College or No College

[quote]JPBear wrote:
Experience is worth more than an education, but if you can’t get the experience without an education or you are not willing to move somewhere where you can then it really doesn’t mater.
[/quote]

This is true, however all things being equal the college degree wins.

A college degree will not get you in the door, but not having one may keep you out.

Before you answer this question you really need to decide what your goals in life are. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer or other technical field I don’t know how you can succeed without it.

However, if you have a good idea for a business or you can’t see yourself becoming a Dilbert, then college might not be your best option. If you took the same $100,000 you’re going to invest in college and invested it in a business you will come out far ahead of your peers who went to school.

I am a self made man. I bounced in and out of college for 3 years and then I said screw this. Instead of wasting my time working for minimum wage and taking shit from professors who failed in their own business or just couldn’t hack it in the real world, I decided to start my own business. The first few years were lean, but now I’m set for life. Funny part is, the accounting professor that flunked me now my CPA.

I guess I’m a little anti-establishment because I see these universities for what they are, money machines. The knowledge you gain in college which you actually apply to your profession could be learned in 2 years maximum. But they make you take all of these ridiculous courses to make money. I paid $2000 to get a gym credit in tennis. I could get a years worth of private lessons from my club pro for that much. How the hell is that justified? How about that art appreciation class.

For what I paid for that class I could have spent a month in Paris and gotten a private tour of the Louvre every day. The point is higher education is a rip off. I could give two shits if my doctor took tennis or art appreciation. Don’t even get me started on textbooks that cost $250. I’m extremely well read and go through 3-4 books a month, I have never seen a book at Borders or Barnes and Nobel for $250.

It just pisses me off because they know these kids need and eduacation and the squeeze them an bury them in debt. For what? So my art appreciation teacher can spend her summer in europe doing research for her class.

Anyway kid, if you want to be a computer programmer, maybe a 2 year technical school would be better. Most of the IT guys I hire go to tech. school after they get a college degree because the colleges are behind on what is happening in the programming world. Especially when it comes to the web. I have 10 guys in my IT dept. and they all went to 2 year tech. school. Even my outside computer consultant will tell you he learned more after he got out of college by going to 2 day to 2 week seminars from Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.

Some excellent replies!

I will tell you the same thing I tell my own kids (who are much younger than you) who are always complaining that they will never (practically) use what they are learning in school.

No matter what topic you study, you build your brain! Somewhat like physical exercise. The actual motion of a Squat or Press is less important than what that movement can do for your body relative to development.

You can develop your brain learning various things that may not be practical in life. However, building a better brain should be at least one goal in college.

Not only should you go to college, you should fall in love with the idea of learning! Learn for the sake of learning. Don’t worry about what it will bring you in the short term. In the long term you will be far better off in many, many ways.

College degree = more money. It doesn’t matter what your degree is or what you do, college grads make much more money over their lifetime than others.

Hey man, if you’re not sure if you want to go to college right away, you could always join the Marines. I get out in 2 months and will be starting college.

The benefits of being a Marine are great. In 4 years, I’ve been to several unique places, met interesting people, learned skills that you’d never learn as a civilian, and had one hell of a time. I also have the Montgomery GI Bill to help me pay for school, a VA Home Loan and the pride of having been a Marine. You can’t beat that. Plus it’s only 4 years. By the time you’re done, you’ll be focused and ready for college. Personally, I don’t regret a thing.

Joe

Oh, and did I mention that it’s your JOB to be stay in shape? What T-Man wouldn’t love that?

[quote]getbig wrote:
I know some people that don’t cause they say universities don’t give you real world experiences.[/quote]

I don’t know who says that. I learned tons of shit about myself while in college. I developed a strong work ethic, learned how to take care of and provide for myself, expanded my mind, made some incredible friendships, and survived some of the hardest times in my life (including my boyfriend dying).

I went to college too early though. I didn’t know what I wanted and didn’t have any direction from my parents and ended up trying on different majors and not feeling that any of them “fit” me. I dropped out after three years and haven’t finished up yet. There are plans in the works though. :slight_smile:

But dude, if you have the chance to go to college, don’t be stupid and think you won’t learn anything from it. You’ll have a great time, meet some great people, and learn a thing or two along the way.

[quote]CU AeroStallion wrote:
I know that all of the programming the AeroStallion has done is in a program called MatLab, it’s very dependent on calculus and applying it in the real world (it’s engineering, engineers use lots of calculus). [/quote]

On a side note, I, hate Matlab… I had to write a program once that would take the audio channel of a Leno Show and find the highlights based on the highest intensitys of the volume spikes. It was suposto represent crowd applause, but it always Kevin Eubanks laughing then the audience clapping, go figure.

