Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

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I lived down the block from that NYU makerspace and walked my dog past it every day.

I'm also a self-taught dev who's wanted to go back to college and get a degree for posterity.

So naturally applying to NYU made sense, get started on the education stuff I was putting off, get access to a really cool makerspace, etc. I talked to someone from admissions at the school, learned more about the process, but then we got to pricing and the fact I wouldn't qualify for assistance... well it turned out it was practically unaffordable for me, a senior SWE in NYC making a "FAANG-like" salary.

I say "practically" because technically I could pay it, but to what end? I'd be looking at over 150k over the next two years for a simple bachelors with no appreciable change to my career trajectory.

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It really blew my mind. I was making what their graduates can expect to make years out of school and the math wasn't working, how is it supposed to work for someone coming out of high school?

The cynic in me would look at that makerspace that easily had *40k in Ultimakers that never actually seemed to be printing anything peeking out the window and think "is this what they're paying for?", but I guess on the flip side you get things like this post?

* Actually I went and looked at an old picture, I only counted 8 or so in view of the window...

What's the point of this, you can easily go to cheaper school and pay about 10K a year. Software Engineering is a fields where you don't even need a degree to be honest. I know at least 2 colleagues who make much more than me without degrees.

Just make side projects.

Or spend a bit more , go to UC Berkeley and you can attend one of the best CS schools in the world. Just live in California for a year to get residency first

That's my whole point, I don't have a degree and it's been a long time since that came up.

In my most recent position I got an offer before the recruiter found out I didn't have a degree: We were making small talk waiting for someone to join the call and they offhandedly asked where I went to school... I didn't.

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So with that in mind, how are they justifying their value over those cheaper (or free) options? With an expensive makerspace? Pedigree? (as you point out there are cheaper schools of a similar calibre)

To me it doesn't add up and something has to give at some point. I've long felt that if we get student loan relief, it must come with tightening the purse strings on the tuition side by downsizing how much the government is willing to finance per student.

The schools are using the money for everything from vanity projects to real-estate plays, that needs to stop.

If people want to pay for prestige let them.

For the most part you either should logically come from money or get a scholarship. At 18 your free to ruin your life in a variety of ways ,college isn't the worst.

The problem is they (usually) can't pay for it.

They take out loans for it, and as the now-in-jeopardy relief program shows they often can't pay those loans back.

A lot of schools don't even have the prestige but have this pricing problem: if we keep letting colleges access "free money" on the backs of 18 year olds, they will keep taking that money and spending it regardless of if it benefits the students.

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If you walk into a bank as an assetless 18 year old and ask for a $100,000 for "a big bet that will probably pay off just trust me", you'll be politely but firmly asked to leave.

Why are we letting that happen just because some school offering 0 collateral happens to be the co-signer?

Most people aren't literally taking out a 100k loan.

It's a very complex problem. Not everyone wants to code, for many professions you really need to get into a top school. That top school might cost a bit of money.

Recently I've found it's best to worry about oneself to be frank.

Know you don't want to take out 100k for a top school, but don't judge those who do.

Assuming that results in an additional 5 to 10k in income per year after graduation, it easily pays for itself.

For you, since you already have an established career it makes little sense to spend that much

You're creating a martyr that doesn't exist.

I didn't judge the students who go there, or imply such a thing.

My parents both came to this country from a third world country and spent the better parts of their lives working towards their doctorates, so I'm not looking down on people for seeking education.

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My entire point is that the act of paying tuition isn't what makes you 5-10k, going to the school as a whole is.

NYU is a school where according to their own numbers the average student does in fact pay out more than 100k for a 4 year degree after the >30k in aid the average student gets

And so I'm questioning if that extreme level of cost is actually a requisite of NYU creating a student worth more than average.

Do they really need to spend 1 billion dollars more a year than UC Berkley, on a slightly smaller student body, to make students who make near identical salaries?

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At the end of the day no one person can answer that, but I'm highly skeptical and would rather see downward pressure on tuition in the form for cutting off the money faucet that is 18 year olds taking out loans.

If the schools really generate equivalent value to what they're asking, that shouldn't be an issue: richer graduates will still benefit their endowments, better outcomes will still differentiate them, etc.

What are you complaining about?

Presumably the amazing high cost of education and how it isn't always being used efficiently.

The idea that schools get to use 18 year olds as unsecured loans to build out extravagant facilities.

Then those 18 year olds grow up, can't pay back the loan, so the government uses bailing them out as a political bargaining chip.

If I may ask... what specialization are you in? and is it the same thing you started off in? I've been thinking of pivoting and have narrowed it down to 1-3 niches, but also don't have a degree but currently working in a FAANG company.

My first paid programming gigs were on video games as a freelance Unity developer, but my "real career" was founded on embedded Android

Embedded systems were a good match for my background tinkering with assembly for calculators and messing with MCUs, but it's a very "traditional" part of tech.

Android in embedded is much closer to mobile in terms of culture, so my lack of a degree wasn't a problem getting started, and demand has only grown over the years. I currently work in HMI for self-driving vehicles these days but I've worked on everything from in-store interactive displays to prototype fitness equipment

Bonus: You can also pivot to traditional mobile dev, which I've done for some stints over the course of my career

Take a look through the window during orientation time. all those machines will be running printing out crap to show how cool and trendy their maker space is.

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