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Comment by arihant | Hacker News Reader

> They are nothing for entrepeneurs.

This is absolutely false. Great colleges are extremely hard, and in top programs kids are always fighting for life to not get kicked out.

To me, CMU taught invaluable lessons in hard work, getting kicked in the teeth over and over, surviving mostly on coffee and alcohol, and persisting till success comes along. All these lessons help while starting a startup.

A great college program will make graduate's problems feel small in comparison to what they put him through.

Besides, starting a company is not the only entrepreneurial work one can do. Is Sundar Pichai less or more entrepreneurial than Zuckerberg? There are far more ways to inhibit courage than starting a company.

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> Great colleges are extremely hard, and in top programs kids are always fighting for life to not get kicked out.

This is a lie when it comes to non-technical degrees at elite colleges like Harvard. Most people get A's. It's a joke.

Edit: source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-...

There are classes where a lot of people get A's. But I have a first hand experience to tell you that it's not easy. Just because majority got an A in a very small number of classes, does not disregard equal number of classes where majority fights for a C. It also does not say that people getting A's did not work their asses off.

Grade inflation does happen in some courses. But it's not easy and is far from a joke.

In the article you mentioned, the average is A-. Which means half of the smartest people recruited off from high school struggled to make it to 90 average, even after worrisome inflation. At worst, that's a 5-7% grade inflation.

People are fighting for As, and maybe working their butts off, but they could be doing a lot less, getting their straight Cs, and not get kicked out. It is easy to be mediocre and stay in Harvard if you already got in.

(What gets people kicked out is a major depressive episode that results in DNFing all their classes for a while, not handing in mediocre homework consistently.)

True, but nobody is trying to get a C. Mediocrity is possible everywhere. Zuckerberg could have just made a university-specific social network and have gotten by. Bill Gates could have just made software for altair and gotten by. Larry Page could have just let Google work for libraries and would have made good money. Elon Musk could have stopped after selling PayPal.

When talking about people just trying to get by, you're naturally ruling out people who can start a company. The argument here is refuting the assertion that college is useless for a wannabe entrepreneur. I say it's not, for the person who wants to use it. All great CEOs did use college effectively. Some started companies there, some found talent there, some learned lessons, some learned hard work, some got inspired, and some learned skills.

I had some friends who used college as a placeholder time to work on their entrepreneurship or other endeavors while getting mediocre grades.

Since 'entrepreneur' literally means someone who starts a business, yes, Sundar Pichai is less entrepreneurial.

As you mentioned those universities are extremeley hard what means time consuming. Starting a company is time consuming too. Doing both at the same time is nearly impossible.

But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company. It would be better if colleges would honor this instead of just ignoring.

There are avenues such as taking project based classes in the area you want to start something, doing an independent study, working on senior research in field one wants to work in. You can do what Google guys did in senior thesis time.

But I agree, it would be nice to have a guided entrepreneur-track independent study style option. Or at least a more startup-friendly environment and outlook in departments.

>But when you are studying it is the best time to start a company.

What?

Most people would argue that having knowledge of the field, experience and contacts; the sort of thing you get after working in a field for a while, is going to help more than the slightly increased physical stamina you have as a very young person.

Later you have a family and responsibility for your children. In college you are free and can take risks.

I certainly agree that children are a big responsibility, and take a lot of time... From what I've seen, though, of small businesses? Experience matters even more. I know a bunch of Entrepreneurs who are also parents. I don't personally understand how, I don't think I could handle being a parent even with an easy office job, but many entrepreneurs seem to be able to be a parent and run a business at the same time. I can't tell you how many of the informal meetings that are also dinner parties had children underfoot, but it's a reasonably large percentage.

Even if you do think that having a child will slow you down, being older doesn't automatically mean you will become a parent... the technology in that field is pretty good at this point.

There is good decade between when you graduate and when you expect children.

Starting a business before 20-21 is not really ideal. Yes, some people can do it. But those people have an over the top mental and emotional maturity that nominal case is lacking, and college is a great way to get there.

Are you really suggesting that you see a CEO in a nominal high school graduate? Most of them don't have a slightest clue how to deal with people, let alone negotiate their terms -- knowledge in domain being aside.

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