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Comment by laurentdc | Hacker News Reader

I paid zero for my university since EU, but I still kind of feel scammed out of five years of my life. I got a degree only because I was young and family/friends pushed me into it since "that's what everyone does".

The networking thing, meh. Maybe if you attend the top 1% of universities that have some barrier of entry for people who're actually talented/determined to achieve a goal and care about what they do. Or expensive private ones with industry connections. Which feels a bit like "easy mode" but whatever :)

But in the average public university most students you meet are just coasting through it as if it was high school, or as a way to delay real life. Professors just don't care and they never have time. Even the job placement events, it's all a bullshit perpetuating machine.

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I went to a normal European uni as well, although it did cost money (inflation corrected tuition fees were around €700 or so, and there was a room to rent and food to buy; but many courses used a syllabus written by the teachers and printed by the uni, costing a few € each, only a few required an expensive book). Nothing that should make me feel scammed.

The networking thing is real, though. It's not everywhere, but if you join the right student society (Am. fraternity), it definitely exists. I worked a (long) while as a researcher and teacher at university, and networking via student societies only seems to have grown in that period.

It never felt to me as useless, as killing time or delaying life. It taught me skills I don't think I could have picked up by myself.

> But in the average public university most students you meet are just coasting through it as if it was high school, or as a way to delay real life.

Perhaps that's an unintended consequence of it being free, just like high school.

If you're paying the bill, it's a lot less likely you'll be coasting through.

European countries with free public universities also usually have private, paid colleges. In practice, those are where you really coast through.

Why would you pay $$$ just to coast? Just go rent a resort on the Mediterranean if that's what you want to do.

To get a piece of paper saying “bachelor” on it. Some people think it’s useful, and for some, it might even be.

Because you need that word for the next steps: words like "master" and "doctor" or even "engineer" that have real dollar values.

I expect word will get around about the "coasting", making it worthless.

With the wealth of knowledge available, and the slow improvement of online learning, I hope we stop treating college as the place to discover things and improve our knowledge. It’s sometimes an okay way to do it, but is generally one of the least efficient ways in the modern world.

With a basic foundation in a topic, Wikipedia and open journals are much more valuable learning places than a lecture hall or study group. Those basic foundations should be built much earlier in primary education.

Do they though? In most parts of the world academics are not well paid relative to what they can get in the private sector. Even for most liberal arts subjects you can get paid more to produce good entertainment or good books than you'd get in the academy.

You can become a master programmer with no degree at all. Look at all the successful CEOs who dropped out.

"There are dozens of us, dozens!" Bill Gates.

One my best friend used to run a top architecture firm and he himself was highschool dropout, he had team of architects and engineers to get his wildest imaginations passed by government's approval.

Case in point, being if you've real value to offer. Absence of that degree or paper will never come in your way.

For one of the same reasons wealthy families send children to "elite" prep schools. Some are worth it, many just social filters that introduce you to the people who will be making laws, decisions, policies, and purchases. From what I often see, that gets people further than just working hard and trying to work their way up the ladder.

I paid some $$$ and kind of coasted doing my Masters in Investment Fund Management. I thought the qualification would look good but the actual course content was a bit too rubbish to get very enthusiastic about it. All academic math silliness from teachers who'd never got anywhere near managing actual investment funds.

My earlier free of charge degree I worked hardish and it was taught at a much higher level.

Which doesn't really address Walter's point that, in practice, people who have to pay from their own wallet (not their parents) for an education at a non-prestigious school do tend to work hard.

In my observation those who do not engage with the material are more like to just drop out, rather than waste their money.

> If you're paying the bill, it's a lot less likely you'll be coasting through.

The fact that there's a bill to pay doesn't mean that it's the students who are paying it. I think a significant number of students—most?—at expensive universities have their bills paid by family.

The cheap, but not free, schools are probably more likely to be paid directly by the student themselves.

"If you're paying the bill, it's a lot less likely you'll be coasting through."

I would guess that the real indicator of whether or not you can coast through is if your life situation - including the college standards - allow it. If you can coast through and get decent enough grades to get a degree, is it worth spending more effort on? After all, what you are paying for is a completion certificate.

If all education was free. I would be much willing to study forever.

Here are the benefits of get:

1. Cheap accommodation

2. Access to high tech cutting edge equipment on university premise

3. I'd sleep in fully air conditioned library making excuses that I fell asleep while studying in library.

Access to free internet and machinery/test equipment alone would be enough for me to join free university.

Then I'd study there untill I discover something and rise to fame or find some idea to turn into into a profitable business then exist the university and kiss it goodbye.

You are getting downvoted but this is absolutely true. In Russia, college is/used to be free and easy to get in to (I think they are limiting that now at least to some extent). As a result,

1) Most students coast. From my CS class over the years, straight out of college I'd hire maybe 25% of the people in any CS/IT capacity. Not for a FAANG job, any job; most people wouldn't be able to build a reasonable PHP page or manage a 5-machine LAN for a retail store (or calculate a determinant of a 2x2 matrix) with their "Masters in CS". Not because they were not capable of it if they tried - in my impression, most never wanted to learn and never bothered.

2) More importantly, college diploma in Russia is/was an equivalent of high school diploma in the US, because of the credentials inflation. If you don't have one, in most cases there must be something wrong with you (which was true enough at least when I went to college).

You could even use going to trade school as an insult - PTUshnik, with connotations anywhere from being dumb/lazy, to being a chav/petty criminal.

> You are getting downvoted but this is absolutely true.

I don't mind that, I expected it with this post. People value things based on what it costs them in blood, sweat and tears. For example, suppose the Olympic Committee started handing out the exact same gold medals to everyone who shows up at the games. What's the value of that medal going to be? Zilch. Nobody is going to train for 10 years to get one of those.

But this observation doesn't fit with popular political thought, and people react negatively to it.

Though that's not a paying the bill thing. Olympic medals are not valued because there is an admission fee or anything like that.

They are paid for via enormous effort by the athletes. As I wrote: blood, sweat and tears.

As Thiel puts it, unless you attend an elite university your degree is merely a dunce hat in disguise.

Whatever it might be, it is often still a checkmark litmus test for many jobs.

A dunce hat for the student or a dunce hat for the employers who require a degree?

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