It is paywalled and I no longer subscribe to FT. Fwiw: I have a PhD (never actually totalled what it cost to get from undergrad to final walk ... would have had a stroke, I'm sure) so I'm biased...
It is paywalled and I no longer subscribe to FT.
Fwiw: I have a PhD (never actually totalled what it cost to get from undergrad to final walk ... would have had a stroke, I'm sure) so I'm biased because I thought it was worth it for me.
The real question for the next generation is about the valuation of expertise. Politicians globally have seemed to diminish the sanctity of knowledge, experience, technical know-how, and intelligence (KETI). Do you need a degree to acquire KETI? No, you never have. Do you need a degree to signal to others that you have specific relevant KETI? IMHO, that's pretty much what an accredited degree in any field is/always has been for.
edit: internships and apprenticeships are amazing opportunities to acquire KETIs (since well before the Guilds of the Middle Ages right up until today). My concern with them is their transportability: without some standardized certification/accreditation, how do others know the KETIs an individual has acquired are a good fit for their job requirements? I then fall back on the degree which should inherently provide that signal to other employers in other industries and other countries about an individual's KETIs. Or do we need to invent a new parallel track to industrial trades' journeyman certifications? Then we're right back to Guilds. And by way of reminder: in the Middle Ages, you joined A guild where you lived (probably wherever you were born): you worked there for the rest of your life, never moved around, just that one job for frickin ever. Zero transportability.
I was a first generation non-traditional student, and now have a Bachelors. If I had known what a PhD was early on out of high school, I would have stuck to it and worked towards that. I have...
I was a first generation non-traditional student, and now have a Bachelors. If I had known what a PhD was early on out of high school, I would have stuck to it and worked towards that. I have worked and been very lucky and privileged to have ended up in a research role where most of my peers have terminal degrees. I love it and am planning to continue towards at least a Masters. It's been a challenge at every role to get in the door and then prove myself, having an advanced degree could have greatly improved this.
I know it's not for everyone, but if you have some inkling of what you want to do early on, you should seek the right training and accreditation for it, whatever that may be. Even if your field doesn't strictly require it, the process of earning a degree is likely to open up your universe of possible futures significantly and help you arrive at the right destination for yourself.
I think for most people its a safer bet to get an degree if possible. Personally I'm doing fine without a degree. But I have also been very lucky. So, I guess the answer is maybe? (but probably yes)
I think for most people its a safer bet to get an degree if possible.
Personally I'm doing fine without a degree. But I have also been very lucky.
So, I guess the answer is maybe? (but probably yes)
I am firmly in the camp of not unless you need it. By that I mean if you intend to study law or medicine you no choice but to bite the bullet. you absolutely need that piece of paper at the end of...
I am firmly in the camp of not unless you need it.
By that I mean if you intend to study law or medicine you no choice but to bite the bullet. you absolutely need that piece of paper at the end of your degree.
If you intend to do a skilled job and can learn while doing I believe time and money is much better spent teaching yourself and then doing an internship or even volunteering to get hands on industry experience.
Comparatively you will be way more employable after let's say 3 years compared to someone else straight out of university. they will likely have stiflingly debt and you could well have started a pension and have some savings and well on you way to being a mid level employee.
I am drawing strongly on personal experience as a software engineer in the UK. I got my degree and paid off my debt but if I could go back in time I would have opted to skip it. students these days have it way worse than I did too, they come out with more dept and a way higher interest rate, I don't believe it's realistic to believe they will be paying off their debt before it gets automatically written off after 25 years which is a joke.
All that aside, university is one of those amazing times in your life, I met my wife while studying many years ago and there's so many great experiences open to you as a student.
At least from the US perspective I disagree for software engineering. I learned a lot in university, not just about actual computer science but even more about the industry, who to aim for, how to...
At least from the US perspective I disagree for software engineering. I learned a lot in university, not just about actual computer science but even more about the industry, who to aim for, how to aim for, and many connections which have paid over many fold. Even just in terms of ambitions - before I went, I would’ve been happy with an 80k/yr job as a newgrad, but I ended up with 250k/yr.
I had about 40k in debt but my signing bonus was higher.
My experience is that there is a lot of Dunning-Kruger going on with people who resist degrees in Computer Science, or complain about basic data structure/algorithm interview questions. There is...
My experience is that there is a lot of Dunning-Kruger going on with people who resist degrees in Computer Science, or complain about basic data structure/algorithm interview questions. There is often a very clear separation between people who can program by gluing premade libraries together and people who grok actual CS concepts and can design novel things competently.
I was self taught, programming from the age of ten using only library books, but I chose to go to college to learn things that I knew would be difficult to do alone. (There's simply no replacement for formal CS, calculus, discrete math and physics classes. Nobody is teaching those to themselves for fun.) Then I walked into a junior position, but at a higher title and pay grade than someone without a degree, straight out of college.
I also maintain that college is necessary to break people out of their small-minded bubbles. It's crucial that people be exposed to skills and ideas that they wouldn't necessarily think about on their own, such as much of the humanities, math and other scientific fields. It's necessary that people be exposed to other cultures and be cured of preconceptions. (I finally learned some music theory and how to find my way around a keyboard due to space for electives.) The traditional university education is one of the greatest achievements of western society, and those hell-bent on destroying it are perpetrating a great evil.
I got a generic degree in IT and from that somehow got a programming job that I've been working for a few years now. I feel like I can tell pretty quickly when one of my peers has an actual CS...
I got a generic degree in IT and from that somehow got a programming job that I've been working for a few years now.
I feel like I can tell pretty quickly when one of my peers has an actual CS degree because they grasp certain concepts much faster than me due to their inherent knowledge of OOP concepts etc. I simply don't grasp as quickly as them. I feel a little bit of regret I didn't go the CS route (but more thankful I landed a CS role more than anything considering how much more it pays compared to say, a helpdesk role, which is all that my degree really prepared me for).
I agree with this. I would not be in the position I am now, at my age, if it weren't for my degree. It would've been much more difficult to find my first job, because there are many (maybe even...
I agree with this. I would not be in the position I am now, at my age, if it weren't for my degree. It would've been much more difficult to find my first job, because there are many (maybe even most) companies who still require degrees for software development.
