Is College Worth It?

[python862]

College. Supposedly a place of "higher learning", aimed at students of the highest caliber - when really, everyone is allowed in with enough money. But, is all the trouble really worth it for a simple piece of paper? Why do high school teachers care so much about whether or not you get into the college system - or better yet, why SHOULD they care? Their job is done as soon as the student either graduates or drops out. Are college students really any better than high school students? Why is it that jobs take these degrees so damn seriously? What if the student with the degree had partied their way through, making passing marks by simple blind luck and cliff notes? As I said, it's only a piece of paper stating that you were willing to put more effort into it than the next guy. I know, some wooters here go to college, and I suppose I'm not trying to rag on them, but still, what's the point? Please, explain why a huge university is so much better than a small community college or technical school, where the teachers actually care about the students, and the students actually care about furthering their education.

[David75]

True that a paper isn't a person's worth.
However bad my experience was with post high school studies, even though I mastered them, I have to admitt some of the things I learned then are a basis to most of the useful ideas I have at work. What's funny though is that it's more about details that had no stress put on them while learning...

In the end, it's what inside someone that matters to acomplish things. Graduation papers are only a mean to do some of the things, they can be a short cut saving you lots of years.
But that's only true if those papers are inclueded in a long term goal and fit perfectly within a clear plan.
If you go to college only because you don"t know what else to do, just try to find a damn objective.
Then there's the fact that college years should also be the most important as a person. I mean, that's when you can get your hands on valuable knowledge, experience lots of things and do not have to think of the hassle of sustaining your household...
It's also a time when you can enjoy your time with mates, girls, parties, have great deals of fun, so do not pass it. Those are the years to most important to mold what the you for the next 10 years or more will be...

Those years were some king of nightmare to me, however they were very important and the few moments I was happy by then, I cherrish the most.


c u

[Yukimura]

Going to (an accredited) college tends to makes you appear more valuable to society. Regardless of whether it should be the case or not this is simply a fact. Appearing valuable to society will get you more money in life than not, this is also a fact. So if your goal(s) in life are or require the aquisition of capital going to colllege and getting a degree will make your goal easier to reach.

Like you said it means you're probably willing to put more effort into something than other people who didn't get a degree. Dedication is an attractive quality that people who need things done tend to respect when choosing who to pay to get those things done.

And quite frankly you can only go so far in community college or technical school. Larger institutions offer a larger breadth of knowledge as well as the chance to work with things that smaller institutions might not. How much this matters depends a lot on what your field of study is though. If you want to be a scientist or an engineer having hands on experiance with high quality equipment and tools is a must if you want to excel.

[Zachiru-Hirosaki]

Please, explain why a huge university is so much better than a small community college or technical school, where the teachers actually care about the students, and the students actually care about furthering their education.

Answer>Two words :''More intelligent'', actually the system that in Holland is going is that if you graduate the college than you can go to the High School and then to the university if you graduate the university then you can (if you want) study further to the MBA if you graduate to that then you are possible to work everywhere where you want.
The reason of that is that every company can adopt you because you are intelligent on a subject what you can well.
If you only graduate the college then there is a little chance that a company will adopt you.
Maybe if you have strange brains that Microsoft can adopt you.
But there is a other way to study if you stop the college you can also study at home just go to the library and get some books that are important. Sometimes i also think why am i studying i can also study at home, but its better to study at school. Thats my way of thinking
In fact you must choose for your self

[Uchiha Barles]

A degree is generally just a piece of paper that says that you've taken enough courses and done well enough in them to get that degree. Why is it important? If I was running a company, the MINIMUM requirement would be that someone be able to get that degree. If you cannot do that, I don't want you in my company. That degree doesn't tell me that you're actually capable of doing what that degrees claims you're capable of doing. All it tells me, is that you did what you had to do to get it, and that is a bare minimum. If you are in fact intelligent, then what's stopping you from getting that piece of paper that a lot of quite stupid people can get?

High school teachers realize this, and furthermore, many of them see college as this mythically wonderful place of higher learning that would make the ancient greeks jizz their pants. A lot of your high school teachers really would like that for you. College CAN be that place, and that time, however, you cannot wait for a professor to make it so. Community college, Ivy league, or anything in between, college is the place where you ought to take responsibility for your own education. For example, you're taking a linear algebra course, and you find that for the sake of time, your professor is omitting the study of eigenvectors. Does that mean that you yourself ought not study the material, on top of what is required for the class? That depends on what you want from college. If it's that piece of paper that tells society "I'm at least above this level of idiocy", then yes. If you want to come out of college quite learned and feel it was an intellectually satisfying experience, then no, depending on what your actual abilities are.

