EDIT: Also, to be clear, masochism was part of the problem. In college I thought I wanted to be a professor so I was working hard for grad school so I can get into a good PhD program. I was also doing a lot of research. Then I realized I liked being an engineer, and I don't have money to go to PhD. I DEFINITELY didn't need a near 4.0 GPA and taking ALL the hardest CS/engineering/math classes to get a six figures job.

obviously I feel I received some value from college (in my case, the soft value outweighs the hard values).

like I said, I don't necessarily think college is the best place to spend 4 years of life and many thousands of dollars if you are not gaining any type of skill, earning a value-add level of expertise in a field, or great general skill set improvements. It had a significant impact on me, although most of the skills I learned there were improvements on traits/ skills I already possessed.

I would whole heartedly agree that coursework can be dramatically optimized to better prepare students for a variety of careers [which I think will be the future case as trade schools, crash course programming schools and various workshops appear, and colleges continue to get pushback from those who have not been snapped up into the workforce]

but as bluedino mentioned, university life allows for a fairly unique set of circumstances: most young people, densely populated by people in relatively similar circumstances, rapidly maturing as people, learning a wide variety of new/ interesting things. >> for me from 18-22 this experience held quite a bit of value.

There are many paths to teaching young adults self-sufficiency, resilience, and how to adapt and overcome. I have a hunch the college track is a bit more expensive and inefficient vs other tracks; it's still a viable path, but suboptimal IMHO.

When faced with a large amount of work to do, it's easy to dismiss it. It's not so easy to actually do it. When I realised that (unlike high school) I actually had to do work to pass (and letting down extended family by failing wasn't really an option), I managed to work out how to apply myself to things that I didn't necessarily enjoy. Interestingly, when you actually apply yourself to a course what once seemed like a pile of uninteresting work to slog through starts to become interesting.

I've had plenty of courses that I wouldn't have learnt about myself. It's not until you force yourself to spend a semester studying something that you realise just how useful it can be in other areas of your life.

It was only really the last two years of my degree that I went from sort-of enjoying it to truly enjoying it. Sometimes there's a bit of a slog to get through before you can do interesting things. Engineering degrees (and probably computer science degrees) are like that. You have to learn the (often dull) basics before you learn the interesting things. The author makes the mistake of assuming that their experience (one year of OK performance followed by a year of not going to classes) is indicative of the college experience. That's not necessarily true.

Beyond academics, I got so much out of college in many ways. The ability to spend a year studying in another country, the wide range of people I met, the opportunities that I had to work with lots of people on interesting projects. College isn't just about going to classes and doing exams.

My degree didn't cost nearly as much as the authors one would have. I don't think I would have paid $40,000/year for my degree. However, there's plenty of options that don't cost that much that offer the same (or similar) teaching experience. I completely agree that college isn't for everyone, but I don't think the author really addresses why. What the article really says is that they didn't apply themselves very well to hard topics that they weren't interested in. Unfortunately not everything is instantly fun.

The only place I see this thinking is on Reddit or among people who aren’t engineers. It’s something people want to believe from the outside.

There are probably rare exceptional people who grasped all of the fundamentals without college, but I have never met one.

Which is just something many people don’t really care to do. And that’s fine. The problem is trying to get everyone interested in it, denying the fact that many lack interest and aptitude, and then diluting the experience for everyone while saddling the next generation with decades’ worth of debt.

> and you will receive just as good of an education

It depends on what you're being educated on. For the cookie-cutter classes every first- and second-year undergrad has to take, yes, I agree. For courses dealing in something you're deeply interested in or which involve advanced theory, it's more of a mixed bag.

> No crowded dorms, no roommate issues, know more people

For me, learning to deal with situations where I'm just a face in a crowd, having to deal with roommates I didn't always get along with, and having to make new friends because I didn't know anybody were all valuable parts of my education.

> You don’t need to take the ACT or SAT

Depends on the school.

> Employers don’t care what college you got your degree from

Depends on the employer. In an ideal world, each candidate would be judged entirely on merit and accomplishments rather than on things like schooling. However, even then going to a university will provide more opportunities to get involved with cool projects or to experiment with emergent technologies.

In college you were exposed to philosophy, literature, and a host of other things. That self-educated guy generally knows a lot about quantum mechanics, but has never bothered to read a classic novel or has never heard of Kant. All of those things form the basis and experience that allow you to learn from the world around you so much more efficiently.

I don't think college is broken, I just think the expectation that college is somehow a four year skills-training institution is fundamentally flawed.

My viewpoint on this has definitely evolved over the last decade. At 22, fresh from dropping out of college after my junior year, I would have written the same thing. A decade of experience has taught me the value of what I learned in college.

There will always be time to work, and to be good at your job. School can be more than that. Pretty much everyone shits on college these days, and I certainly understand why, but this shouldn't be looked at as anything other than conventional wisdom at this point. It's not a cutting-edge take or anything of the sort.

I know plenty of college educated people, many from extremely prestigious universities, and while they are both bright and I believe good people, most of them don't have much experience or perspective outside of what its like to be a middle/upper class American.

