Hacker News Reader

Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

>we have GOT to stop acting like a college degree is the be-all-end-all. We cannot keep protesting against the tremendous student loan debt burden that's creeping ever bigger on the one hand while touting college degrees as being the ONLY way to get a high-paying "respectable" job.

It's not "us", it's politicians who service the wealthy that like to lay down those two contradictory pieces of advice ("why did you get a degree if you didn't want debt?" / "why did you not get a degree if you wanted a decent job?").

View on HN

Oh c'mon. "Get a college degree" is the mantra of baby boomer parents at all levels. It's not the wealthy elite pushing that message.

College isn't the end-all, but the education helps, even if it's not purely technical or vocational. Spending a few years just learning how to think about various problems, discipline to study instead of drink (or if you're me, you didn't do well with this), etc.

I do think that we over-emphasize the school itself. What I mean by that, at least in my opinion, is that if it's not an Ivy and not the top school in the field that you are 150% sure you will absolutely do (and won't change majors 3x like I did), then take the reasonably priced state option.

Time has flown and I recently realized I'm 12 years out of college. My education was ~10k a year at a public school - a decent one, but not even the best one in the state. I would not be materially farther ahead in life if I'd spent 30k a year at UVA or 50k at Georgetown. And I'm not paying off undergraduate debt right now. I am paying off grad (law school) debt, but that's another story - I was a night student and by the time I graduated it didn't make sense to restart my career in law when I was pretty well along in my industry. And the mistake I made was not going to the cheaper, public state school (and I didn't attend an Ivy).

By all means, get your education, but control the costs. To an 18 year old graduating high school it might sound like a no brainer to spend 50k at the "good" private school over the state option, but the reality is, there are few circumstances where that's true. I did it the right way once, and the wrong way once, so just my two cents.

"I do think that we over-emphasize the school itself."

God yes. I remember an article I read earlier this year (can't remember the title or I'd link it) that followed students at Ivies and at State schools and found that (controlling for grades) it was the students' commitment to networking, extracurricular activities, volunteering, internships, etc. that made the most difference to their long-term success. I WISH SOMEONE HAD TAUGHT ME THAT! I graduated 10 years ago and oh my god I wish I had done more to network/intern/volunteer when I was in school.

I'll bet there's an untapped hiring pool that consists of 18 year olds newly admitted to good colleges (or rising sophomores who don't want more debt). They've been admitted, and outside of internships and technical majors the "college advantage" is largely selection bias.

Come to think of it, one recruiter at my school did offer bonuses to any student who dropped out to work for him instead of graduating. The department organizer didn't look thrilled.

I believe a lot in the value of undergraduate education in general as a time to learn how to think and even just grow up a bit and learn how to live independently and such. Even just exploring and figuring out what on earth you want to be when you grow up (at 34 I still struggle with that). Beyond that, internships really open doors. I think that some kind of post-secondary education is important - just do it reasonably in terms of course of study and cost. Take up a trade if you prefer, that's education as well. But do something to develop yourself - and I don't necessarily think going right into the corporate meat grinder is the best way to start since you'll get such a narrow view of the way to do things right out of the gate.

I do wish that we did gap years in the US like some countries do. If my daughter grows up and decides to take a year or two between high school and college, I'd be thrilled. Shit, I'd pay for it if she found something reasonably constructive to do. I'd have been way better off had I delayed my freshman year by 1-2 years - I had a great time, but I didn't go to class much.

It does come down to that, and it makes sense if you think about it. Fresh grads come in batches of thousands at a time, many of them took the same classes, similar majors, etc, even across schools. Grades sometimes matter, sometimes don't (I had a low GPA because I had a bad habit of picking and choosing what I wanted to learn about, and it didn't come in full course increments). So what's left is the network and internships - the demonstrated ability to act human enough that people will talk to you, and listen to your ideas and think enough of you to give you a shot at something. That's why I say Ivies still matter - there's access from there to a very different network, and it opens up a job market that people like me would have very little access to.

This will be very New England focused, since that's where I live, but if my daughter doesn't get into an Ivy, I'd really try to talk her out of Colby or Bates as a consolation prize. They're fine schools, but very expensive, and probably not a whole lot better than some of the state options like UNH, UMaine, UMass, UVM, etc. They're not 20-30k more per year better anyway.

The one that I never figured out, is who on God's great earth would go to a state university, in a state that you don't live in? Out of state tuition at UNH, to pick one of them that's close by and I have interns from, is not very much cheaper than going to Colby or Bates or BC/BU.

Depends on what degree you want. Plenty of state schools like Texas, Michigan, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech are in the top-20 for one field or another. Wanting to go to one of those for one of their specialties is reasonable.

Top 20 in a specialty is a stretch for me. I could see if something was the top school for something - otherwise, we get into the wishy-washy world of school rankings which really can be manipulated and start to mean less as you go down the list. However, let's hypothetically say that top 20 is a good cutoff - there is still the very real issue of a 17 year old kid (because that's when we apply to college) following through on that specialty. It doesn't matter how good a CS program CMU has if you decide two semesters in to pursue that BFA.

Now, for your specific examples, provided that you are in-state, they actually are reasonable options for any degree. Texas (10k), Michigan (14k), Cal Berkeley (14k) and GT (10k), all excluding room and board. On the other hand, I'd really not want to send my kid to those schools from out of state unless she had some pretty specific plans and seemed reasonably likely to follow through. And if that were the case, we'd probably pay that first year out of state while figuring out residency to try and bring that down.

I could have picked better examples, I suppose. I went to a state school as an out of state student because it was still reasonable (James Madison was 10k a year).

UNH is a bad example and I shouldn't have used it. It's expensive even for in-state because the state is not funding it as much as they used to. But my point was that I wouldn't spend Ivy money on Bates or Colby when going there is not clearly better than a state school as it would be with an Ivy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com