Our company actually tried accepting boot camps in lieu of degrees. It was an absolute disaster, and in one year, we reverted back. Learning syntax is one thing. Learning what actually happens under the covers is quite another.
From my sample size of two, I will say that I found the US university focus on jobs and industry to be much stronger than the UK’s, which still held on to a bit more of that “knowledge should be...
From my sample size of two, I will say that I found the US university focus on jobs and industry to be much stronger than the UK’s, which still held on to a bit more of that “knowledge should be its own reward” ethos. I can quite believe that’s been shifting as the UK system gets more marketised, though.
I’m ambivalent about this - I’m happier self teaching than not when it comes to hands on problem solving (and I’m including coding as hands on here), but the physics and CS courses I spent my...
I’m ambivalent about this - I’m happier self teaching than not when it comes to hands on problem solving (and I’m including coding as hands on here), but the physics and CS courses I spent my degrees doing largely dealt with fairly abstract maths and theory. I loved it, but there was very little “hands on” to be had: it was the structure of the course, the guidance of the lectures, the support of my peers that allowed me to make sense of it all.
So did I need to learn all that stuff at all, given that 95+% of my dev work for the last decade has been not-that? Hard to say.
On the one hand, I do genuinely think that knowing the real fundamentals helps me pick things up faster, find more elegant solutions, generally be better at what I do - but it’s almost impossible to quantify the real impact of that (if it even exists at all) without a clone or a time machine.
On the other hand, I’d do it all again even if someone handed me conclusive proof it did nothing for my career. The importance of learning for its own sake, the exposure to new perspectives, the amount that the whole experience developed my social and life skills were a huge part of making me who I am, and if that’s not valuable education I don’t know what is!
And then on a third hand, we’ve stumbled into a world where 10+ years later things like tensor calculus suddenly do form a massively important part of an enormous growth industry - making the academic work I did way back then incredibly valuable to know even in a day to day business setting. But totally by chance, in a way that pretty much nobody could reasonably have foreseen in the mid-2000s when I was choosing what to study.
So it’s been personally worth it regardless of the financial, and then it’s completely chanced into being financially worth it in a way that wouldn’t have been possible to predict. All of which says nothing useful for anyone making the decision today, but I guess that’s perhaps the point: we’re in a world that changes so fast we can’t rely on past experience to judge what’s smart for those who come next.
I think software is kind of an exception in that degrees are considered optional despite paying as well as it does. And it seems like even that is changing since there's so many people with...
I think software is kind of an exception in that degrees are considered optional despite paying as well as it does. And it seems like even that is changing since there's so many people with degrees that it's hard for someone without one to even get that first foot in the door.
And if you look at other science or engineering professions that pay in the same range, they'll pretty much all have a degree as a hard requirement that cannot be bypassed
Software should be treated as a trade, not a degree. You don't get a degree in plumbing, you learn the trade. That's not to say there couldn't be computer degrees, but they'd be a theoretical math...
Software should be treated as a trade, not a degree. You don't get a degree in plumbing, you learn the trade. That's not to say there couldn't be computer degrees, but they'd be a theoretical math or physics specialization.
Plumbing doesn't have a degree, but it (and most other trades) have licensing requirements instead. It's kind of an interesting idea, though considering many kinds of physical engineering has a...
Plumbing doesn't have a degree, but it (and most other trades) have licensing requirements instead. It's kind of an interesting idea, though considering many kinds of physical engineering has a license requirement (PE) as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if software goes that route. Currently it's the wild west of employment. No unions. No governing bodies. No quality or responsibility controls. Yet software dominates the...
I wouldn't be surprised if software goes that route. Currently it's the wild west of employment. No unions. No governing bodies. No quality or responsibility controls. Yet software dominates the modern world. I imagine things will eventually settle down into something more akin to the trades as it matures.
It's not always the wild west. Certain important areas like financial systems and health information are very heavily regulated. The labor side is another story but that extends well beyond software.
It's not always the wild west. Certain important areas like financial systems and health information are very heavily regulated. The labor side is another story but that extends well beyond software.
I mean at that point, that just becomes a Computer Science degree all over again. Most of the courses I took in university weren't even about software engineering (two total about software eng. to...
That's not to say there couldn't be computer degrees, but they'd be a theoretical math or physics specialization.
I mean at that point, that just becomes a Computer Science degree all over again. Most of the courses I took in university weren't even about software engineering (two total about software eng. to be precise), they were mostly about theory and things like lambda calculus and algorithms, with written exams on pieces of paper.
edit: on second thought, if you're excising all courses where you write code at all, that would cut like half of the courses out, and the rest would presumably be filled with different math. I don't agree that writing software has no place in universities though, a ton of major breakthroughs and important projects come from CS research departments in universities.
tbh I don't think computer science degrees that are solely theoretical is remotely worth it, at least not at the bachelor's level. The theoretical knowledge is very valuable, but actual hands-on...
tbh I don't think computer science degrees that are solely theoretical is remotely worth it, at least not at the bachelor's level. The theoretical knowledge is very valuable, but actual hands-on experience is absolutely also worthwhile. Probably the most useful skills I gained from my master's (in natural language processing, so not full CS admittedly) were from being forced to do actual projects.
Also from the Uk the way the student loans work here means the debt is in no way stifling that’s an absurd claim. Few things, it is overall bullshit but not stifling. Yes it’s insanely high £9k a...
Also from the Uk the way the student loans work here means the debt is in no way stifling that’s an absurd claim.
Few things, it is overall bullshit but not stifling.
Yes it’s insanely high £9k a year + now
It only kicks in once you are over 27k/yr salary so it’s impossible to be crippled by this loan if you lose your job, repayments stop.
It is not treated as debt for your mortgage or other credit applications.
Anyway we’re way more class conscious here so good luck getting a prestige job in most industries that are not tech, without going to a Russell Group university of having access to an old boys club.
alright, I agree stifling is probably a bit extreme. but you may as well consider it a 25 year student tax as no grad is likely to pay it off before their term. it's a decent chunk of your pay...
alright, I agree stifling is probably a bit extreme. but you may as well consider it a 25 year student tax as no grad is likely to pay it off before their term. it's a decent chunk of your pay too, I'm not entirely sure at what point you start overcoming the interest but I believe it's close to 50k.
yes, student loans do https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/when-your-student-loan-gets-written-off-or-cancelled
yes, student loans do
If you were paid the first loan on or after 1 September 2006
The loans for your course will be written off 25 years after the April you were first due to repay.