To answer your question, yes college worth it. It makes you more mobile within society to have a degree, and it's the best opportunity to learn as much as you'd like, with the caveat that you have to be proactive in getting that learning. Can't wait for a professor to spoonfeed it to you.

[Assertn]

The question is too vague. It depends on the career.

Let me ask you this...would you drive 10 extra miles to a gas station that was 5 cents cheaper?

The point being is that everything has a relative investment/reward ratio, and your own cost analysis is dependent on your circumstances. Sure a higher level degree from a more reputable university is always better to have, but what will be the quantifiable advantages over, say, 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Would you spend $20k more on tuition if it means earning a $5k higher salary? How about $50k more for a $7k higher salary?

Some careers thrive more on what you know. Others thrive more on who you know. Some skill sets are very academic, while others are only achieved through real-world experience.

From my own personal experience, very little of what I learned from college is used in my day-to-day job -- most of what I know I started learning my first week into my career. When employers look at my resume, they don't even bother to read past my title. So many companies are looking for my skill set that it makes me wonder how much farther I'd be right now if I didn't waste 4 years under the radar in my dorm room.

[Death BOO Z]

they tell me that this is how college works, it's probably more accurate than american college movies.

[Board of Command]

Sounds more like post-grad to me.

[Buffalobiian]

Well, I can't speak for other programs/fields, but it's probably similar. Would you trust me to be your pharmacist, if I say...just left high school? What about if I've been training with the local chemist for the past 4 years, so that the amount of learning time is the same as a uni course? What's the difference?

Difference is that a University, as the name suggests, is a collaboration of experts from many fields. If I stayed at the drug store down the road, I'd be learning, yes, but only what the pharmacist knows and is able to teach me. There is no guarantee of standard nor accuracy which is being passed on.

At a university, everything is peer reviewed and the knowledge is coming from those actively researching in your particular area of interest. I don't know how easy or hard it is to pass other subjects, but here, you really have to study consistently to pass. Bludging then cramming can work, but you'll have to have some uber capacity to pull it off. As you go further into your studies, it builds more and more on your previous knowledge, so it's not like you can memorise and forget.

In the end, I think places like university, colleges and other tertiary education institutions are places where they train qualified people in a selected area. It's not an intelligence filter. The cut-offs are there to limit supply/demand in a way deemed fair by the academic society and to a lesser extent, give an idea of the difficulty of the course.

[Animeniax]

One of the practices that concerned me while in college was that a course would cover a topic for about 2 months, then have an exam, then go on to the next topic. The next topic had little to do with the previous topic, so it was easy to learn what you needed just to pass the exam, then forget everything you learned and move on to the next topic. Even the final exam only covered what you studied in the last month or two of the course; it was rarely a test of the entire semester's material. So I was always worried that I wouldn't learn what I needed in order to succeed in future courses or in my actual future job. The answer is, beyond the basics that you will need to survive through the degree plan, most of everything else you learn is just to get exposed to it, not necessarily to build on it and definitely not to master it.

More than just for future job considerations, college is a good time for personal experience and growth. Why rush into the work force if you don't have to? You'll probably never get another chance in life to take it this easy. 4 to 6 courses a semester, requiring 12 to 18 hours a week of class time, and the rest is hanging out, meeting people, playing sports, trying new things, and experiencing what's out there before you join the rat race and the old 8 to 5 and an hour in traffic to and from work 5 days a week, all year round.

[David75]

One of the practices that concerned me while in college was that a course would cover a topic for about 2 months, then have an exam, then go on to the next topic. The next topic had little to do with the previous topic, so it was easy to learn what you needed just to pass the exam, then forget everything you learned and move on to the next topic. Even the final exam only covered what you studied in the last month or two of the course; it was rarely a test of the entire semester's material. So I was always worried that I wouldn't learn what I needed in order to succeed in future courses or in my actual future job. The answer is, beyond the basics that you will need to survive through the degree plan, most of everything else you learn is just to get exposed to it, not necessarily to build on it and definitely not to master it.

More than just for future job considerations, college is a good time for personal experience and growth. Why rush into the work force if you don't have to? You'll probably never get another chance in life to take it this easy. 4 to 6 courses a semester, requiring 12 to 18 hours a week of class time, and the rest is hanging out, meeting people, playing sports, trying new things, and experiencing what's out there before you join the rat race and the old 8 to 5 and an hour in traffic to and from work 5 days a week, all year round.

