Ask HN: Do I need College?

Go to college.<p><pre><code> Take science to discover something you're good at. Take humanities to discover something you may love. Take at least one art or music class. Take at least one advanced math class. Join a fraternity. Learn how to play bridge (and play all night sometime). Learn how to play foosball. Get drunk. Learn how to play foosball while drunk. Get laid. Play an intramural team sport. Get a part time job. Eat something you never tried before at least once/month. Get high. Do original research. Take a class you think you'll hate pass/fail. Do 5 minutes at a comedy club on open mike night. Hang out with a professor you like. Get laid. Do a web start-up on the side. Make a few friends for life. Go to at least one party each week. Pick a major you love whether it makes career sense or not. Get someone who has written one of your text books to sign it. Blog about your college experience. Get laid. Go to Europe with nothing but a backpack for a month or two. Enter a college talent show. Meet as many interesting (and boring) people as you can. Read good books. Go without shoes for a week just for the hell of it. Get laid. Graduate. </code></pre> If you don't go to college, exactly when do you expect to do all of this?

I wish someone had given me advice along these lines, long ago:<p>(a) Make sure you have a really strong grip on your finances. (You sound like you probably do but I'm mentioning it anyway.) Include worst-case planning like the scenario where you are pulling part-time shifts flipping burgers or whatever -- the more savings you can accumulate early, I'd bet the happier you'll be. This industry most definitely does have its "bust" periods when even many of the "best" can't find work.<p>(b) As long as you've got work.... nothing says that you have to be a full time student, or complete in four years, or go deeply into debt. Consider working on a BA or BS or higher part-time on a pay-as-you-go basis while still accumulating savings. And, especially if you'll be paying out of pocket -- even though you are only part-time -- be a really f'ing good student and really nail everything along the way. Dig in and enjoy it all. Shine.<p>(c) avoid the trap where you think you'll get started on that "part time student" thing <i>next year</i> (or the year after, or the year after).<p>With this path you'll be managing your money conservatively, dedicating a substantial amount of your life to guided learning, gaining a diversity of real-world experience at the same time, minimizing your dependency on some all-or-nothing guess about what future employers you care about will want.

Probably.<p>Most people like college, and many people try to re-create aspects of the college experience at later points in their lives, usually without success. Even those who don't learn much seem to get a fair amount out of college. A lot of the learning takes place between the lines, and between classes.<p>I've seen college from the position of an undergrad, a law student (I quit) and now an ABD in a Phd program. I've written a lot about it here: <a href="http://jseliger.wordpress.com/?s=college" rel="nofollow">http://jseliger.wordpress.com/?s=college</a> . Take a look at those posts to get a better sense of the issues.<p>You can also look at a college degree as a kind of insurance: you may or may not need one, but if you do need it when you're 35, you REALLY need it.<p>Finally, look at the successful people you know or have read about. The vast majority went to college. Even the famous dropouts didn't, for the most part, dropout because they thought getting a degree was useless—they did so because they had a better opportunity to pursue. Unless you do, go.<p>Don't spent every hour programming. Go to parties, join a club, hit the gym. You'll still have lots of time with your hands on the keyboard. For many people, college is the easiest environment for sex they'll ever encounter. Take advantage of that.

Since you're smart enough to ask the question, then the answer is yes, you do. At 19, if all you've ever done is "IT" — maintaining servers and databases — then you need to broaden your perception of the world. A good college will help make you a well-rounded, much smarter person with a way better awareness of the world. That's what it did for me.<p>Go to a good college. Don't cheap out. Don't play with computers too much. Study computer science if you want (it's good for your programming skills), but don't get hung up on it. Step out of your academic comfort zone and take classes in subjects way outside of your experience: philosophy, anthropology, women's studies, linguistics, comparative literature, art. College gives you a place where you can experiment with knowledge freely. Maybe you'll find something you'll like more than computers. If you're really lucky, you'll find something you can put together with your knowledge of CS and do something really important (or at least really profitable!). Don't worry about jobs afterwards, since you clearly have all the skills you need to earn a paycheck.