You actually do, as long as you have federal loans. Repayments are based on a percentage of your income above a multiplier of the poverty line and debts are forgiven after 20 years. Yes, in the...
You actually do, as long as you have federal loans. Repayments are based on a percentage of your income above a multiplier of the poverty line and debts are forgiven after 20 years.
Although actually, Biden is trying something similar starting this year for federal loans that have been in repayment for 20 years or more. It survived one legal challenge last month. I'm very...
Although actually, Biden is trying something similar starting this year for federal loans that have been in repayment for 20 years or more. It survived one legal challenge last month. I'm very interested to see how it works out.
So, when I was an undergraduate, The University of California charged tuition but not more than I could reasonably earn in a summer working full time. Cost of education today is a huge issue....
So, when I was an undergraduate, The University of California charged tuition but not more than I could reasonably earn in a summer working full time. Cost of education today is a huge issue. There are other ways to get the information and the analytical skills if you don't need the degree in order to be hired. Coursera is one service that brings university lectures to the public.
In my ideal society, both university studies and apprenticeships would be subsidized. I believe Germany does this.
One of my most admired people in my personal circle took a degree in theater studies. She was a gifted costume designer and also built sets and did other practical work for the theater program. After graduation she struggled with what to do to earn a living, but eventually created a reupholstery business, combined with sewing bespoke pillows and curtains for clients and providing home decorating advice.
Are there success stories from both sides? Sure! I’m personally from a non CS background (mechanical engineering, computational fluid dynamics). But ultimately, university teaches you a bunch of...
Are there success stories from both sides?
Sure!
I’m personally from a non CS background (mechanical engineering, computational fluid dynamics).
But ultimately, university teaches you a bunch of research skills, especially at post grad, that the average person even if very well self taught, does not have.
Writing a thesis, doing a thesis defence, reading research papers, trying to replicate them, brushing up against the cs/tcs/applied math fields, writing and reading proofs, proof and theorem solvers, functional programming, lambda calculus, etc.
It obviously depends what you want to do, you can have a fulfilling high paid, wonderful career either way, but for some roles yes a degree is definitely needed.
Depends. STEM degrees are certainly worth the hassle. They're often acredited qualifications that are practically required to go into science, any kind of technology (even computer science), or...
Depends.
STEM degrees are certainly worth the hassle. They're often acredited qualifications that are practically required to go into science, any kind of technology (even computer science), or engineering field. All of these fields are also paying incredibly well and are secure in the sense that artificial intelligence cannot easily replace them.
If your best subject is something that involves an arts degree like History, Sociology, Fine Art, etc, fuck university. The best thing you can do if you aren't planning to go into STEM is to join the workforce as soon as you leave high school, whether that's flipping burgers at your local McDonalds or doing basic admin work in an office.
I made the mistake of studying a History degree. It left me with student debt, being overqualified for dead-end work and underqualified for anything graduate level. Also discovered later on that nobody gives a fuck that you did a degree.
The book So Good They Can't Ignore you is one that I found useful, but your mileage may vary. Best wishes. I'm currently returning to school for what is hopefully my last career change. I'm going into library science.
Not really. I struggled to find a job when I graduated ten years ago, but the British economy was in a much different state back then. Since then, I spent 3 years working in customer service for...
Not really. I struggled to find a job when I graduated ten years ago, but the British economy was in a much different state back then. Since then, I spent 3 years working in customer service for two really shitty call centres, got a gig as an accounts assistant which lasted me almost 4 years before I was made redundant, then I kept coasting through purchase ledger jobs until I got where I am now.
Currently I work as an assistant commercial reporting analyst and am nine exams and three years practical experience away from completing my ACCA and gaining chartered accountant status.
I'll check out the book you recommended. Could be useful for me.
There are plenty of "decent" careers that do not require degrees. Trades are totally an option, for example. And for many people, trades can be way more fulfilling than office jobs.
There are plenty of "decent" careers that do not require degrees. Trades are totally an option, for example. And for many people, trades can be way more fulfilling than office jobs.
There's a lot I could say about this. It's a complicated issue, one that's very much wrapped up in societal norms, pressures and individual goals and values, but what I'll say here is that I...
There's a lot I could say about this. It's a complicated issue, one that's very much wrapped up in societal norms, pressures and individual goals and values, but what I'll say here is that I taught freshman in college for three years while I was going through grad school and I saw so many students who were either completely unprepared for college (or living independently, for that matter) or had no reason to be there but were only enrolled because their parents told them they had to or it was what their guidance counselors in college pushed them toward.
I'm someone who highly values education and believes in a college system that's not tied to employment opportunities but encourages critical thinking and curiosity. Unfortunately, now that a bachelor's is the barrier to entry, kids are funneled into college and into taking out huge loans with no real need or interest in the experience. It's a race to get out a lot of times.
Our current system encourages this, but it shouldn't.
A degree was well worth it to me. I've made lifelong friends, one of whom I still speak to every single day, and a couple more who are important enough that they're in my wedding party. More still...
A degree was well worth it to me. I've made lifelong friends, one of whom I still speak to every single day, and a couple more who are important enough that they're in my wedding party. More still that I catch up with occasionally. I ended up working at the university for a while too, so I have great connections with a significant academic and professional network.
My degree also taught me a way of thinking and researching that I don't think I would have picked up otherwise. I learned plenty while I was there, but it also gave me the capacity for so much more lifelong learning down the road. Although I don't work in a relevant field anymore, it's also given me a ton of transferrable skills.
All that said, I got mine in the UK back when it was still £3000 a year and on-campus delivery/ attendance was the norm. Now that it's £9250 a year minimum for home students, I'd still say yes but with a lot more hesitance (and to be honest only "yes" now that we're on the other side of the pandemic and can come back from fully remote delivery - I have a lot of sympathy for students who chose to continue during those two years).