I have never met someone who regretted getting their degree or going to college. I know many who regret not finishing or having the opportunity to go.

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:

Don’t even get me started on textbooks that cost $250. I’m extremely well read and go through 3-4 books a month, I have never seen a book at Borders or Barnes and Nobel for $250.
[/quote]

The authors of most of those $120 textbooks (I don’t know of anything near $250) are effectively working for peanuts to write them. This is because of the small market and large effort required. A very small percentage of them do get lucky (or write an excellent book), get a large number of adopters, and can actually make a living at it (this also requires that it be in a popular field of study).

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
Anyway kid, if you want to be a computer programmer, maybe a 2 year technical school would be better.
[/quote]

That depends on what you mean by “computer programmer”. If you want to be a website designer, then tech school may be sufficient. If you want to build CAD software for woven composite textile design, then a BS in EE, ME, or something similar and an MS in Computer Science would be a good start.

[quote]ZEB wrote:
No matter what topic you study, you build your brain!
[/quote]

This is advice here is gold. I have never used calculus for work, but the years I did do these type of subjects forced me to think and grow.

A college degree is only important because so many employers ask for it. It also shows them that you have the dedication to stick at something for 4 years with all the other distractions that are around at college.

[quote]usdsig wrote:
JPBear wrote:
Experience is worth more than an education, but if you can’t get the experience without an education or you are not willing to move somewhere where you can then it really doesn’t mater.

This is true, however all things being equal the college degree wins.

A college degree will not get you in the door, but not having one may keep you out.[/quote]

I think the Bear is saying if somehow you get through the door once, either by college or by hook or by crook, that’s pretty much it for doors.

Once you’re about five years out from school, the degree typically counts zip and experience is everything. A track record is even better than either experience or a degree.

Hell yeah. Go to college. College is a safe bet to get more money.

Go ahead and take calculus. As stated before calculus familiarizes one to rates of change and their relationships to amounts. Calculus is a foundation for MANY fields. Math is a topic that spans several if not all fields. When talking about medical research, understanding pharmacologic rates of change of a particular drug in the human body relies heavily on calculus. Explaining the disappearance/appearance of substances during chemical reactions rely on calculus. Designing anything with moving parts is simplified with the use of calculus. Don’t limit yourelf now. Be in a position to choose your career and not the other way around.

beef

[quote]getbig wrote:
Do you most of you recommend going to college/university? I know some people that don’t cause they say universities don’t give you real world experiences. So, what is the purpose of a university education? Except that you get a diploma and education of course.

Also, I am planning to take a Calculus course and I want to know what is calculus good for, and why the heck do I need to study it if I am not going to use it for programming?

Thanks!
GB[/quote]

College is like the gym; the more you challenge yourself and the harder you work, the stronger you get.

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
By: Will Durant

Chiming my two cents in.

Go to college. The quotes about it being GPP for the brain (especially calculus) are true. I can’t begin to explain the difference working with people who can think and who can’t.

If I was hiring, I’d question anybody who hadn’t gone to college. Prejudiced? Maybe, but I would have my doubts about their ability to think, work, participate in a team, organise and everything. The percentage of people who haven’t gone to college but could perform in a higher-level job is infinitesimally smaller than that of those who have.

I’ve done a lot of technical stuff over the years, and college always stood to me. Always. I met people who were smart, intelligent, easy to get along with but didn’t have the basics of a good college education and it always worked against them.

To put it in T-Nation terms, imagine if you have a bunch of your friends helping you to move, but none of them can lift more than 20lbs. You can like them, understand them, they can try, they can want to help, but at the end of the day they won’t make much of a dent in the pile of furniture to move. They won’t be heavy hitters.

Regarding self-made people who went to college, there’s always exceptions and college is not for everyone. However, they are few and far between. Most of them have at some stage at least tried college and not succeeded, which is vastly different to not going in the first place. And, as someone said earlier, no-one ever regrets going to college but a lot of people who didn’t wish they had.

Finally, I teach a kid over here English - he starts US college in the fall. I’m so jealous of him right now, it’s eating me up inside! Of all the places in the world to go to college, I think the US provides one of the absolutely best experiences in the world with regard to independence, self-discovery, growing up in general and experience, of all sorts. And bluntly, your college chicks are just so much hotter than anywhere else on the planet. Why wouldn’t you want some of that?!