I returned to college at least 4 times. I tried and tried. I am a high performer when I'm motivated. But I have trouble sustaining momentum.
Entering college for the last time 5 years ago, my goals were: brush up on latest technology, earn CompTIA certifications. Mission accomplished. Pell Grant well-spent.
My parents are the types who don't understand non-traditional education. My father scoffs at anything that isn't accredited. But we're living in the future now. Education has been disrupted by technology and disrupted by culture.
I had straight As in grade school and a bright future. Unfortunately, my childhood wasn't as loving as I had always thought it was. I suffer from C-PTSD. I was homeless, penniless, jobless, all at once. I lost everything I owned. I've bounced back from all that, but I still visit the hospital too often.
I've worked at a steady job in the education industry for 3 years now. That's a new record for my tenure at anything. They don't require a degree. They don't even require the relevant certifications I've owned -- they make no difference in my paycheck, and they won't pay for me to earn or renew them. But we love each other, I've found a great team, I am in my niche. I'm here to stay. No degree necessary.
Same. I will say that after nearly 40 years in tech, my lack of a degree has only every hurt me during the application process and that has been only been in the last 10 years where HR bots pre-sort me out of the pile. I am at the end of my career and as such searching for new tech work isn’t a big issue because I expect my current gig to carry me through to retirement.
But because of the gatekeeping HR bots, I’d argue that folks who want to work in tech in the future should pursue and achieve a STEM degree. However outside of STEM careers, degrees are just expensive pieces of paper.
I obtained my BS from a state university, retired at 38, went to graduate school at a state university at 48, started another business, retired again 3 years later. I've hired ivy league graduates, graduates from MIT, but my best employees came from state schools.
Every Harvard graduate I've ever known has been arrested, committed fraud, or worse, murder (Lookup Luke Sweetser). The first thing that comes out of all of their mouths is they went to Harvard, and pretty much that is the extent of their ability.
The university system is in shambles in the United States. I've been consulting with several, but they're entrenched in this new ideology. Many top level engineering programs are suffering by putting diversity over qualified students. Diversity is a goal we should seek, but not at the expense of the student that is produced. They're setting up many for failure, and loading them up with debt they will never be able to repay.
Spend your money wisely. You will get out of any university what you put into it.
Similar experience. My MIT reports were largely average in terms of output, despite very strong "raw puzzle solving ability", if that makes sense. However, I had some amazing state school reports, they blended talent for unconventional solutions, strong work ethic, and the attitude of someone who doesn't think their lives are already figured out due to their college degree.
One problem is that there are plenty of really bad state school people too. The bottom line is that if you select carefully, and don't let fancy degrees bias you, you will find some of your best people from "boring" places.
Unsurprising, the degrees that prepare you for a professional career, e.g. STEM, medicine and law are shown to be good investments.
People who choose to pursue majors on the basis of passions and/or quest for knowledge in a specific area without concern for the market, would need to be aware of what they are signing up for. But when you are young and not yet worldly wise, it can be a problem. Perhaps, those degrees should come with a warning label.
CS in the classroom is not remotely similar to CS in the field. From my own experience, I definitely lacked the maturity and vision to look that far ahead. Interested to know how you made this determination and which parts you would actually grow to hate.
At Caltech, everybody knew that an AY degree was useless for getting a job (there are only so many telescopes). So lots of students did a double major - EE for a job, AY for fun.
I can vouch for the fact that people who take a brutal AY major for fun are indeed some of the most interesting people you'll ever meet.
Asking this question generally has no value because everyone's experience is different. It's hard to a/b test this because it's impossible to control for everything else.
You'll see lots of personal stories in this thread. Some will say yes, some will say no, some will have no degree.
Some degrees are better than others. Some institutions are better than others.
There simply is no one-size-fits-all answer here.
Of course for someone contemplating a degree, some research and planning is a good idea. Maybe find people with your context, with your planned degree, and quiz them.
You are incorrect. Asking this question has great value when you do it regarding degrees because, while your statement is true about individual outcomes, outcomes of the population that completed a degree tell you quite a lot about the value of the degree, which is a large part of the input into choosing a degree for many people (and it certainly should be a huge part of deciding what degrees get subsidized and to what extent by the tax payer).
