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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

If you feel that the purpose of higher education is just to get a job, you are already off-track. Likewise, if you think the value of your education is measured by what hiring managers think, you are off-track.

Learn because you want to know more, do more, and acquire more skills in research and critical thought. Apply everything you learn to your life in order to direct it better and adapt to changes over time. Do that learning in school... or not. Whatever is best for you, personally.

More specific to your question, if other people are short-changing themselves by abusing AI, that has nothing to do with you individually. And if hiring managers cannot see that, would you want to work for them anyway?

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The original idea of a "liberal education" was an education appropriate for a free person, as opposed to learning a trade, which was for slaves.

Translating to today, what you are describing is appropriate for people who don't have urgency to get a job that pays the bills. I mean, it's nice if that's you. If it's not, though, you either need a degree that is going to help you earn money, or you need a job that's good enough that you can get without a degree.

What you say is a nice ideal. (I mean that sincerely.) Not everyone is in an ideal position, though, and for many people, what you are saying is out of reach.

Yep, we are in agreement. That is one reason that I am so adamant that people should not see college as a path to a job - if you need a job, get one. College can (and arguably should) be done later in life when you have the time, flexibility, and maturity to maximize what you get from education.

Frankly, if I had it to do over again, I'd work a few years first before going to school. The experience did have value, but I could have done far better when I was a little older.

If you look at the statistics of the lifetime earnings of someone with a degree and without a degree, there is at least a 75% premium.

“Later in life”, you have kids, responsibilities, and probably don’t have parents who will subsidize your college degree either directly by helping pay for it or indirectly by letting you stay in their health insurance, car insurance and living at home.

Money earned early in your career and invested is worth more than money earned later.

This, 100%. Look East (assuming a Western reference point) for copious evidence that supports this POV. Education is a means to an end, and the only way out of abject poverty (personal experience).

Studying the classics and poetry (arguably components of a well-rounded “liberal” education) is a privileged viewpoint. Hell, I wanted to study theoretical physics. But that would be like studying poetry. Engineering just seemed more practical. Now I earn more than a tenured professor of physics at a top university. Q.E.D.

> If you feel that the purpose of higher education is just to get a job, you are already off-track. Likewise, if you think the value of your education is measured by what hiring managers think, you are off-track.

Many parents raise their kids this way though. Many people are being raised off-track. I happen to know that because my motivations for university were 50% for getting a job and 50% to satisfy my large curiosity.

> if other people are short-changing themselves by abusing AI, that has nothing to do with you individually.

This question is not about me. Or at least, I'm not asking this question for my personal situation. I'm asking it because I'm concerned about others.

It's about people who believe that a degree proves that they have a certain form of skill in thinking and whatever it is that they studied.

> It's about people who believe that a degree proves that they have a certain form of skill in thinking and whatever it is that they studied.

Do you believe that is incorrect? That studying for 4 years does not give you that skill? Because it probably does. That doesn't make them better than people who didn't do that study, it just is a different experience. And if they abused AI in the process, there will be better and worse students from any given cohort.... but that was true before AI as well. There have always been people who deeply engaged with their education, alongside people who skated by just barely doing enough work to graduate.

Well sure, but quite frankly people undervalued my education when I started out in the job market in the beginning of 2020. They undervalued it in terms of the technical skills I've learned simply because they projected their educational experiences onto mine. That's what that it is.

But apparently _now_ it seems we're going to a world where hiring managers don't believe _anyone_ to have those skills, even if they in fact do have it.

I guess new grads have to make a portfolio on the side and take care of the code quality. Because even if you vibe coded that application, vibe coding a project with high code quality still shows a strong skill in programming as LLMs aren't there yet to do that fully themselves?

Like, how are skillful new grads supposed to show their skill when everyone (is about to) believe their education doesn't show any evidence of skill?

And yea, I agree, cheaters will be cheaters. I'm not talking about them, they're a lost cause in my opinion.

I actually think that's a pretty valid purpose. I mean we could have purist thoughts of going into universities for research and such, but to be realistic, most people don't go into universities to do research. Like, 95% of them? We do have vocational schools but they are not really enough, especially when hiring managers are setting the bars.

Is it fair/good to follow whatever hiring managers are saying? No. Is it realistic though? Absolutely yes.

Everyone says this, and even I've said this, but I don't think this is honest.

You can learn anything you want for free or very cheap by buying textbooks and watching free lectures on YouTube. Hell, you can often email the professors from those lectures and they'll answer questions for you, for free.

Since you can learn for basically nothing, what is the value add for universities? A few things, but a big one is having a certification that "Person X knows enough about subject Y and is vouched for by University Z". University is extremely expensive. Extremely expensive now, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the school (and other criteria). It's not weird for people to want a direct return on investment.

I don't think it's honest to tell people "go to university for the love of learning!!!". If you just "love learning", do it for free.

I'd add one bit of insight to the equation: When you self-direct your learning, you have blind spots to the "Don't know what you don't know" phenomenon, which are far more quickly and easily resolved when learning within a community. Not to mention, the community aspect itself... learning on your own by watching Youtube is a vastly different experience that being in a collective of hundreds or thousands of people all working together on their learning.

So you are absolutely correct that self-teaching works and is a valid approach. But saying that we are dishonest for pointing out positive aspects of college-based learning is taking that perspective too far. There are multiple paths to walk for your education, and they are all valid.

It's a different experience, but it's also an overpriced experience if your goal is to "simply learn". If you genuinely think people should pay 100 grand just for the joy of learning from a professor in person and being surrounded by a bunch of other people without expecting a financial return, then yes I think that's completely intellectually dishonest. It might sound insulting, and it kind of is, but I don't think I'm wrong.

This is coming from someone who has been a university lecturer, and has been part of a PhD program. It's not like I'm completely speaking out of my ass here.

ETA:

To be clear, I am not saying there are no positives to in-person university and I'm not saying university has no value over self-learning. I'm saying it's expensive and I take issue with your statement of "If you feel that the purpose of higher education is just to get a job, you are already off-track."

It's a potentially six-figure investment. It's not weird or wrong for people to do it to get a better job.

How do you look at affordable universities in certain European countries.

Less cynically!

I would be far more amenable to the “go to college just to learn” perspective if American universities were roughly the same cost as European universities.

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