Best eight years of my life

I do know one person who graduated in 4, my roommate my fourth year.
I worked 30+ hours a week for three years of school and was going part-time for most of that to make the schedule work. I was working in the biz and quickly found I learned a lot more from my co-workers than my profs so it was a no brainer to focus more on the job. I think I had $15k in student loans when I graduated so was it worth it? Definitely. A few years after graduation, while all my friends were keeping their old clunkers pieced together with duct tape, I bought a new car. I had all my loans paid off fairly early and socked money away.

 

I graduated in 4 years, took 15 credits each semester except my first, which was 14 because of a science lab, and one other semester with 18 credits which included an internship.

We also could get extra credits for participating in things like the school paper and stuff like that. Plus there were the easy 1-credit classes, such as golf, that students could take.

A decent amount of my fellow classmates also took 4 years, although the teachers had to go an extra semester for student teaching.

 

Even though it's been 30 years now I still have that occasional dream where it turns out I have to go back and te-take some classes to graduate. I so wish that dream came true so I could change majors. Maybe computer programming?

 

Oh, the hell they do. I sure as hell don't.

Universities have been robbing taxpayers and students blind for awhile now. And lots of people know it and think it.

 

Thomas Friedman today, "How to Get a Job":

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/opinion/friedman-how-to-get-a-job.html?_r=0

"(T)he world doesn’t care anymore what you know; all it cares 'is what you can do with what you know.' And since jobs are evolving so quickly, with so many new tools, a bachelor’s degree is no longer considered an adequate proxy by employers for your ability to do a particular job — and, therefore, be hired. So, more employers are designing their own tests to measure applicants’ skills. And they increasingly don’t care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an online university, a massive open online course, or Yale. They just want to know one thing: Can you add value?"

Not applicable, of course, to Marissa Mayer. But if Friedman's column is to be believed, she's the exception.

 

Can you be a purple unicorn?

 

Translation: "If one can divide by zero ..."

Mayer/Yahoo are decidedly not the exception.

 

I'm also pretty sure that the Interwebs are going to be all over the fact that his column eventually turns into an advertisement for his daughter's friend's startup.

That said - and I think that Brooks has been the one beating the drum about online education, another imperfectly developed concept at least worth thinking about - Friedman's column is a nice place to start and/or continue the conversation. The question being: Is there a better, more efficient way to hire than we've been hiring? The question becomes whether firms like the one in the column actually add value to firms that hire them to sift applicants. He gives us the anecdotal example of the woman who taught herself Excel. But, ultimately, is the most efficient use of time and money still going to be spotting signals, whether the signal is Harvard or an APSE in breaking news or five years in the relevant industry.

Alma has some legitimate gripes about universities not actually supplying an amount of education that matches the price tag. That said, having attended a "name" school, two of them actually, and one non-name school, I thought it was quite valuable to be around a lot of driven, intellectually curious, on-top-of-things people. You could say something like, "Well, according to Keynes ..." and people would be engaged. I think it's also important to attract students of different viewpoints - ideological diversity, in other words. One of my schools severely lacked that. One of them had it in glorious spades.

 

I basically agree with Friedman, but it all depends on the kind of company we're talking about.

If you want to work at your law firm, or for Bain Consulting, you're still going to need a degree from a select number of top schools.

But, certain skills will always be in demand, and the ability to demonstrate that you can add value is all that's necessary.

A top sales guy, with the numbers to back it up, will always have a job. Someone who has earned a reputation for writing godd code, quickly will also never lack for work.

And, smaller companies can also be more nimble, and take more risks. If it's the company owner or founder doing the hiring, he/she doesn't have to worry about being second guessed by his/her boss if the new hire doesn't work out.

And, the way we find new employees is changing. This company sounds interesting. Testing the basic skills required for a job sounds like a good idea.

This article from a couple of weeks ago also shows how potential hires will be identified in the future:

 

I know a kid going into his senior year of HS who is being told to basically "go pro" as a designer/animator. He already knows as much as he will learn at USC or wherever else he might attend, and the companies in that field don't give a rip about the piece of paper he'd get in four years.

It isn't a viable overarching policy, because most people don't have those unique talents that show themselves outside the academic environment, but it's certainly worth thinking about in many cases.

 

What companies is Friedman talking about? Maybe he should look on a job board sometimes and see how many require a college degree. I bet he'd be shocked.

 

Don't kid yourself that that play doesn't have its own peculiar risks. Suppose the designer/animator business changes fundamentally. Suppose he decides that he wants to do something else -- I know, I know, shocking coming from someone on his third career, right? Let's say he goes back to school in his early 20s ... he graduates at 25 or 26 ... in many, many eyes he has, rightly or wrongly, become damaged goods.