We really need to see more encouragement for trades and apprenticeships again and focus on universities as places for research and the academically gifted rather than prerequisites for employability. It's bloody expensive and not everyone is cut out for university, and that's ok! There should be more opportunities for people to learn and develop themselves outside of it.
Lots of discussion about STEM and science degrees here, but not so much about degrees in the social sciences and especially the humanities - degrees that are definitely in crisis right now. North...
Lots of discussion about STEM and science degrees here, but not so much about degrees in the social sciences and especially the humanities - degrees that are definitely in crisis right now.
North America has bound degrees to professional careers, and while that's very important, it's degrees in the SS/humanities that can both augment STEM education, and on their own, encourage people to think more holistically about their role as citizens.
Low voter turnout, falling for misinformation, narrow understandings of historical precedent, baseline economics, shared culture and existential purpose (among many other topics) are all qualities that the humanities can teach.
My answer is that everybody should have some level of secondary Ed. These are life skills and ways to understand the world - we owe it to ourselves and the species to strive to be better.
In a lot of STEM degrees (at least in continental Europe) there is an emphasis on trying to construct a broad foundation (so we study mathematics, and basic principles of our discipline) – it...
In a lot of STEM degrees (at least in continental Europe) there is an emphasis on trying to construct a broad foundation (so we study mathematics, and basic principles of our discipline) – it would be nice to also include an essay course as part of this; writing is really important and there are lots of engineers out there whose written communication could easily become a lot better with a little practice.
One area where I feel specifically that social science has a very valuable contribution to make is in stats – mathematicians have an approach which (if I am to be a bit cynical) is a sort of hermeneutic game of derivation; start from some axioms and "prove" that everything is sound. This works very well, but it is important (and this shows up all the time in stats whereas it doesn't to the same extent in other areas of mathematics) to remember that the map is not the territory, and the social sciences have good frameworks for critically analysing statistical models to understand how they relate to 'reality'.
Same thing for social scientists w.r.t. learning some maths, science, etc – would bring them a lot of value.
We shouldn’t be forced to pay for classes that are irrelevant our fields of study and have our degrees held hostage in the name of “social issues”. A couple of classes here and there makes sense,...
We shouldn’t be forced to pay for classes that are irrelevant our fields of study and have our degrees held hostage in the name of “social issues”. A couple of classes here and there makes sense, but two full years worth of general education is a waste of time and money when all that stuff should have been taught in high school to begin with.
But isn't that the thing? Many non related classes are in fact new ways of thinking about what you're studying. A broad understanding of the many things that your topic is essential to being...
But isn't that the thing? Many non related classes are in fact new ways of thinking about what you're studying. A broad understanding of the many things that your topic is essential to being effective at your discipline, I think
I think it really depends. But I think in general, for most people, it is probably worth it. For my personal journey, I enlisted US Army, then worked at the post office. Near minimum wage jobs...
I think it really depends. But I think in general, for most people, it is probably worth it.
For my personal journey, I enlisted US Army, then worked at the post office. Near minimum wage jobs before those, but all jobs making less than about 50k a year.
Once I got my generic IT degree from WGU (probably, literally, the cheapest/fastest online school one can find) using the GI bill, I immediately landed a ~70k job in the defense sector that absolutely required a bachelors degree, and three years later I am at double that with better benefits than I've ever had by far. I'm sure it's very sector-specific, but I believe there are many lucrative fields where just having a degree is what will allow you to get your foot in the door.
Years ago I read the book “How would you move Mt Fuji” which talked about hiring tests and other new-hire screening methods used by companies like Google. The tests are probably not indicative of...
Years ago I read the book “How would you move Mt Fuji” which talked about hiring tests and other new-hire screening methods used by companies like Google. The tests are probably not indicative of much but they just provide some filter for companies that get an overwhelming number of candidates. Degrees are another screen, maybe Google needs a phd for some positions and maybe not but they have to limit the candidate pool.
The article has a bit about this type of thing but mostly is concerned whether the average wage bump from a degree covers the cost of it. That calculation gets less obvious as the price of education goes up. So from this perspective, the benefit is worse than it used to be. Also companies like to hire apprentices or internships now which lets them use different filters than just a degree for finding good people.
There are a lot of other benefits to higher education whether or not it leads to degrees or higher pay. Universities are supposed to create well rounded people. It’s better when people are exposed to history and art and philosophy and not just technical skills or training in some programming language. In general, well rounded educated people make for a better society that is able to appreciate things like Shakespeare and make informed decisions in a democracy.
Degrees add credence behind your qualifications. I'd say their value decreases significantly if you've already gotten into a good position. Then again, some fields are extremely difficult to...
Degrees add credence behind your qualifications. I'd say their value decreases significantly if you've already gotten into a good position.
Then again, some fields are extremely difficult to access without going through an education, and the experience and knowledge gained can be invaluable for them.
Would I say a software engineer requires a degree? Nah, not per-se. It would depend on the accessibility of the knowledge you require to achieve your niche.
I have a PhD and did a two-year fellowship afterward, and I work in a job that requires it all. My question when people ask whether they should get a doctorate is, "Would you be able to live...
I have a PhD and did a two-year fellowship afterward, and I work in a job that requires it all. My question when people ask whether they should get a doctorate is, "Would you be able to live happily without it?" If not, then figure out why not, and if it's nothing you can change without getting the degree, then go for it. But if you can live happily without the degree, then go without. My degree damn near killed me, and it ingrained in me many unhealthy work habits and attitudes that I'm still working out. And I love my job.
But no, I say run away if you can. Value learning and work on bettering yourself forever, but there are many better ways to do that than a doctoral program.
I got a degree in PHIL/PSCI/ECON. Cost me about $35,000 and I never managed to get a job in the field. Managed to start up a career in IT and haven't looked back. I don't regret the degree. It...
I got a degree in PHIL/PSCI/ECON. Cost me about $35,000 and I never managed to get a job in the field. Managed to start up a career in IT and haven't looked back.
I don't regret the degree. It helps show employers I'm able to commit to something and follow it through. Not sure if I'd recommend university of technical collages these days though.