I can't speak to the position of the OP, however, I have a general point I don't think I've seen mentioned. For some individuals, a college degree may not serve much value, either financially or for it's own sake. However I feel that collectively, all else being equal, a world where most poeple have been exposed to a broad range of views and have learned the liberal arts and sciences from passionate thinkers is better than a world in which they haven't.

College is not beneficial to all people but to many it is critical. At least in America the state of elementary, middle and high school is simple failure. Students are graduating with skills 8th graders had 30+ years ago. Students are graduating with only ever have taken watered down math and science courses.<p>I was one of those students who went to a public school which the standard of education was pretty darn low. When I got to college I was hit hard with just how behind I was. Many students were far above me all around.<p>When I graduated HS around 98% of students went off to colleges of some kind. Now when I look at facebook at least of the people I knew only a handful actually has a real job and of those people they are the ones who finished college. The rest don't have careers.<p>For me and the few others college fixed us. It forced us to do the work and work our way up to what most people are capable of.<p>So when you hear about the all star developer who never went to college and is doing great. Be sure of one thing, that person got a great education and good problem solving skills were learned. For the rest of us who never got this, you need to make up for it somehow. College is your shot.

Clearly you are above average in intelligence, possess initiative and are not afraid to take some risks. This is a great start to adult life.<p>My advice, keep doing what you are currently doing. Going to school part-time and working. If the start up goes bust, turn those skills to freelancing, and work fewer hours at a higher rate and go to school full-time.<p>Since you already seem to have much of the practical application of Computer Science in hand, I would suggest that you try a combination like Statistics as your Major, with a minor in Computer Science. Or, if there is a domain like Health care, or geology, or marketing that interests you. Get your BA in that discipline and pick up a minor in Computer Science. The combination of domain knowledge plus computer science plus all your practical experience should position you very well.

Educational value aside, a degree makes it easier to work abroad. As a Canadian I may want to work in Silicon Valley and I might get hired based on experience alone, but the US government is less willing to issue visas to those without a degree. That itself may make it worthwhile to you. Additionally, there are some government grants for startups (in Canada, but presumably elsewhere) that require one of the founders to be a STEM grad. Prior to enrolling in university I was unaware of these hidden benefits, but they're numerous.

If you want to be the best developer you can be, go to college.<p>Where else can you spend 40 hours a week learning about programming and computer science? At your job, you have to go to meetings, fix inane bugs, and focus overly specifically on your one little language|environment|product.<p>College (at a decent technical school) teaches you Computer Science. College will teach you the WHY of everything we do. Why do we do X, why do we not do Y? How do compilers work? How does TCP work? Why do you almost never use recursion in real programs?<p>Think of it this way - programmers are like carpenters. We build stuff. On the job training can teach you to remember to measure twice and cut once, to always put plastic over the insulation, etc. You don't need college for this stuff, you can learn from the experienced guy on the team. This is programming - the tips and tricks for getting stuff done in a specific language, common pitfalls, etc.<p>However, college teaches you to be an architect - to think about wind stresses on the walls, to think about traffic flow in the rooms and halls, how different materials will affect the size of the rooms you can build, etc. This is Computer Science. This is the interesting stuff.<p>Anyone can learn javascript and throw up a webpage with some buttons that do stuff. But if you want to truly be a master of your craft and someone that other people consistently look to for insight into how a program should be designed and how to solve really tough problems.... if you want that, you have to go to college.