Exactly, College is also a time when you experience your adulthood without more than 5% of the adulthood constraints.
So it's a time worth experiencing, every minute of it is important because you'll never get the chance to do it again unless hug amounts of money fall in your pocket by chance.
You could say you'll have a second chance at retirement, but then your body won't be as strong and healthy than for those college years.

If you have the chance to, don't let it pass.

[python862]

Thanks all who have explained. This was a topic on my mind for awhile, but never got around to posting it.

The thing is, I never said I wasn't going to college, but I also never said that I would be going to a top-name school like Harvard, Yale, or even Florida for that matter. The things I said were some opinions I had over the past two or three years while listening to my teachers harp on me to push myself more so that I could go to college, when I never really understood the reason why anyway. I do know that college is a very valuable experience when it comes to 'figuring yourself out', but beyond that was very vague descriptions of how college could be so great academically. You see, these high school teachers always tell you that you should go to college, but never say why or for what, beyond the standard reply of "So that you can learn more."

I have always planned to be a videogame designer/programmer/writer, but even then I didn't quite see the purpose of college to my own ends. I still don't, really, but I've started planning to at least attend a technical school; something like Devry or Full Sail. Something that gives you the high school mentality while still maintaining the independence of a university. (And because Devry gives away free laptops XD).

[Animeniax]

Don't think that you have to go to a top college to succeed. A degree from any state university or accredited college is all it takes really. I personally wasted too much time in high school preparing to get into a "good" college. Then I ended up going to an "ok" college and not finishing. If I had gone to a "bad" college I would most likely have finished in 4 years and my life would be totally different now. But for too many people name-branding means more than I think it should. They wouldn't be happy unless they graduated from a Harvard or Stanford.

[David75]

Thanks all who have explained. This was a topic on my mind for awhile, but never got around to posting it.

The thing is, I never said I wasn't going to college, but I also never said that I would be going to a top-name school like Harvard, Yale, or even Florida for that matter. The things I said were some opinions I had over the past two or three years while listening to my teachers harp on me to push myself more so that I could go to college, when I never really understood the reason why anyway. I do know that college is a very valuable experience when it comes to 'figuring yourself out', but beyond that was very vague descriptions of how college could be so great academically. You see, these high school teachers always tell you that you should go to college, but never say why or for what, beyond the standard reply of "So that you can learn more."

I have always planned to be a videogame designer/programmer/writer, but even then I didn't quite see the purpose of college to my own ends. I still don't, really, but I've started planning to at least attend a technical school; something like Devry or Full Sail. Something that gives you the high school mentality while still maintaining the independence of a university. (And because Devry gives away free laptops XD).

you would think that in programming, game design and so on the internet is more than sufficient.
However, even the geeks need to confront real people on their favorite battle ground.
I mean that however good you are, if you never meet someone of your level... or even better you can't progress. It's strange because the minutes you spend while seeing a comrade IRL seem like wasted time. But when you see true genius at work, you never ever forget it. And no collaborative internet environment can replace that experience.

If you even get the chance to work with several people good at what they do and you do a collaborative work, it's even more profitable.

[Jessper]

I have always planned to be a videogame designer/programmer/writer, but even then I didn't quite see the purpose of college to my own ends. I still don't, really, but I've started planning to at least attend a technical school; something like Devry or Full Sail. Something that gives you the high school mentality while still maintaining the independence of a university. (And because Devry gives away free laptops XD).

I'm about to graduate with a degree in Software Engineering Technology, programming from a tech school. I have learned more than I imagined there was to this whole programming idea, sure you can learn c, c++, xna, etc etc from the internet, you can even find all the courses you will go over on wikipedia but there is so much more to it than a 2 page article.

My professors have explained a number of times that we are not there to be code monkeys, that is what they hire high school grads for. Knowing how to design a system from the top down is more than you learn from the article "Everything you need to know to code in C++" it just isn't that simple.

Even with out the growing up experience there is a wealth of knowledge at college that is necessary to operate at the levels a company will want. When I was asked what big o notation is during an interview it wasn't a written test question, it was because it matters in their product.

Even the extreme math we take as computer engineers is necessary, it isn't like I remember all the tricks to use to take a derivative but my senior project uses linear algebra to determine camera views.

On top of all the non-monetary reasons you WILL get payed more, so the time and money are worth it. The only exceptions are crazy one in a million breakthroughs, and even those are mostly from people that have attended college (look at you-tube, it was a senior project for college and is worth an enormous amount of money).

But for too many people name-branding means more than I think it should. They wouldn't be happy unless they graduated from a Harvard or Stanford.

People visit my school all the time and tell us how they love the people from here, it is backed up by their business hiring many of our students every year and having >30% of their employees made up of people graduating from here. I'm happy with the name in my situation, not saying you are wrong but that it sometimes the name is worth something.