I think one of the biggest issues is that there's become an increasingly blurry line between "education" and "job training." In the former category, a degree like philosophy can be incredibly...
I think one of the biggest issues is that there's become an increasingly blurry line between "education" and "job training." In the former category, a degree like philosophy can be incredibly flexible when you apply it to constructing/deconstructing arguments, formal logic, etc. even though very few people have the job "Philosopher." Meanwhile you can also get (sometimes even from the same school) a degree that qualifies you to operate a piece of medical equipment, which very arguably falls into the latter category.
I think this might be behind a paywall. Unfortunately it's written in a bit of a clickbait-y direction, but I think that the subject matter it is interesting.
I think this might be behind a paywall.
Unfortunately it's written in a bit of a clickbait-y direction, but I think that the subject matter it is interesting.
It depends on what job you want. If you work in a trade college probably won’t help you. But if you want to work in software you absolutely need a CS degree, I’m sure it’s the same for hardware...
It depends on what job you want. If you work in a trade college probably won’t help you. But if you want to work in software you absolutely need a CS degree, I’m sure it’s the same for hardware and finance and other white-collar work. And doctors and lawyers need not just undergraduate but their own school.
Like my father said, its always good to have something to fall back on. So yes, a degree got me a good steady job as a teacher which was important when I had young kids and a family to support....
Like my father said, its always good to have something to fall back on. So yes, a degree got me a good steady job as a teacher which was important when I had young kids and a family to support. Now as an old fart with another source of income, it is indeed only there as something to fall back on.
Probably depends a lot on what you're wanting to do. As a software dev I've managed to build a prosperous career without one, and as far as I can tell lack of a degree has had only a very mild...
Probably depends a lot on what you're wanting to do.
As a software dev I've managed to build a prosperous career without one, and as far as I can tell lack of a degree has had only a very mild negative impact on compensation at best (if it's had one at all). Getting my foot in the door would've been easier with one but it's not been essential.
That said, I've been looking at potentially moving abroad, and the country of interest has a hardline requirement of at least a bachelor's degree or a thoroughly verifiable (e.g. signed document from someone at the company) full decade of experience in your field. For this reason I'm now arranging pursuit of a bachelor's degree.
So while a degree may not be strictly necessary, they can afford flexibilities in some situations.
I have an associates from a community college that probably cost me less than 5k. I work a remote role in Trust and Safety and make around 90k~ a year. I definitely don't regret not spending 80k+...
I have an associates from a community college that probably cost me less than 5k.
I work a remote role in Trust and Safety and make around 90k~ a year. I definitely don't regret not spending 80k+ and 2-4 more years of my life getting a "real" degree as the college experience was just not for me.
Yes it is. Should it be? Not really. At the end of the day employers use it to limit candidates. I think it’s insanely stupid for a variety of reasons in most fields, but so long as that’s the...
Yes it is.
Should it be? Not really.
At the end of the day employers use it to limit candidates. I think it’s insanely stupid for a variety of reasons in most fields, but so long as that’s the standard not having a degree is just a handicap, regardless of your actual skills
It is paywalled and I no longer subscribe to FT.
Fwiw: I have a PhD (never actually totalled what it cost to get from undergrad to final walk ... would have had a stroke, I'm sure) so I'm biased because I thought it was worth it for me.
The real question for the next generation is about the valuation of expertise. Politicians globally have seemed to diminish the sanctity of knowledge, experience, technical know-how, and intelligence (KETI). Do you need a degree to acquire KETI? No, you never have. Do you need a degree to signal to others that you have specific relevant KETI? IMHO, that's pretty much what an accredited degree in any field is/always has been for.
edit: internships and apprenticeships are amazing opportunities to acquire KETIs (since well before the Guilds of the Middle Ages right up until today). My concern with them is their transportability: without some standardized certification/accreditation, how do others know the KETIs an individual has acquired are a good fit for their job requirements? I then fall back on the degree which should inherently provide that signal to other employers in other industries and other countries about an individual's KETIs. Or do we need to invent a new parallel track to industrial trades' journeyman certifications? Then we're right back to Guilds. And by way of reminder: in the Middle Ages, you joined A guild where you lived (probably wherever you were born): you worked there for the rest of your life, never moved around, just that one job for frickin ever. Zero transportability.
I was a first generation non-traditional student, and now have a Bachelors. If I had known what a PhD was early on out of high school, I would have stuck to it and worked towards that. I have worked and been very lucky and privileged to have ended up in a research role where most of my peers have terminal degrees. I love it and am planning to continue towards at least a Masters. It's been a challenge at every role to get in the door and then prove myself, having an advanced degree could have greatly improved this.
I know it's not for everyone, but if you have some inkling of what you want to do early on, you should seek the right training and accreditation for it, whatever that may be. Even if your field doesn't strictly require it, the process of earning a degree is likely to open up your universe of possible futures significantly and help you arrive at the right destination for yourself.
I think for most people its a safer bet to get an degree if possible.
Personally I'm doing fine without a degree. But I have also been very lucky.
So, I guess the answer is maybe? (but probably yes)
I am firmly in the camp of not unless you need it.
By that I mean if you intend to study law or medicine you no choice but to bite the bullet. you absolutely need that piece of paper at the end of your degree.
If you intend to do a skilled job and can learn while doing I believe time and money is much better spent teaching yourself and then doing an internship or even volunteering to get hands on industry experience.
Comparatively you will be way more employable after let's say 3 years compared to someone else straight out of university. they will likely have stiflingly debt and you could well have started a pension and have some savings and well on you way to being a mid level employee.
I am drawing strongly on personal experience as a software engineer in the UK. I got my degree and paid off my debt but if I could go back in time I would have opted to skip it. students these days have it way worse than I did too, they come out with more dept and a way higher interest rate, I don't believe it's realistic to believe they will be paying off their debt before it gets automatically written off after 25 years which is a joke.
All that aside, university is one of those amazing times in your life, I met my wife while studying many years ago and there's so many great experiences open to you as a student.
At least from the US perspective I disagree for software engineering. I learned a lot in university, not just about actual computer science but even more about the industry, who to aim for, how to aim for, and many connections which have paid over many fold. Even just in terms of ambitions - before I went, I would’ve been happy with an 80k/yr job as a newgrad, but I ended up with 250k/yr.
