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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Collage is not expensive due to lectures because they don’t actually cost that much.

Let’s say your average class size is 20 people at a good school and a professor costs the school 200k including benefits per year. Assuming a student takes 18 credit hours and a teacher teaches 12 credit hours that balances out to ~15k per year. But, more than 2/3 of what a teacher spends their time on is outside the lecture such as grading assignments etc. So, removing lectures only saves ~5k per year.

Sure the physical room adds a little, but the average teacher is also far less expensive at most schools.

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I am not saying the lecture itself is expensive. I am saying the artificial scarcity of everything around higher education keeps people from receiving a certified education that is recognized by the employment marketplace, when at least for undergrad classes, the lecture and the textbook is largely what you need to receive a functioning education.

I think the number of people graduating with a collage degree significantly outstrips the demand for collage degrees. Otherwise you would not see people with collage degrees working retail etc.

For some degrees. I don't see many CS degrees working retail. I don't see many EE degrees doing so.

Nearly every EE I graduated with, including me, had to give up on our dream of being a hardware engineer because nearly zero hardware companies will hire an EE grad from a mid-level school. They either refuse to hire new grads or only recruit at CMU/Purdue job fairs.

Then you take a software job that's available but not interesting, and you get pidgeonholed into that field. It's not retail but it doesn't seem great for EEs who didn't go to a top-10 school. I'd be very interested to hear any other EE grad's perspective though.

I'm an EE that went to a mid-level state school and got a hardware engineering job out of school; I got lucky that there was a hardware company in town that did a lot of hiring from my school. I had a similar experience applying to other companies before I graduated though, the company I eventually started working for was the only one to ever give me a call back and I think that was only because I was already working there as a software engineering intern ;)

This is absolutely true which is why I went back and got a masters from CMU.

How'd you like it/would you recommend it? I've heard really good things about that program specifically, other than it can be hard to graduate from it.

It is as hard as you want to make it. You have near absolute freedom in the classes you choose to take. I would say it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

It’s a fair point, but colleges also adjust program sizes based on what students chose to study. Just compare CS graduates in 1990 and how fast that grew and shrunk over time.

Not to nitpick but it's spelled "college"

That's what I meant by my line "just because you pay the membership fee, doesnt mean you actually make the club."

College is selling you the promise of an opportunity to join the club. You pay an application fee, and then you may or may not get into the club. If you don't get in, they keep your application fee, and you have student loans and a degree but no viable networking.

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