> College is a scam (specifically the debt-based form of it) and nearly completely unnecessary for most work.

Signalling remains incredibly important. Employers want to know that their junior employees are capable of overcoming adversity. There are many ways to check for that, but the easiest is check if they've succeeded in a stressful environment before. That's effectively all a degree is for most jobs.

No, you don't need a college degree to get a white collar job, but convincing employers that you are the type of person who overcomes adversity is much harder without the degree.

As far as the price, last time I checked getting a college education is still statistically the best investment you can make. The price is increasing because people are willing to pay since they recognize how much it will add to their earning potential.

I would not look at a college degree as an indicator that someone can overcome adversity. They are incredibly common. Almost everyone applying to certain categories of job will have one. And I've personally seen a large number of people with at least one degree fall apart under the real pressure of a startup or FAANG job. The whole point of a leetcode interview is to separate the applicants who merely graduated from the ones who can handle very difficult questions under close observation.

And I would be remiss of I didn't point out that people who go to college at all are more likely to be from well off families and have educated parents. It's a "great investment" for those who already have a huge head start.

I agree that there are better signals. As I said, the college degree is just the easiest one for employers to use. I think there probably will be a shift towards tech style interviews in other fields, but until they figure that out the degree is an important aspect of deciding who is able to be successful.

>I've personally seen a large number of people with at least one degree fall apart under the real pressure

There are of course false positive/negatives with every heuristic, I don't think that makes them worthless.

> people who go to college at all are more likely to be from well off families and have educated parents.

The studies on how a diploma effects future earnings obviously controlled for that, as well as many other things. You can go ahead and check the studies, they're pretty thorough. College is a great investment for many, even if it is much easier for the wealthy to obtain.

>I would not look at a college degree as an indicator that someone can overcome adversity. They are incredibly common. Almost everyone applying to certain categories of job will have one.

It might not be a good signal of "can overcome adversity" because everyone has one, but not having a degree could be a good signal for "can't overcome adversity".

>Signalling remains incredibly important.

This is the kind of thing that remains true until it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely true right now, and I'd advise my own child to go---but this would a pragmatic knuckling-under, not a fundamental need.

There's significant psychic distress that's created by being a maverick, which I doubly wouldn't wish on my children, so I would still advise them to go. But I would also advise them to not take it too seriously, to be interested in learning things outside of school, and to keep an eye out for off-ramps.

I love that it's considered 'adversity' - working in some of the most advanced labs in the world, on some of the most wealthy campuses in the world, all the while partying with your friends, doing the minimum work to get a B or C average.

Not saying I was exactly one of those types, but those types ALSO got jobs just fine, and I'm ready to brawl anyone that says they faced any true 'adversity'.

There absolutely are people that are not able to complete their degree with a B or C average. It's not an incredibly difficult thing to do at most schools, but I wouldn't exactly call it easy either. Additionally college is designed to test things that employers value most in junior hires. Basically comes down to "Are they able to consistently complete tasks on a deadline with minimal supervision?" Which isn't much of a bar, but many are still unable to pass.

> The price is increasing because people are willing to pay since they recognize how much it will add to their earning potential.

I assumed prices for colleges were increasing because of the availability of cheap debt. I know plenty of people who went to college, taking out large amounts of debt, and not seeming to directly consider their earning potential post-graduation.

It's ridiculous for eighteen year olds to have to consider their future earning potential, when the constant drumbeat is "you must go to college to be a successful human".

I was the only person in my immediate family to go to college, and it was clear from my school and my family that "college = success". I majored in psychology, which has absolutely no job prospects. At no point did I have meaningful support from anyone around me in terms of picking an "effective" degree, or evaluating job opportunities.

It worked out fine for me, because I spent most of my time not paying attention to class and screwing around on the internet instead, so the ~50k in private student loans at an extortionate rate that I had to take out to attend have never been a problem, but it was all by complete luck.

It's an absurd system. How about we stop encouraging kids to go to college unless they have a plan on how to manage the incurred debt?