Yep, and even if it's (nearly) free (not the US) the opportunity costs of not working for a few years can be harsh. It depends, and I'm still not sure if I regret it, I keep telling myself that I learned enough interesting and useful things so that I recognize problems and can look up the solutions I once knew. In my case CS, and finished in 2010.
I studied electrical engineering because I was told I'd have a leg-up on software engineers, who don't understand how computers work. That knowledge turned out to be irrelevant in the Internet era. Then I doubled down by going to graduate school, where I specialized in the hot research field du jour and discovered it did not exist in industry. It is now dead as a research field too. So my entire higher education, I painfully realized, was worth jack. I did not get my degree either 'coz my advisor was denied tenure, got a breakdown, and I became depressed myself. After much moping and with marital support, I cut my losses and dumped electrical engineering for software engineering, and machine learning in particular. That was a fantastic career move but it took me a long time to get over the waste and suffering. I've always hated school, and I was a great student.
Fortunately I became proficient with computers well before I got "schooled" so I was able to eventually get a job. But employers always held my education against me, especially at startups. Why did you study that? Why did you go to graduate school?
That's interesting. I had a similar experience, where I was proficient with computers and programming before entering university, chose to get an EE degree instead of CS, and then immediately went into software engineering where I've never used my degree. I've long since forgotten pretty much everything EE-related that I learned in school, so my degree is also pretty worthless at this point.
But I never got advice encouraging me to get an EE degree as a way to get a "leg up" on SWEs. Most of the advice I got was that I was making a mistake, and should get a CS degree instead if I was interested in programming. I went ahead with the EE degree anyway, but it's never seemed to hurt me in the eyes of potential employers, at least not that I've noticed.
Can you say a little more about how employers held your education against you? I've also been asked questions about why I chose various aspects of my education and job history, but never assumed it was hurting me as long as I gave a reasonable response.
My advice came from academic EEs. In my youthful ignorance, I failed to consider the potential for biased advice. From people with no industrial experience.
As for employers, some interviewers grilled me about my education. Others I deduced by de-emphasizing my education in my resume.
My degree was absolutely worth it, I paid a total of 2700 euros in tuition fee and got a master (French software engineering degree in 5 years @ 540 euros a year). By having a cursus to follow, I got a sense of direction of what to learn and ended up studying things that are useful to this day that I might not have learned otherwise. Even if I skipped a lot of classes, I spent a lot of time reading all the relevant textbooks to those classes and got all the theoretical foundation I wouldn't have otherwise as well as access to teachers who could answer my questions or point me in the right direction.
And finally, having a master degree has been extremely useful in getting visas allowing me to live in a lot of different countries over the years.
On the other hand, I was an exchange student at RIT for 6 months and I don't know if the very high tuition (40k per year nowadays? when I was there, I didn't pay the tuition, just the one in France) there would be worth it given the lower quality of education compared to what I had in France and the extremely high cost.
I probably wouldn't have found programming work without my CS degree, I needed some training. I do know programmers who were good, got jobs and who didn't have a degree, but they were the coding-since-8 types and I wasn't.
But I'm late 40s and now long term unemployed, wondering what I'm supposed to next. So that CS degree didn't go far. They seem to be mostly signalling now anyway, you have to have the right Brand Name attached to them for maximum effect, and I don't. And a lot of my jobs were a notch or two above garbage tier, so lacking that brand name seems kind of bad.
Readit News
I returned to college at least 4 times. I tried and tried. I am a high performer when I'm motivated. But I have trouble sustaining momentum.
Entering college for the last time 5 years ago, my goals were: brush up on latest technology, earn CompTIA certifications. Mission accomplished. Pell Grant well-spent.
My parents are the types who don't understand non-traditional education. My father scoffs at anything that isn't accredited. But we're living in the future now. Education has been disrupted by technology and disrupted by culture.
I had straight As in grade school and a bright future. Unfortunately, my childhood wasn't as loving as I had always thought it was. I suffer from C-PTSD. I was homeless, penniless, jobless, all at once. I lost everything I owned. I've bounced back from all that, but I still visit the hospital too often.