You learn a lot in college. It's a structured environment where relatively well-curated information is supplied to you at a reasonable pace. You could find the same information elsewhere, of course, but it is often hard to know where to look or who to ask. Things like algorithm design, software engineering, and project management are very useful things to know. College will teach them to you. If you choose not to pursue further college, you should have a plan for teaching yourself.<p>Additionally, there is some perceived value in a having the degree. In a perfect meritocracy, if Alice and Bob have similar skills and experience, they should be treated similarly in the professional world. However, if Alice went to college but Bob was purely self-taught, the real world may well hold its prejudices against Bob.<p>Here is a personal anecdote of mine, which may be relevant to you. Not long ago, I finished a 4-year bachelor's degree in 3 years. On my resume, it lists a 3 year time span for this. I regularly get recruiters (both official company recruiters and 3rd parties) asking me whether I actually finished school, whether I was in a proper 4-year program, and the like. This leaves me in an awkward situation, and I am forced to clarify my circumstances.<p>People often joke about the value of a piece of paper, but sadly there may be some degree of truth to this one.

Ok so as a student who never thought going to college wasn't an option, until about Freshman year of High School I never thought about the fact that some kids didn't go to college.<p>So I am now a Sophomore in college studying Computer Science, and I whole heatedly think that you can do perfectly fine in the software industry without a degree. I haven't taken any classes that I feel like made me a better programmer. I learned some interesting things and got to spend a semester hacking Lisp but that won't really be what I ever do in a job, so not too beneficial.<p>With all that said, I wouldn't even consider not going to college. I don't really care that much about getting my degree, obviously I will get it (or in fact a few majors) but that's not why I would recommend college. If you are only contemplating going to a CC then it might be different, but the experiences and fun that I have at school I wouldn't trade for anything. I'd pay the $40k a year to just hang out for four years of my life and have a great time, regardless of whether I was getting an education.<p>The friends I have made and the confidence I have gained simply by being at shcool and interacting with friends and people on a constant basis are the reasons I love going back to school.<p>I have a friend who asks me why I don't want to graduate early, I have the credits where I could, and it's simply because college is the most fun I've ever had and I don't know why you would want to give that up.<p>So that's my opinion, if you can go to a Four Year college and have that experience I think you should jump on the oppurtunity

I don't think going to college is worth it if you're just going to get a degree. If the education will get you a foundation that will almost certainly benefit you, go for it. For example, if you want to be a doctor you have to finish college before you get go to medical school, but I'm not sure a C.S. degree makes you a better sys admin.<p>Let's pretend you start your own startup and you look for an entry level dev + ops kind of person. All other things being equal, would you rather hire a CS grad with no work experience or the person who didn't go to college with 1 year of startup experience working as a dev and being a sys admin? Either way, you should probably hire the person who demonstrates the best ability to do the job.<p>There is definitely some value in having a college degree. HR drones may opt to interview college grads first. You'll certainly learn things in college you may not learn other places. But college is pretty damn expensive these days, you've already got a career that pays you something, and it's hard for me to imagine you could learn something in college that you couldn't just teach yourself by building interesting things on your own.<p>Basically if you have to ask if college makes sense, spending a lot of money to go to college to find out if college makes sense may be doing things the hard way.<p>Here's a post from my old blog questioning whether or not it was a good investment to have gone to grad school -- <a href="http://captainrecruiter.blogspot.com/2011/05/value-proposition-of-higher-education.html" rel="nofollow">http://captainrecruiter.blogspot.com/2011/05/value-propositi...</a>.

The absolute worst thing I've ever done for myself was to go to college. I had a 50% scholarship towards one of THE top electrical engineering schools in the country (not MIT, but you'd be in the right state if you were guessing), and I toughed it out for four years. Due to financial aid f&#38;ckery, I made the choice to drop out with around half a year of credits to go to complete my BA. I had my own consulting business at the time, and I made a pretty decent run of it for about a year at which point I realized I was a MUCH better 'technology person' than 'business person'. I made the jump to full-time sysadmin for other companies at that time, and haven't looked back since. NONE of the skills I use today (either in my 'day job' as a <i></i>nix sysadmin or 'real job' as a musician/bandleader) came from my college experience. I had over $100k worth of debt (slightly less now, almost 10years later) and no degree. If I had to do it all over again, I would've skipped college entirely, gone straight into the 'failed' consulting business, and taken the extra four years of earnings instead of the staggering amount of debt. I have never once felt limited due to my lack of degree. The fact that I don't have one is easily eclipsed by what I've achieved professionally, and companies have had no problem bringing me on at top dollar (according to the various sysadmin salary surveys I read) to do my thing.<p>I'm not saying my path is for everyone, and as always Your Mileage May Vary. However, your path seems reasonably similar to mine, and if I had a time machine I'd go back and slap my younger self around until he decided to forgo college entirely :-) In <i>my</i> experience, it wasn't worth it - from the 'you NEEEEEED a degree to get a good job!' perspective AND the 'crushing amounts of debt' perspective.