I had about 40k in debt but my signing bonus was higher.
My experience is that there is a lot of Dunning-Kruger going on with people who resist degrees in Computer Science, or complain about basic data structure/algorithm interview questions. There is often a very clear separation between people who can program by gluing premade libraries together and people who grok actual CS concepts and can design novel things competently.
I was self taught, programming from the age of ten using only library books, but I chose to go to college to learn things that I knew would be difficult to do alone. (There's simply no replacement for formal CS, calculus, discrete math and physics classes. Nobody is teaching those to themselves for fun.) Then I walked into a junior position, but at a higher title and pay grade than someone without a degree, straight out of college.
I also maintain that college is necessary to break people out of their small-minded bubbles. It's crucial that people be exposed to skills and ideas that they wouldn't necessarily think about on their own, such as much of the humanities, math and other scientific fields. It's necessary that people be exposed to other cultures and be cured of preconceptions. (I finally learned some music theory and how to find my way around a keyboard due to space for electives.) The traditional university education is one of the greatest achievements of western society, and those hell-bent on destroying it are perpetrating a great evil.
I got a generic degree in IT and from that somehow got a programming job that I've been working for a few years now.
I feel like I can tell pretty quickly when one of my peers has an actual CS degree because they grasp certain concepts much faster than me due to their inherent knowledge of OOP concepts etc. I simply don't grasp as quickly as them. I feel a little bit of regret I didn't go the CS route (but more thankful I landed a CS role more than anything considering how much more it pays compared to say, a helpdesk role, which is all that my degree really prepared me for).
I agree with this. I would not be in the position I am now, at my age, if it weren't for my degree. It would've been much more difficult to find my first job, because there are many (maybe even most) companies who still require degrees for software development.
Our company actually tried accepting boot camps in lieu of degrees. It was an absolute disaster, and in one year, we reverted back. Learning syntax is one thing. Learning what actually happens under the covers is quite another.
From my sample size of two, I will say that I found the US university focus on jobs and industry to be much stronger than the UK’s, which still held on to a bit more of that “knowledge should be its own reward” ethos. I can quite believe that’s been shifting as the UK system gets more marketised, though.
I’m ambivalent about this - I’m happier self teaching than not when it comes to hands on problem solving (and I’m including coding as hands on here), but the physics and CS courses I spent my degrees doing largely dealt with fairly abstract maths and theory. I loved it, but there was very little “hands on” to be had: it was the structure of the course, the guidance of the lectures, the support of my peers that allowed me to make sense of it all.
So did I need to learn all that stuff at all, given that 95+% of my dev work for the last decade has been not-that? Hard to say.
On the one hand, I do genuinely think that knowing the real fundamentals helps me pick things up faster, find more elegant solutions, generally be better at what I do - but it’s almost impossible to quantify the real impact of that (if it even exists at all) without a clone or a time machine.
On the other hand, I’d do it all again even if someone handed me conclusive proof it did nothing for my career. The importance of learning for its own sake, the exposure to new perspectives, the amount that the whole experience developed my social and life skills were a huge part of making me who I am, and if that’s not valuable education I don’t know what is!
And then on a third hand, we’ve stumbled into a world where 10+ years later things like tensor calculus suddenly do form a massively important part of an enormous growth industry - making the academic work I did way back then incredibly valuable to know even in a day to day business setting. But totally by chance, in a way that pretty much nobody could reasonably have foreseen in the mid-2000s when I was choosing what to study.
So it’s been personally worth it regardless of the financial, and then it’s completely chanced into being financially worth it in a way that wouldn’t have been possible to predict. All of which says nothing useful for anyone making the decision today, but I guess that’s perhaps the point: we’re in a world that changes so fast we can’t rely on past experience to judge what’s smart for those who come next.
I think software is kind of an exception in that degrees are considered optional despite paying as well as it does. And it seems like even that is changing since there's so many people with degrees that it's hard for someone without one to even get that first foot in the door.
And if you look at other science or engineering professions that pay in the same range, they'll pretty much all have a degree as a hard requirement that cannot be bypassed
Software should be treated as a trade, not a degree. You don't get a degree in plumbing, you learn the trade. That's not to say there couldn't be computer degrees, but they'd be a theoretical math or physics specialization.
Plumbing doesn't have a degree, but it (and most other trades) have licensing requirements instead. It's kind of an interesting idea, though considering many kinds of physical engineering has a license requirement (PE) as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if software goes that route. Currently it's the wild west of employment. No unions. No governing bodies. No quality or responsibility controls. Yet software dominates the modern world. I imagine things will eventually settle down into something more akin to the trades as it matures.
It's not always the wild west. Certain important areas like financial systems and health information are very heavily regulated. The labor side is another story but that extends well beyond software.
I mean at that point, that just becomes a Computer Science degree all over again. Most of the courses I took in university weren't even about software engineering (two total about software eng. to be precise), they were mostly about theory and things like lambda calculus and algorithms, with written exams on pieces of paper.
edit: on second thought, if you're excising all courses where you write code at all, that would cut like half of the courses out, and the rest would presumably be filled with different math. I don't agree that writing software has no place in universities though, a ton of major breakthroughs and important projects come from CS research departments in universities.
tbh I don't think computer science degrees that are solely theoretical is remotely worth it, at least not at the bachelor's level. The theoretical knowledge is very valuable, but actual hands-on experience is absolutely also worthwhile. Probably the most useful skills I gained from my master's (in natural language processing, so not full CS admittedly) were from being forced to do actual projects.
Maybe that's what you think it should be, but given the amount of people walking out of colleges with CS degrees that's not actually going to happen.
Also from the Uk the way the student loans work here means the debt is in no way stifling that’s an absurd claim.
Few things, it is overall bullshit but not stifling.
Yes it’s insanely high £9k a year + now
It only kicks in once you are over 27k/yr salary so it’s impossible to be crippled by this loan if you lose your job, repayments stop.
It is not treated as debt for your mortgage or other credit applications.