I've worked at a steady job in the education industry for 3 years now. That's a new record for my tenure at anything. They don't require a degree. They don't even require the relevant certifications I've owned -- they make no difference in my paycheck, and they won't pay for me to earn or renew them. But we love each other, I've found a great team, I am in my niche. I'm here to stay. No degree necessary.
Same. I will say that after nearly 40 years in tech, my lack of a degree has only every hurt me during the application process and that has been only been in the last 10 years where HR bots pre-sort me out of the pile. I am at the end of my career and as such searching for new tech work isn’t a big issue because I expect my current gig to carry me through to retirement.
But because of the gatekeeping HR bots, I’d argue that folks who want to work in tech in the future should pursue and achieve a STEM degree. However outside of STEM careers, degrees are just expensive pieces of paper.
Every Harvard graduate I've ever known has been arrested, committed fraud, or worse, murder (Lookup Luke Sweetser). The first thing that comes out of all of their mouths is they went to Harvard, and pretty much that is the extent of their ability.
The university system is in shambles in the United States. I've been consulting with several, but they're entrenched in this new ideology. Many top level engineering programs are suffering by putting diversity over qualified students. Diversity is a goal we should seek, but not at the expense of the student that is produced. They're setting up many for failure, and loading them up with debt they will never be able to repay.
Spend your money wisely. You will get out of any university what you put into it.
One problem is that there are plenty of really bad state school people too. The bottom line is that if you select carefully, and don't let fancy degrees bias you, you will find some of your best people from "boring" places.
"Harvard MBAs Keep Going To Prison So Why Do They Still Rule The World?" - https://www.inc.com/dustin-mckissen/harvard-mbas-keep-going-...
People who choose to pursue majors on the basis of passions and/or quest for knowledge in a specific area without concern for the market, would need to be aware of what they are signing up for. But when you are young and not yet worldly wise, it can be a problem. Perhaps, those degrees should come with a warning label.
It would be nice if we had some sort of snappy aphorism. "Make your major your money and your minor your passion" or something.
I can vouch for the fact that people who take a brutal AY major for fun are indeed some of the most interesting people you'll ever meet.
From the article:
>> Mr Biden also promises an official list of “low-financial value” courses.
You'll see lots of personal stories in this thread. Some will say yes, some will say no, some will have no degree.
Some degrees are better than others. Some institutions are better than others.
There simply is no one-size-fits-all answer here.
Of course for someone contemplating a degree, some research and planning is a good idea. Maybe find people with your context, with your planned degree, and quiz them.
Fortunately I became proficient with computers well before I got "schooled" so I was able to eventually get a job. But employers always held my education against me, especially at startups. Why did you study that? Why did you go to graduate school?
But I never got advice encouraging me to get an EE degree as a way to get a "leg up" on SWEs. Most of the advice I got was that I was making a mistake, and should get a CS degree instead if I was interested in programming. I went ahead with the EE degree anyway, but it's never seemed to hurt me in the eyes of potential employers, at least not that I've noticed.
Can you say a little more about how employers held your education against you? I've also been asked questions about why I chose various aspects of my education and job history, but never assumed it was hurting me as long as I gave a reasonable response.
As for employers, some interviewers grilled me about my education. Others I deduced by de-emphasizing my education in my resume.
And finally, having a master degree has been extremely useful in getting visas allowing me to live in a lot of different countries over the years.
On the other hand, I was an exchange student at RIT for 6 months and I don't know if the very high tuition (40k per year nowadays? when I was there, I didn't pay the tuition, just the one in France) there would be worth it given the lower quality of education compared to what I had in France and the extremely high cost.
But I'm late 40s and now long term unemployed, wondering what I'm supposed to next. So that CS degree didn't go far. They seem to be mostly signalling now anyway, you have to have the right Brand Name attached to them for maximum effect, and I don't. And a lot of my jobs were a notch or two above garbage tier, so lacking that brand name seems kind of bad.
We absolutely need to find a better model for STEM fields. Apprenticeships shouldn't just be for blue collar.