Go to college.<p>I came out of high school knowing exactly what I wanted to do: make video games. So that's what I did throughout college, while professors forced me to work on problems and with languages that had nothing to do with video games, including one class where I made a course-scheduling web app in Django.<p>I graduated and worked in the games industry for a couple of years, until I was an engineer on a multi-platform game engine working on PS3, Xbox 360, PS Vita, 3DS, PC, and iOS games.<p>Then I realized that what I really wanted to do was start my own company, so I started teaching myself web development on the side. I got a job at a YC company with a Django-based site and I've been here for the last 9 months, learning the ropes before I try to start my own thing.<p>If I hadn't been 'forced' to work on problems outside of my own interests in school, I wouldn't have been able to make the career change I did. College might not teach you everything you want to learn, but it will make you learn things you never realized you needed to know.

I wouldn't say it's a joke in the IT field notwithstanding whatever people on HN say which is just a very small slice of the world.<p>There is not enough detail in your question to even give any specific advice to you. Like "what car should I buy.." Most importantly you haven't given any reason why you can't stay at the startup and continue to go to community college (cost, time from what you write don't appear to be a problem). Consequently (once again from the info you present) seems to be more of a downside to quitting then an upside to not finishing.<p>It's possible that going forward you will have to go beyond a BA so if you don't get that now where will you be? I'd stick it out and get the degree.<p>What do you do with the web hosting business? How many accounts do you have?<p>I don't think you can expect (with the limited info you are providing) though for anyone on HN to give you advice specific to your situation.

Continue pursuing the degree part time until you are at a point where you can go full time. Especially look for courses that compliment what you are learning in the work place. There will be a point where you realize that continuing school part time will take another 5 years but if you enroll full time, you can graduate that year.<p>If you go to college, then run up the stairs as Paul Graham writes. If you take the hard courses, i.e. the ones that make you work and think, then you are better off regardless. If you enroll in classes to get grades then you are wasting your time.<p>College should prepare you for thinking critically and finding answers on your own once you are out in the 'real' world. The biggest issue is that you won't learn business skills that are useful, i.e. ones that help you work for yourself rather than an employer.

First, let me put it this way: you can do perfectly alright without a college degree, however, you can only rise so high. You must not expect to be the next Gates who is obviously an exception.<p>Secondly, college is not about only about learning. Queue the "Don't let schooling get in the way of your education" spiel. It's experience. I'm not even talking about partying and getting laid, which are still experiences, but professional experience where you go a talk to a professor that you liked for four hours arguing how machines will never be truly intelligent.<p>So, yes, I think you should definitely go to college and do your startup part-time. The startup might not work out, and you will have the degree forever thus allowing for other prospects. Besides, who knows how you'll feel in ten years.

One of the largest advantages in getting a degree is working abroad. A lot of countries wont give you work Visas unless you have some sort of degree.<p>While this advice isn't perhaps directly answering your question, the fact is simple, having a degree will open some extra doors for you.