I've got a job out of college and I know for a fact that I will use my college training on a daily basis.

The simple answer is if you can get through it yes it is worth it, in my opinion.

(Ignore the ironic incoherence!)

[complich8]

First thing's first, and that's a cautionary note. Professional game development (in the sense of PC/console game programming) is a very hard field to get into. You've got to be a seriously sharp programmer, absurdly lucky and well-connected to get into most of the very few positions out there in the field.

It's also nowhere near as fun as a lot of people think it is, and most people who want to go into it have no idea what it entails. If you've never written OpenGL or DirectX, if you haven't started writing C++ or C#, or if you've never written and debugged a several thousand line long program in a low-level language, you've got no idea what it's all about and you definitely have some serious research and self-study to do before you commit to that path.

Most people who start out in a programming-centric major in college end up either failing out, changing to something else, or end up doing things like software maintenance -- with nowhere near the glamor or interest of the game industry.



In a more general sense, the question "is college worth it" is pretty commonly asked. It's worth it for a small subset of the people who end up going, but you've got to do some introspection to figure out if it'll be worth it for you.

The way I see it, there's 3 routes you could consider after high school:

1. Straight into the workforce
2. Community College/Technical school
3. Traditional 4-year university

Straight into the workforce:
Basically, rather than going to college, you find a job and start working. If where you're going doesn't require a college degree, then this is the best route, because college is expensive and costs you time you could have been spending getting practical experience. Also a good choice if you're ill-equipped to succeed in college (bad at taking tests, bad at writing papers, just not terribly smart, not great on motivation) -- because if you fail out of college, you end up with somewhere between a couple thousand and a couple tens of thousands of dollars sunk in an education which got you nowhere and wasted your time.

Community College/Tech School:
If what you want to do is taught there, community colleges and tech/trade schools are great. They're inexpensive, they're direct routes to the goal, and the teachers are usually better at teaching because it's what they're there for (professors at most universities are there for academic purposes, which means research and publications are their primary concern and teaching is just an annoyance). Also, they tend to introduce you to the sort of college mindset and make sure you're prepared to succeed in a university environment, only without gambling as much up-front.

University:
If you're smarter than average (say, 70th percentile or better on most standardized tests), good at academic pursuits (homework, studying, exams, papers), somewhat motivated, and like learning for learning's sake, then this is a great path. It's also great if you're looking to spend four years as a man-child, pursuing drinking and debauchery with other man-children and woman-children with little responsibility and a lot of free time. But you'll also walk out of it likely 60-80 grand worse off than when you walked into it, and if you end up with a degree unrelated to whatever your career ends up being, you probably won't even get a significant pay boost from it.

A traditional university will open up a lot of doors for you, if you are the type of person it does that for. But if you're not, it'll just bleed your finances dry and waste your time.

On top of all the non-monetary reasons you WILL get payed more, so the time and money are worth it.

If you make it out of college, into a career which requires a college degree, yes. But at the last place I worked, none of the management, one of the four other people on my team, and only one of the half dozen or so developers in the organization had a degree. Similarly, the only people on my current team who have degrees are me, my manager's manager, and the department's director.

After you've been out in the real world for a couple years, the salary benefits of a degree largely disappear versus an equivalent work experience. And you sacrifice the opportunity to get that experience in spending the time getting the degree. In economics, this is called an "Opportunity Cost" -- the value of the best opportunity you miss in making a given choice.

The simple answer is yes, in the vast majority of cases.

As someone graduating from a technical program at a tech-centric school, maybe this is the case for you. However, the vast majority of cases includes those people who don't graduate at all (a VERY significant chunk), those people who do badly and have trouble finding jobs (also significant), those people who end up working in a field different than their degree field (also significant -- the vast majority of people who graduate with Liberal Arts degrees don't end up working in their field without a graduate degree)

[darkshadow]

First thing's first, and that's a cautionary note. Professional game development (in the sense of PC/console game programming) is a very hard field to get into. You've got to be a seriously sharp programmer, absurdly lucky and well-connected to get into most of the very few positions out there in the field.

Very very untrue, game development is so much more then just programming, i know since that's what i'm doing, plus at our school the 3rd year is 6 months internships. Also all graduates of my school have found a job and 30% of them even started their own company.
There definitly is a demand for people in the industry, since its not just programming and new talent is what keeps things fresh and innovative.