>> the easiest is check if they've succeeded in a stressful environment before

I guess you...overcame adversity by going to college?

Least stressful time of my life. I fucked off, did drugs, and somebody else paid for it all.

So much stress.

Yet it remains completely necessary to make it to the interview so that you can be hired and paid to do a lot of that work. Including interesting, desirable and rewarding work.

In a lot of fields that's changing, but not in nearly as many fields as it should be. Outside of academic fields a training program could provide just as much, if not more knowledge needed for a specific career as a college. Especially with college requirements including a lot of things not necessary for the specific degree being sought.

Obviously there's many exceptions. I don't want a doctor that just took a training course, but my doctor not taking american history or calculus? Not a deal breaker at all.

Speaking from experience... Degrees are not at all required in software engineering. Passion & skill are sought after in early career developers, and years of experience will suffice in more advanced engineers.

I'd say degrees from prestigious universities can still help you even in software engineering, even after experience should take precedence.

My sense is that's mainly true at companies where the founders/execs have prestigious degrees, and therefore put a lot of stock in them.

I think it's (unfortunately) quite helpful to these companies too, since appearances matter a lot. Telling a non-technical investor, prospect, or journalist "all our engineers are from Stanford/MIT/etc." will often impress them regardless of whether any of those engineers have a clue (something a non-technical person has no way to really evaluate).

But unless it's a household name university, I think you're right that it no longer matters at all.

It's also worth noting that someone who graduated from Stanford/MIT/etc has a lot of good options, and it's a huge vote of confidence that they chose to work for your startup

This just isn't true at all. After my second job I stopped even listing college on my resume and my first two jobs didn't care that I never graduated. I'm sure it depends on the industry but in tech the companies that are worth working for care about what you can do, not where you went to school or if you graduated.

I don't know how or why but nobody ever asked me once, they just sort of assumed. I'm guessing this isn't the common experience.

this is kind of a tangent, but you know what makes work really interesting, desirable, and rewarding? it's not anything about the work itself, it's that it actually, truly needs doing.

I generally agree with this position.

However, my son wanted to be an engineer, so he learned calculus and got into a well-regarded engineering program. My mother is pretty well off and she's been funding his education. Now he's about to graduate with his degree and become an ME.

My feeling is that there are a number of occupations that meet a couple of criteria:

- you actually need both a highly-specialized education - there is a certificate that you can only get through formal education - there are jobs waiting for successful applicants - the student in question has a good chance at succeeding - there is some underlying support for the student (in the case of loans, this would tighten up the question about success and and the kinds of jobs available)

I believe in the utility of a deep humanities education, but the US university system makes that ruinously expensive to the point where I more or less agree with your sentiment. It sucks that "necessity for work" has become the only reasonable way of deciding to pursue deeper education.

perhaps it has become a scam (and it certainly has become expensive), but i defnly got a ton of value from my education at University of Oregon back in 2001-2006ish.

you've got your whole life to work! it's valuable to take some time as an adult (or almost-adult) to learn random stuff in some depth; this will be hard for 99% of us to do once we've got the rest of the real world to deal with.

(now, if we could restructure life to allow for a more lesiurely pace, that would be great. but until then, college is a pretty precious "out" from the rat race imo.)

> College is a scam (specifically the debt-based form of it)

Degrees are statistically worth it, salary-wise. Just don't go to an expensive college. There are a few degrees where it may matter, but for the vast majority of subjects the expensive colleges are NOT worth the premium. Find a boring reliable but inexpensive college, hopefully near inexpensive lodging. Some states make it easy to go to a community college for the first half of the education.

Indeed it is more of an anti-education for many, who come in a lot smarter and capable than they leave. The grievance study disciplines provide next to no social benefit while poisoning the minds of the next generation with imagined sleights and resentment while saddling them with insurmountable debt. College attendance still helps with job prospects for a narrow set of fields, but any applicant with a degree conferred after 2016 or so should be held under a microscope as the radical beliefs they spent $60k studying are toxic to any organization.