Caveat: my experience is from the UK (where university is usually focused on a single subject).<p>No, you don't need a degree to work in IT (for almost all areas). I know plenty of people who failed their degrees who are good programmers.<p>But, degrees are pretty good if you want to pursue a subject in some depth, or if you are interested in academia in general. You get to hang out with a lot of intelligent people of your age who are into what you're into. You get to talk to some people who are (academic) experts in their field. You get to find out a lot of things that you might never have considered that people would put thought into.<p>Degrees do make it easier to get a foot in the door of some of the more interesting areas of computer science (machine learning etc.).

College is a great place to make friends, bond with other intelligent people and learn of course. Even though when you reach some point, you have to do all the learning by yourself with books and articles anyway... If you were Canadian / French/ German / Finish, studies would be very affordable. Maybe you could go over there to study? My sister is in Finland right now and she tells me that school is free for everyone, even foreigners. Go burst that bubble !<p>The other option is to stay home, be discipled and learn everything from books and online courses. Then you impress the hell out of interviewers and you get the job anyway because some companies care more about skills than diplomas.

I went to college and stopped after I got my Associates because I had already landed a job in the software development world without my degree. Since then I have a few different programming and design jobs, I currently own my own development company that is doing better and better every month. Anyways, if I decided to go work for someone and they didn't hire me because I didn't have a BA or better, I probably wouldn't want to work for them anyways. I would like to work for someone that believes that experience speaks louder than a degree, because in my eyes, it does. A degree just shows you went through a structured learning experience.

Fresh out of high school I wanted to develop software and petaled around the idea that only a genius could do it so I changed my major to Bio. After two semesters, I couldn't take how boring it was. Over the years in college, I found very few people who were actual developers. I met a senior level developer playing starcraft who I became really good buddies with and got a lot of insight to what it's really like to be a developer and how (for the MOST part depending on the company) little a degree actually mattered if you were going for a dev position somewhere.<p>My buddy knew that I was looking to get into programming and would tap at the idea from time to time. Finally, I got the balls to start playing around with javascript. Shortly after, he informed me his friend's friends were looking for someone to train (completely green to software development) to write software for their consulting company. I did the interview with them, landed the job and shortly I began to realizing how much I loved programming. When they said "train", they meant they'd buy me books and would pay me to read them.<p>I got to the point where I was in my Bio classes and it would drive me insane that I wasn't learning something about the software world. I began to skip classes, skip homework and eventually dropped out. (I do have my Associates in Computer Science, but not a BA). 10 months later I'm able to handle small yet fairly complex projects they throw at me and am familiar with several .NET frameworks. I've been able to familiarize myself with certain ways to Unit Test my code, I'm familiar with WCF, WPF, C#, MVVM, OOP concepts and a handful of other amazing things.<p>Now to make my point. Being completely new to all of this I felt I needed to go to school to get any type of job. Being surrounded by software developers who've had their own startups, consulting companies or do hiring at their company for developers, I've heard the same thing repeatedly "I don't give a shit if you have a degree or not. If you know what you're talking about I'm going to hire you. I've interviewed countless people with degrees who can't write code."<p>Moral of all of this. Be good at what you do. If you're going to drop out of school, you better bust your ass to learn and you'll be fine :)

A person who moved from developer to CTO to CEO I am warning you don't MISS college. I have found myself in strange situations without knowing Mathematics that I have to go back to basics to do my job. If you take it easily by looking at low hanging fruit you will suffer later. The memories and learning you will have from college will be always there with you like swimming -- no matter if you dont swim for 10yrs still you won't loose that talent.

If you're going to work for someone else, go to college for the simple fact that you'll otherwise face discrimination knowingly or unknowingly at some point. And you'll probably learn more about life than about coursework.<p>If you're going to take over the world, skip college and do it. You can always go back later, and it's a major investment that will follow you around. Taking a couple years to follow your dreams will probably cost much less.

Work will always be there. College will not. As you get older responsibilities change and it will become harder to go back.<p>Think of it as an opportunity to learn how to:<p>-- Interact with people who have totally different interests than you<p>-- Find your passion outside of technology<p>-- Succeed (and fail)<p>-- Lead (projects, social clubs, fraternities, school)<p>-- Make friends<p>Life is too short.