[Jessper]

My first post was a flurry of edits because I didn't like how I stated things, you'll have to forgive that. It was perhaps a bit late to make a large reply to something fairly serious... Though I'm not sure this post will come out much better. =)

If you make it out of college, into a career which requires a college degree, yes. But at the last place I worked, none of the management, one of the four other people on my team, and only one of the half dozen or so developers in the organization had a degree. Similarly, the only people on my current team who have degrees are me, my manager's manager, and the department's director.

Yes experience is worth a lot but at this point in the industry unless you know someone you are not going to get an equivalent job, at the very least money wise. I don't have the experience to say obviously but I'd bet climbing the ladder from the guy that delivers the mail to a software engineer is a slow process. Would the 4 years you save of college be worth the low wages up to the real job?

After you've been out in the real world for a couple years, the salary benefits of a degree largely disappear versus an equivalent work experience. And you sacrifice the opportunity to get that experience in spending the time getting the degree. In economics, this is called an "Opportunity Cost" -- the value of the best opportunity you miss in making a given choice.

I agree completely that experience is worth more, but again I don't see getting that experience to be easier or more cost effective than getting the degree.

As someone graduating from a technical program at a tech-centric school, maybe this is the case for you. However, the vast majority of cases includes those people who don't graduate at all (a VERY significant chunk), those people who do badly and have trouble finding jobs (also significant), those people who end up working in a field different than their degree field (also significant -- the vast majority of people who graduate with Liberal Arts degrees don't end up working in their field without a graduate degree)

I edited my original line there (before your edit ) because I saw the flaw there, that you have to make it through college for it to be worth it, even though it should be obvious. Even if you end up working in a different field will have an easier time getting a job with any degree, I was offered a management position at some painting business because I will be getting a degree, doesn't matter that it is software.

Very very untrue, game development is so much more then just programming, i know since that's what i'm doing, plus at our school the 3rd year is 6 months internships. Also all graduates of my school have found a job and 30% of them even started their own company.

One of the people in my class interned at EA(on spore omg!) and will be working there most probably, after he graduates. I imagine he would agree about it being much more than just programming, he is very creative and he has a real passion for game development which he considers very necessary. That is not to say that programming isn't important, he only got the job because he is one of the best programmers in our class, he knows how to make his games work well and do what he wants.

[complich8]

Very very untrue, game development is so much more then just programming, i know since that's what i'm doing, plus at our school the 3rd year is 6 months internships.

Right, it's not just programming, but .... would you say that you'd be successful finding a job if you can't program?

Also all graduates of my school have found a job and 30% of them even started their own company.

My university's college of technology has about a 98% job placement rate across the whole college, but "finding a job" and "finding the job you want" are two very different things.

I'm not saying it's impossible to get into the job you want, whatever it is, but you definitely have to approach things with an honest assessment of your own abilities, aptitudes and motivation. Further, if you have a specific, selective industry you're aiming for, you definitely want to make sure you pick the school that'll get you there. That's also research...

Yes experience is worth a lot but at this point in the industry unless you know someone you are not going to get an equivalent job, at the very least money wise. I don't have the experience to say obviously but I'd bet climbing the ladder from the guy that delivers the mail to a software engineer is a slow process. Would the 4 years you save of college be worth the low wages up to the real job?

This, again, all depends on the person. Some of my friends who didn't graduate high school at all will never make as much as I made after college and a couple years of experience. OTOH one guy I know got a job working as a tech at a small IT consulting firm, learned a lot about cisco and juniper and network infrastructure in general (some of it on his own, some of it on the job), and by the time I was 4 years into college he was starting his own consultancy firm and making a 6-figure income. Of course, he's a smart, motivated self-starter willing to spend hours every day learning an industry on top of actually working, so ... ymmv on that one.

Seriously, college is great if you're the right type for it, but it's not the only path to independence.

[python862]

There definitly is a demand for people in the industry, since its not just programming and new talent is what keeps things fresh and innovative.

Like I said, I wanted to be a writer/programmer/designer. I haven't even decided on going one way or the other, and by doing this, I'm leaving myself options. I already know I can write, and I enjoy writing. The programming seems to be the hardest of the three options, but it's definitely something I can do if I put my mind to it. The design is really something of a last-ditch effort. I am not artistically inclined in the least, but if I work and work at drawings, I can make them at least presentable.

As for Complich's posts, this seems to be the general consensus for those who want to get into the game production field of work. They say it's hard studying and long hours of working at C++ and other coding. I can do studying and long hours, but it's the subject matter that really matters to me the most. I don't study world history all too much, but if it was something to do with gaming, I know I'd put more effort into it. Hell, I'm not even in it for all the glamour, or even the money. I want to do it because I know it's something I'd enjoy doing.