup? -- is just as biased as everyone else's measurements. After all, when was the last time that a YC-funded startup really did anything new?

Peter Norvig in his essay "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" says, "If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub. # Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (because they make you do it for them)."

He is referring to Jamie Zawinski. http://norvig.com/21-days.html