Why not work for a year somewhere and then decide if you want to get a full degree? If you decide not to go back, then after a few years of work experience, I think few companies will care that you didn't get a 4-year degree.

I think it is smart to continue on and get a BA. Your abilities and experience can only help you further on in your career. Enjoy the time you have while you are young and physically able to enjoy it.

I totally know what you are talking about dude, I am in the same boat.<p>I was going to my local community college (over 26k students) to get an AA in Business and wanted to transfer. The college (like most in California) was impacted because of the sheer amount of students so getting the necessary classes was getting harder and harder. I am not sure about other CC's but this one (one of the biggest in Orange County) had a feeling of "high school part two" type of atmosphere. There was a feeling of its ok to take as long as I want in school....because I am in school, without getting on with your real life. I talked with other friends at other colleges and they said the same thing. It seems like our peers use college as a way to have a sense of achievement while still acting like they are in high school. That's just personally not for me.<p>In high school i started an ebay business which led to a fine jewelry website which i ran for a couple years. Then in college I started a skin care company, flipped the inventory and made some money. I then got another idea, taught myself some programming and got accepted into dev bootcamp. I'll be attending either the Feb 18th or March 11th cohorts once I get a small loan. I then decided to drop out because I got so fed up with the college climate. My thinking is I can always go back...college isn't going anywhere.<p>My suggestion would also be don't worry about companies that hire based on education. Why would you want to work there if they wouldn't even talk to you without an education? I can't personally speak for the tech world, but in general you don't "need" a degree...it's a great fall back but if you know your shit why does it matter if you have a piece of paper to prove it?<p>Why not continue to work where you are, save some money, and start a start up or apply to an incubator? Team up with a couple of friends and get something going.<p>At the end of the day, no one can tell you what to do other than you. I dropped (instead of doing the part time route) because I am a firm believer in the "burn your boat" (the boat being college) methodology. You make some great decisions when you have no other back up because your current situation has to work.<p>You seem like a smart dude who knows where he is going. You really just need to think about what it is you want and what is right for you. It took me a few weeks of constant, gut wrenching, inner monologue talks to finally drop but the pros of dropping out weighed the cons.<p>Hope some of this helped. I was (and am) in the same boat. It was a hard decision, but for me once I burned my boat and realized what I wanted it was very liberating.<p>Best of luck

Generally there's no reason not to take the AA on the way, incidentally.

A couple more comments for if you decide that college is for you and you want to save some money:<p>Fill out the FAFSA form; There is a lot of Grant money available that people do not know about. You may end up getting part or all of your tuition paid for.<p>Consider attending a community college for the first two years instead of going to a 4 year college.

I have two (Seemingly contradicting) comments regarding your question:<p>One one hand: I would say the most memorable experience I have from college for me had been.. Skipping class and feeding the squirrels. I am not being sarcastic here; This was in fact how I felt. The reason being: I took too long to decide what I wanted to major in and had accumulated too many units towards my Junior year. As a result, I had to pretty much pick a degree.. any degree.. to graduate. So to me, it felt like a big waste of time at that time.<p>On the other hand: If I were your age and do it all over again, I would have majored in Computer Science (Looking back in retrospect).<p>To summarize, I am glad I got my Bachelor's degree. But I wish I would have known more back when I was your age; I would have made a wiser decision in terms of what to major in.

I've raised millions for my startups multiple times. Some of my pursuits have worked out but most have not. I don't regret dropping out but it is definitely held against me. Prepare for many people that needed to goto college to get a foot in the door to pre judge you and you may even miss opportunities to get in front of important people because of that prejudice. I'm lucky I had extraordinary circumstances which helps people psychologically get over their preconceptions of a dropout. To most that are thinking of dropping out I advise them not to.

By virtue of you even asking the question, I'd say yes, definitely stay in College.