What's with all the 'Boo! College is bad!' posts these days? Don't get me wrong, if people find good jobs and educate themselves without going to college, more power to them. However, I dislike the tendency of some(/many) of these posts to present college as a waste of time. It's not. And that's from someone who dropped out the first time around. ;)
Different country, different context. I dropped out of the first college after 2-3 years (was hard and useless and tended to produce soulless zombies) and started another one which was much easier just to get my degree, while working at the same time. A few comments:
- college is about meeting people and doing different stuff. It's been said a lot, but not enough.
- the very few (3 in my case) really good teachers made a difference. Falls into the "meeting people, doing stuff" thing.
- overall, I think wasting over 4 years on getting my degree was a mistake, probably the biggest one I made. When I didn't have to also go to college at the same time my freelancing really took of, and I probably did more in the next year then in the previous three. BUT - I have a career (not just a job) where it's very very unlikely anyone will ever ask me for a diploma.
Dropping out has come to mean you will never get a degree because most people only consider college in the first place because they perceive a workplace advantage to having a degree. When they get out into the real world and realize they can live comfortably without one, there is little reason to go back. Someone who loves learning and is in college for reasons not related to future employment is not likely to leave over an idea in the first place.
Because of that, the number of people who leave and then go back is significantly small. Though I think you make good points anyway.
Meh. I dropped out for awhile, learned a lot, went back to college, learned some more. Dropping out should be a non-issue, something that just happens because you ran out of time. Making arguments for it just always struck me as apologetics.
The worst part of this drop-out fad is people miss out on going to college-the-experience. As opposed to college-the-education. It turns out it is actually awesome to hang out, learn stuff, and meet people 24/7. Work can give you some of it, but not everyone is committed in the same way. Different ages, different motivations, it won't be the same. The experience is worth as much as the education.
I have mixed feelings about this. I got terrible grades in college, and dropped out three times. The idea of ever going back makes me feel queasy. I hated it, and I wouldn't wish it upon anybody that feels like me.
Then again, nobody took me seriously before I graduated. I always had lots to offer, but no opportunities to offer it. Graduating gave me opportunities to meet people who could look past my grades and still see me as an intelligent, capable person. Those people ended up helping me to get my first "real" job...a job I got fired from for being "too technical", but nonetheless, a job which put an immense amount of experience on my resume in a short amount of time. In other words, college sucked ass, but it opened so many doors that I can't be too bitter about it.
I guess my true feelings on the matter are as follows: drop out, but make sure you are dropping out because you have an amazing opportunity...not because you don't like it.
Oh, and if you do drop out, never say to yourself "I don't care what anybody thinks of my decision". You do, and you are lying to yourself. You can't succeed anywhere without a decent subset of people trusting you. If you can earn their trust without a degree, awesome. If you can't, you either need to find a different subset of people, or you need to earn it the way that they expect.
I prefer to take a different perspective: college didn't fail you, you failed at going to college.
College is a place to gain knowledge from those that have more than you. If you see it as anything else (especially anything malicious) then you're looking at it from the wrong angle and coming in with the wrong attitude. A motivated person can gain a lot of insight and knowledge from even the shittiest of situations.
College classes are a completely valid way to learn things. If you think that you're entrepreneurial dreams will be fulfilled if you drop out, then go for it. Some people don't learn that way, and that's just as acceptable. There are problems with higher education, and some places more so than others. But don't be so vain as to denounce the entire institution of higher education from a single anecdotal data point.
Being a dropout is different than not going to college at all. And I'm not even saying that one needs to go to college, but someone who does 3-4 years at Harvard, MIT, CalTech, etc... and drops out is in a very different boat than one who goes straight from high school or home schooling to the work force.
The only time I think people should drop out of college is if they're building a company that's becoming crazy successful and making a boatload of money to the point that running that business makes more sense then college.
I dropped out of college, so I have first hand experience both ways. For me personally, I don't regret dropping out at all. For some career paths though, college would be very valuable.
"the people that will need to judge you quickly by little pieces of information are very likely to skip over you. That is unless you have some amazing thing on your resume."
Exactly, so we should be telling people that college is the backup option. Try to do some impressive and interesting stuff, and if you succeed, you've got a free ticket out of college. If not, you can always just do the safe thing and go to college.
I admit this wasn't my plan, and that dropping out of college was an act of desperation in response to the pain it caused me. I just happened to have enough stuff with which to fill out my resume since I had been interested in CS and programming for a long time.
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