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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion, there's already a term for all this debate around the education 'bubble': "Buyer's remorse".

Half of it is buyers' remorse, the other half is sour grapes. There are three types of people in the world: those who went to university and are glad, those who went to university and regret it, and those who didn't go to university and want to be reassured that they didn't miss anything important. Only folks in the latter two categories are writing articles on this subject. (Oh, and the occasional embittered professor who thinks things aren't nearly as good as they were in his day.)

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the other half is sour grapes

I think this is a vast overstatement. As a potential employer, it's in my best interests to have colleges create the best applicants possible, regardless of my personal college status. As a parent, it's in my interest to have any sort of college investment I might make to pay off. As a taxpayer, it's in my best interests to get the best return for our government investment.

To put this entire debate in terms of whether the person speaking has attended college or not is really stretching logic a bit too far. Lots of other reasons to evaluate a college education one way or another.

I think you're walking a fine line here. Especially with this sour grapes remark, it almost seems as if you're saying "these folks didn't get/enjoy college. This is the reason they say what they do. Therefore their opinion is biased and you needn't listen to them."

Sticking somebody in a bucket and then explaining away everything they might say because of the bucket they're in? Sounds to me like one of those logical fallacies everybody loves to quote so much.

He isn't just sticking you in a bucket randomly. Your language on the subject has an emotional edge that goes beyond dispassionate observation that college education may be overvalued. It actively pushes the reader toward the conclusion that you actually do have a dog in the fight, and the college system has somehow wronged you.

I don't know if it has, but based on said language, I'd be surprised if it hadn't.

My perspective: Having gone to CMU CS, which on the one hand doesn't have particular brand recognition outside CS, but on the other hand is fairly good at CS as undergrad programs go, I believe I can say that I probably did get 100k and possibly even 200k of value out of the education, quite aside from the piece of paper. A lot of the teachers I had were really seriously excellent (and I don't say that lightly), and I wouldn't have been able to learn from teachers that good in that array of subjects (field theory, abstract algebra, robotics, cryptography, etc) as well in any other situation. Yes, I could have read wikipedia and the lkml and so on, but, having done both, classes from really really good teachers work better.

On the other hand, I think I got lucky not only in terms of the ratio of program strength to brand recognition, but also in which teachers I got within the university; if I had taken different classes in different semesters, I believe I could have done a lot worse. Not remotely all the teachers were good or even passable. And, I could easily imagine getting very little value out of the experience, and I bet a lot of people, particularly ones at big-brand institutions, do overpay for the education they get.

The point is, it's a complicated question. There clearly is some value in some undergrad programs, and there also clearly is a problem with rising prices. Comparing it to a con scheme is not really doing it justice.

I'd bet that the net present value of your CMU CS experience is quite a bit higher than you estimate.

As a credential, it's very well known in tech-heavy industries and will help open doors there. Further, it's a good enough school that it will help open doors if you decide to pursue a graduate degree in the future.

As an experience, you got the opportunity to work with top professors and it sounds like you actively sought them out to get those experiences. Further, you almost certainly got to know a lot of students and if you were smart, reliable and hard-working, likely created a situation that could open professional opportunities in the future.

I'll concede that the correlation between a conferred degree and the value captured by the student is not perfect, and that a degree is not the only opportunity to capture value between the ages of 18 and 22. But I largely believe the "debate" consists largely of overblown, hyperbolic rhetoric and oversimplification.

That may be true, but I think there's more to the "regret" group.

Consider this: I have a degree, so it's in my economic best interest to try and inflate the importance of that degree in the job market. I can do that by trying to raise the status of my school (see: alumni donations) or by putting down those without degrees (see: degree requirements for jobs). In practice, I'm so disgusted by the entire system that I don't have any desire for my degree to have importance.

This strange thing that's happening is that people with degrees aren't defending them nearly as vigorously. I think the reality is finally setting in that having a degree is not a good discriminating factor for employment. This is awkward to the large group of people who only sought a degree for better career opportunities. Like angry rioters, one possible (though perhaps illogical) course of action for the degreed-but-unemployed might be to tear down the facade of the degree.

> I have a degree, so it's in my economic best interest to try and inflate the importance of that degree in the job market

Conversely it is in the interest of people who do not have a degree to deflate the importance of the degree in the job market?

Of course. Are you suggesting that this isn't true?

Of course. I do it every chance I get.

Not for entrepreneurs.

I don't have a college degree, and I'm glad I don't as that would have been waisted time -- but I had to interview people, and the quality of people coming from a certain university in my city is much higher than the rest of the bunch.

I even go as far as thinking that there might be something wrong with people not having a degree, so I definitely bring the point up in interviews.

But a degree can also work against you. If the quality of a university is known to be poor, the candidate would be better off not mentioning it in resumes. So it's definitely about branding.

People complain about the unfairness of the latest trends in regards to contributions to open-source, which look really good on people's resumes. But a portfolio of works released to the public works much better for software developers that a shitty university. On the other hand, whenever I hear MIT or Berkley, my eyes lighten up.

So having (or not) a degree depends on lots of factors.

> I don't have a college degree, and I'm glad I don't as that would have been waisted time

Ouch, talk about a bad time to make a typo ("waisted")

English is not my native language, it isn't even my second language and I don't live in an English-speaking country.

And not that I don't appreciate a good spanking, but I really dislike grammar Nazism and ad-hominems.

There are three types of people in the world: those who went to university and are glad, those who went to university and regret it, and those who didn't go to university and want to be reassured that they didn't miss anything important.

I'll just note here that this statement appears to be true of every conceivable activity. Every person either did do it--in which case they're either glad or they regret it (or they're indifferent; we could express their satisfaction with a real number)--or they didn't do it, in which case they probably would like to feel that they made the right choice--and "didn't miss anything important" is a way of saying this.

Hmm, I should probably add the stipulation that it must be difficult to change your decision and do the activity. Otherwise there's no possibility of regretting missing it, 'cause then you'd just go and do it.

I've never attended more than a couple of classes of college -- and I can't even remember which ones I've finished, if any, and which ones I didn't -- and I'm quite ashamed of that. And publicly so, too.

If I succeed, I will tell people that I did so in spite of not going to college, not because I didn't go.

It's not wrong for me to say that college wasn't for me. I'm only slightly less of an arrogant, self-important know-it-all outspoken jackass than I used to be; but I can, and do, express regret that I never got those qualities under control enough to go to college and come back out with a degree.

So, are drop outs part of the second or third group?

Also: I believe guys from those categories have a right to be informed about the outcome of them all.

To me one important part of higher education is to meet people, make long lasting contacts, and this article is missing that.

You forgot the fourth kind: people who didn't go to university and are glad. If they're writing articles, it's not sour grapes. They're saying, "told you so."

Only one of those three types writes a posts like this, the one you didn't attacked.

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