College: waste of time?

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
College debt is not a mortgage. Bankruptcy does not clear the debt, for example. It is yours for life, and beyond. When you die your assets still have to cover as much as they can, it gets first dibs by law.
 

magnet18

Joined Dec 22, 2010
1,227
IMO, everyone should go to the best college they can afford and get the best degree they can (a real degree, not middle eastern relations or basket-weaving)

The key being the best college you can AFFORD

usually, once you're there a few years, you can get a campus job or internship to help pay for things.
Statistics show that once people who make it through their first two years are much more likely to be able to finish.

Personally, I will be going to Purdue or Rose-Hulman (if they give me enough scholarships) or MIT (if they accept me and give me scholarships... :nervous: ) for undergrad and the I will go somewhere for a masters degree. Either electrical/computer engineering or particle physics... really not sure...

(that is all assuming I don't start the next Facebook/Microsoft business and drop out ;))
 

justtrying

Joined Mar 9, 2011
439
The question is about whether it is worth the trouble...

Personally, I will be going to Purdue or Rose-Hulman (if they give me enough scholarships) or MIT (if they accept me and give me scholarships... :nervous: ) for undergrad and the I will go somewhere for a masters degree. Either electrical/computer engineering or particle physics... really not sure...
Personally I know people who are doing their masters in physics right now and have no clue where it is leading them.

Also funny you should mention all those scholarships.

p.s. be carefull about statistics, its like looking at a crystal ball, they will show what is needed for the time being. The question to be answered is, which equation do we apply to make this look good? Why, lets just reduce our sample size ;)
 

saturation

Joined Dec 21, 2008
22
See here:

http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=Engineering

I think to summarize, its probability: college is better than no college, which college one graduates from is better than others, some degrees do better than others.

Even if you don't finish a degree, college provides opportunities that can't be found in a blue collar environment.

A job that is mostly cognitive based rather than physical also gives you more workable years and less prone to injury, that can end your career.

In recent memory, * = non-graduated

Harvard
Marc Zuckerburg, *
Bill Gates, *
F Buckmeister Fuller *

Steve Wozniak: U C Berkley *

Steve Jobs: no college

Stanford:
Jerry Filo
Steve Yang
Bill Hewlett
Dave Packard
Larry Page
Sergey Brin

Wharton
Donald Trump

And the list goes on.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I was watching an interview with Steve Jobs. He is in the did not graduate category. On of the points he made is college gave him marvelous ideas for Apples GUI, such as fonts (calligraphy). Other ideas came from college electives too.
 
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