Anyway we’re way more class conscious here so good luck getting a prestige job in most industries that are not tech, without going to a Russell Group university of having access to an old boys club.
alright, I agree stifling is probably a bit extreme. but you may as well consider it a 25 year student tax as no grad is likely to pay it off before their term. it's a decent chunk of your pay too, I'm not entirely sure at what point you start overcoming the interest but I believe it's close to 50k.
Your debt gets written off after 25 years? What?
yes, student loans do
https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/when-your-student-loan-gets-written-off-or-cancelled
Ah, UK.
I'm in America, where we don't get that kind of freedom.
You actually do, as long as you have federal loans. Repayments are based on a percentage of your income above a multiplier of the poverty line and debts are forgiven after 20 years.
Yes, in the United States.
Although actually, Biden is trying something similar starting this year for federal loans that have been in repayment for 20 years or more. It survived one legal challenge last month. I'm very interested to see how it works out.
So, when I was an undergraduate, The University of California charged tuition but not more than I could reasonably earn in a summer working full time. Cost of education today is a huge issue. There are other ways to get the information and the analytical skills if you don't need the degree in order to be hired. Coursera is one service that brings university lectures to the public.
In my ideal society, both university studies and apprenticeships would be subsidized. I believe Germany does this.
One of my most admired people in my personal circle took a degree in theater studies. She was a gifted costume designer and also built sets and did other practical work for the theater program. After graduation she struggled with what to do to earn a living, but eventually created a reupholstery business, combined with sewing bespoke pillows and curtains for clients and providing home decorating advice.
This thread about which industries are hiring right now seems relevant to the conversation.
https://tildes.net/~talk/17nk/what_are_industries_and_specialties_where_you_see_demand_for_employees
Are there success stories from both sides?
Sure!
I’m personally from a non CS background (mechanical engineering, computational fluid dynamics).
But ultimately, university teaches you a bunch of research skills, especially at post grad, that the average person even if very well self taught, does not have.
Writing a thesis, doing a thesis defence, reading research papers, trying to replicate them, brushing up against the cs/tcs/applied math fields, writing and reading proofs, proof and theorem solvers, functional programming, lambda calculus, etc.
It obviously depends what you want to do, you can have a fulfilling high paid, wonderful career either way, but for some roles yes a degree is definitely needed.
Depends.
STEM degrees are certainly worth the hassle. They're often acredited qualifications that are practically required to go into science, any kind of technology (even computer science), or engineering field. All of these fields are also paying incredibly well and are secure in the sense that artificial intelligence cannot easily replace them.
If your best subject is something that involves an arts degree like History, Sociology, Fine Art, etc, fuck university. The best thing you can do if you aren't planning to go into STEM is to join the workforce as soon as you leave high school, whether that's flipping burgers at your local McDonalds or doing basic admin work in an office.
I made the mistake of studying a History degree. It left me with student debt, being overqualified for dead-end work and underqualified for anything graduate level. Also discovered later on that nobody gives a fuck that you did a degree.
Are you still looking for a career? If yes, this thread might be useful if you haven't seen it yet. https://tildes.net/~talk/17nk/what_are_industries_and_specialties_where_you_see_demand_for_employees
The book So Good They Can't Ignore you is one that I found useful, but your mileage may vary. Best wishes. I'm currently returning to school for what is hopefully my last career change. I'm going into library science.
Not really. I struggled to find a job when I graduated ten years ago, but the British economy was in a much different state back then. Since then, I spent 3 years working in customer service for two really shitty call centres, got a gig as an accounts assistant which lasted me almost 4 years before I was made redundant, then I kept coasting through purchase ledger jobs until I got where I am now.
Currently I work as an assistant commercial reporting analyst and am nine exams and three years practical experience away from completing my ACCA and gaining chartered accountant status.
I'll check out the book you recommended. Could be useful for me.
Regardless, I think there should always be option to not go to college and still have a decent career.
There are plenty of "decent" careers that do not require degrees. Trades are totally an option, for example. And for many people, trades can be way more fulfilling than office jobs.
There's a lot I could say about this. It's a complicated issue, one that's very much wrapped up in societal norms, pressures and individual goals and values, but what I'll say here is that I taught freshman in college for three years while I was going through grad school and I saw so many students who were either completely unprepared for college (or living independently, for that matter) or had no reason to be there but were only enrolled because their parents told them they had to or it was what their guidance counselors in college pushed them toward.
I'm someone who highly values education and believes in a college system that's not tied to employment opportunities but encourages critical thinking and curiosity. Unfortunately, now that a bachelor's is the barrier to entry, kids are funneled into college and into taking out huge loans with no real need or interest in the experience. It's a race to get out a lot of times.
Our current system encourages this, but it shouldn't.
A degree was well worth it to me. I've made lifelong friends, one of whom I still speak to every single day, and a couple more who are important enough that they're in my wedding party. More still that I catch up with occasionally. I ended up working at the university for a while too, so I have great connections with a significant academic and professional network.
My degree also taught me a way of thinking and researching that I don't think I would have picked up otherwise. I learned plenty while I was there, but it also gave me the capacity for so much more lifelong learning down the road. Although I don't work in a relevant field anymore, it's also given me a ton of transferrable skills.
All that said, I got mine in the UK back when it was still £3000 a year and on-campus delivery/ attendance was the norm. Now that it's £9250 a year minimum for home students, I'd still say yes but with a lot more hesitance (and to be honest only "yes" now that we're on the other side of the pandemic and can come back from fully remote delivery - I have a lot of sympathy for students who chose to continue during those two years).
We really need to see more encouragement for trades and apprenticeships again and focus on universities as places for research and the academically gifted rather than prerequisites for employability. It's bloody expensive and not everyone is cut out for university, and that's ok! There should be more opportunities for people to learn and develop themselves outside of it.
Lots of discussion about STEM and science degrees here, but not so much about degrees in the social sciences and especially the humanities - degrees that are definitely in crisis right now.
North America has bound degrees to professional careers, and while that's very important, it's degrees in the SS/humanities that can both augment STEM education, and on their own, encourage people to think more holistically about their role as citizens.
Low voter turnout, falling for misinformation, narrow understandings of historical precedent, baseline economics, shared culture and existential purpose (among many other topics) are all qualities that the humanities can teach.