Just to be clear, seeing as I have no actual experience with college, I'm not dismissing your assertion, just comparing it to my experience with college educated people.

The idea is that a, colleges move to you places you'd never be (I have friends at NYU and Dublin who absolutely are getting more out of the locale than they are anything else), and b, because college is specifically made so that people can learn, you'll attract a purer blend of people, all of whom are interested in learning.

For the most part, that latter point is absolute bullshit. College has become so psychologically mandatory in the United States that people go to college whether or not they're truly interested in learning. And while I love the idea of liberal arts learning, and while hopefully if I stay I'll learn things I'd never thought to learn otherwise, the fact of the matter is that as colleges defocus themselves, there's less of an emphasis on really bright people who are going to blaze through early college to get to a meaningful level. In my classes, I'm learning to program in Processing and Scratch, for instance: one is a kid's language, for crying out loud, and for the other, I can't see the point of using Processing rather than Java. In my other classes, I'm learning to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, both programs that I have a good deal of familiarity with. It's an absolute waste, and my professors absolutely realize this, but they have no choice because other kids don't know a thing about programming, and the course that I'm in makes these classes absolutely mandatory.

As for the kids being enlightened and focused: don't get me started. At the time of this writing, one kid is in trouble because he brought tons of kids to his house and they threw up and now he's refusing to apologize to his parents because, as he puts it, "I'm in college. This should be expected behavior." Same kid told a real knee-slapper about stealing four thousand dollars while working at a Target. I mean, it makes for an amusing story, but it's despicable. And I'm in a pretty top-notch school, for what it's worth.

No, people who are really fascinated in learning nowadays tend to try and be practical about what they know: I'd bet that the brightest people of college age are doing things like trying to create start-ups, or at the very least trying to earn a living with the skills they've got.

I went to a top-tier 4-year university, and did develop several life-long friendships, many of which have led to introductions to other people, which have further increased my social and professional circles. It'd be easy to say if I hadn't gone to college, I wouldn't have that now, and, well, that's actually true... but it's missing the point. I'd still be me, and I'd still have the same drive to meet people and take advantage of opportunities. My life would be different, certainly, but I doubt it'd be less socially fulfilling.

So I didn't give up any potential salary earnings I didn't already give up by going in the first place.

My point is that college can still be a good option for lots of people, they just need to focus on the cost/ROI. The horrors stories that we hear about are typically from a dumb kid who went to an out of state or private school, got a a 'general' degree and had no job qualifications. Then they were shocked people were t just handing them money.

I've yet to hear a story about a kid that did two years at a community college, finished up their BS in engineering, and then had life crippling problems with their debt.

That is basically the reason why I find these discussions too sweeping and generalizing to be valid. What works for one person or field, might not apply to another.

In addition, for those who can afford it, college provides a tremendous general education and exploration opportunity.

Good college educations require a diversity of classes so students can learn from and about the incredible diversity of valuable ideas and knowledge. The belief that you already know what you want and can dismiss the rest is ignorant and arrogant (usually one follows the other). If you believe that, you most need a college education -- open-mindedness, an intellectual humility, and the desire to seek challenges to your ideas are hallmarks of the well-educated and are major benefit of good college educations; the more I learn the more humble I become! As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."

College has requirements regarding what and how you learn because they know more about it than you do, and would be shortchanging you if they did otherwise. Does a good developer let clients design their own solutions or let them choose bad ones? The educators are experts in their fields and in education; they have experience with thousands (at large universities, even millions) of people getting educations, research on learning, and much more. What do you know about it? I'm not saying that their ideas are all correct, correct for you, or shouldn't be challenged, but it's foolish to discard them wholesale.

The DIY hacker myth is exciting -- people will do it all themselves -- it's the old American rugged individualism. People who follow it limit themselves to their own imaginations, rather than the combined imaginations of a university full of smart people (including fellow students). You can't even imagine what you don't know; if you are dismissing whole fields then you are not even looking.

College is not for everyone, but that's a meaningless truism used as an excuse. The more intellectually able and curious you are, the more an institution full of very smart highly-educated people, experts in their fields, willing to spend months teaching you, waiting for you to walk into their offices and ask them questions, should appeal to you.

One reason why it's so easy to sell, is that college is a near universal experience for the middle and upper classes, and being an expensive experience, people credit it with much of the personal growth that happens in one's early 20s. They also credit it with making them good at their field.

"I really learned how to think in college"

"I really learned how to be apply myself in college"

"I really learned computer science in college, which wouldn't have happened if I went via some other path.

etc.

It's far too painful for most people to think "I could have been an equally skilled person if I'd spent that time doing something else".

I come from a long line of people who've succeeded without going to college. When I tell people I've known for a while that I dropped out of a community college they usually seem stunned and surprised that someone could actually have a reasonably intelligent conversation with them (and be a decent engineer) without that history.

My experience is that you can read books on the humanities, and CS, and get work done AND not kill yourself in the process. Maybe the road is a little longer in some ways, but you also come out of it without debt, and you get the benefit of having a very different set of formative experiences than your peers.