My answer is that everybody should have some level of secondary Ed. These are life skills and ways to understand the world - we owe it to ourselves and the species to strive to be better.
In a lot of STEM degrees (at least in continental Europe) there is an emphasis on trying to construct a broad foundation (so we study mathematics, and basic principles of our discipline) – it would be nice to also include an essay course as part of this; writing is really important and there are lots of engineers out there whose written communication could easily become a lot better with a little practice.
One area where I feel specifically that social science has a very valuable contribution to make is in stats – mathematicians have an approach which (if I am to be a bit cynical) is a sort of hermeneutic game of derivation; start from some axioms and "prove" that everything is sound. This works very well, but it is important (and this shows up all the time in stats whereas it doesn't to the same extent in other areas of mathematics) to remember that the map is not the territory, and the social sciences have good frameworks for critically analysing statistical models to understand how they relate to 'reality'.
Same thing for social scientists w.r.t. learning some maths, science, etc – would bring them a lot of value.
We shouldn’t be forced to pay for classes that are irrelevant our fields of study and have our degrees held hostage in the name of “social issues”. A couple of classes here and there makes sense, but two full years worth of general education is a waste of time and money when all that stuff should have been taught in high school to begin with.
But isn't that the thing? Many non related classes are in fact new ways of thinking about what you're studying. A broad understanding of the many things that your topic is essential to being effective at your discipline, I think
Archive link to bypass the paywall.
https://archive.is/1YaJd
I think it really depends. But I think in general, for most people, it is probably worth it.
For my personal journey, I enlisted US Army, then worked at the post office. Near minimum wage jobs before those, but all jobs making less than about 50k a year.
Once I got my generic IT degree from WGU (probably, literally, the cheapest/fastest online school one can find) using the GI bill, I immediately landed a ~70k job in the defense sector that absolutely required a bachelors degree, and three years later I am at double that with better benefits than I've ever had by far. I'm sure it's very sector-specific, but I believe there are many lucrative fields where just having a degree is what will allow you to get your foot in the door.
Years ago I read the book “How would you move Mt Fuji” which talked about hiring tests and other new-hire screening methods used by companies like Google. The tests are probably not indicative of much but they just provide some filter for companies that get an overwhelming number of candidates. Degrees are another screen, maybe Google needs a phd for some positions and maybe not but they have to limit the candidate pool.
The article has a bit about this type of thing but mostly is concerned whether the average wage bump from a degree covers the cost of it. That calculation gets less obvious as the price of education goes up. So from this perspective, the benefit is worse than it used to be. Also companies like to hire apprentices or internships now which lets them use different filters than just a degree for finding good people.
There are a lot of other benefits to higher education whether or not it leads to degrees or higher pay. Universities are supposed to create well rounded people. It’s better when people are exposed to history and art and philosophy and not just technical skills or training in some programming language. In general, well rounded educated people make for a better society that is able to appreciate things like Shakespeare and make informed decisions in a democracy.
Degrees add credence behind your qualifications. I'd say their value decreases significantly if you've already gotten into a good position.
Then again, some fields are extremely difficult to access without going through an education, and the experience and knowledge gained can be invaluable for them.
Would I say a software engineer requires a degree? Nah, not per-se. It would depend on the accessibility of the knowledge you require to achieve your niche.
I have a PhD and did a two-year fellowship afterward, and I work in a job that requires it all. My question when people ask whether they should get a doctorate is, "Would you be able to live happily without it?" If not, then figure out why not, and if it's nothing you can change without getting the degree, then go for it. But if you can live happily without the degree, then go without. My degree damn near killed me, and it ingrained in me many unhealthy work habits and attitudes that I'm still working out. And I love my job.
But no, I say run away if you can. Value learning and work on bettering yourself forever, but there are many better ways to do that than a doctoral program.
I got a degree in PHIL/PSCI/ECON. Cost me about $35,000 and I never managed to get a job in the field. Managed to start up a career in IT and haven't looked back.
I don't regret the degree. It helps show employers I'm able to commit to something and follow it through. Not sure if I'd recommend university of technical collages these days though.
I think one of the biggest issues is that there's become an increasingly blurry line between "education" and "job training." In the former category, a degree like philosophy can be incredibly flexible when you apply it to constructing/deconstructing arguments, formal logic, etc. even though very few people have the job "Philosopher." Meanwhile you can also get (sometimes even from the same school) a degree that qualifies you to operate a piece of medical equipment, which very arguably falls into the latter category.
I think this might be behind a paywall.
Unfortunately it's written in a bit of a clickbait-y direction, but I think that the subject matter it is interesting.
This is an archive link.
It depends on what job you want. If you work in a trade college probably won’t help you. But if you want to work in software you absolutely need a CS degree, I’m sure it’s the same for hardware and finance and other white-collar work. And doctors and lawyers need not just undergraduate but their own school.
Like my father said, its always good to have something to fall back on. So yes, a degree got me a good steady job as a teacher which was important when I had young kids and a family to support. Now as an old fart with another source of income, it is indeed only there as something to fall back on.
Probably depends a lot on what you're wanting to do.
As a software dev I've managed to build a prosperous career without one, and as far as I can tell lack of a degree has had only a very mild negative impact on compensation at best (if it's had one at all). Getting my foot in the door would've been easier with one but it's not been essential.
That said, I've been looking at potentially moving abroad, and the country of interest has a hardline requirement of at least a bachelor's degree or a thoroughly verifiable (e.g. signed document from someone at the company) full decade of experience in your field. For this reason I'm now arranging pursuit of a bachelor's degree.
So while a degree may not be strictly necessary, they can afford flexibilities in some situations.
I have an associates from a community college that probably cost me less than 5k.
I work a remote role in Trust and Safety and make around 90k~ a year. I definitely don't regret not spending 80k+ and 2-4 more years of my life getting a "real" degree as the college experience was just not for me.
Yes it is.
Should it be? Not really.
At the end of the day employers use it to limit candidates. I think it’s insanely stupid for a variety of reasons in most fields, but so long as that’s the standard not having a degree is just a handicap, regardless of your actual skills
A degree can open doors, but a degree itself will not make you successful. More important than the degree, is learning how to learn.