Speaking for myself and the majority of people close to me (late twenties / early thirties, Dutch, mostly middle-class), that's exactly what we were told. Maybe around one in ten people I know went for STEM taking into account 'worth the cost', but it's hard to tell because most of them were pressured by their STEM-parents, so the reasons could've been different ("everything else is pseudo-science", etc.)

People I know slightly older than me are even 'worse' in this regard and seem to have been raised with the 'keep studying as long as you like' and 'follow your passion above all else' model, which I was most definitely not raised with, so the perspective has been changing pretty rapidly.

looking at the friends of my progressively younger brothers, the advice is more as you say: college is still 'the thing to do - if you can', but there is much, much more emphasis on job prospects. Part of the reason for that might be that the Dutch system has become more expensive though.

I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case - at least I hope so.

I wanted to make a change in my life, and build a better future for myself. Everyone I spoke to said that going to college would be a great idea - there was no way the investment would not be worth it. My parents, my coworkers, my friends, and of course the advisors at my school - they all said it would be worth it. Not a single contradiction throughout countless conversations.

So I went to college, at my own expense. I had no money, so I pulled federal loans like so many others. $25k and 1.5 years later, I realize that college isn't teaching me anything I could not have learned for free on YouTube/Google. Angry at the scores of people who deceived me into believing college was a good investment, and angrier at the institution for acting like predators upon my naive desire to succeed, I dropped out. When I spoke with the Dean of my school about how I was not feeling challenged after paying exorbitant fees, she said these exact words: "Well, maybe college just isn't for you."

Needless to say, I now know more about my chosen career field than most average college grads, due to experience. However, years later I'm still $25k in the hole - the only significant debt I've ever incurred in my entire life.

For me, college was a literal waste of $25,000+ and nearly two years of my life. At this point in my life, I'm telling everyone who asks that college is a complete waste of time, money, and energy.

And yet not many people train themselves watching just these videos.

You generally need a highly disciplined lifestyle to get your education through these means.

>>Angry at the scores of people who deceived me into believing college was a good investment, and angrier at the institution for acting like predators upon my naive desire to succeed, I dropped out.

They were most likely talking about your job prospects.

Many things in college have gone from 'learning' to 'getting a degree for a job' a long time ago.

Although not that many go out of their way to train – period. You are already an exceptional case if you are thinking about furthering your education, be it through postsecondary schooling or Youtube videos.

> You generally need a highly disciplined lifestyle to get your education through these means.

More disciplined than than those who do not attain an advanced education at all, but not more than other avenues of gaining the same education.

> Many things in college have gone from 'learning' to 'getting a degree for a job' a long time ago.

The perception has, at least. The outcome hasn't. Job quality has measurably declined with increasing college attainment rates, and incomes have remained stagnant.

Now $250k, that's a lot of debt even for a programmer.

Turns out you can not, at least not in America.

This thread has been eye-opening from the perspective of all these comments who (apparently) had negligible guidance from a group of people (parents) who absolutely need to talk about debt to their kids.

Maybe a silver lining in this topic is a generation of future parents who will have better conversations with their kids around going into debt for their college education.

The culture surrounding education in this country is not rational. It's a soup of optimism, hope, preconception, ignorance, and classism, along with the avarice of those in the educational establishment that prey on the foregoing.

In other words the market effects of guaranteed student loans that permited colleges/universities to charge any tuition fees they want and still have an endless supply of student with the funds to pay. Baby boomers can't imagine graduating with the equivalent of a mortgage payment and the reality of a non existent job market that might put them in a financial position to payoff their student loans much less pursue the American dream (house, car, kids).

Meanwhile culturally we have a media that pushes the narrative of 4% unemployment; that young people don't want to own a car; young people don't want to own a house; and young people don't want to get married and have families. The whole thing highlights US culture from the individual to the collective willing to lie/embellish finances, which prohibits anyone from having honest conversations about guaranteed loans; actually costs of school; lack of jobs; non existent wage increases since the 80's...it's the culture of lying/masking finances and a debt fueled economy that lead to housing collapse and eventually will lead to a collapse in the student loan market.

We talk about personal finance, net worth, investing, saving for retirement and many related topics. I am an engineer by training and a computer scientist by career. My wife has done a lot of accounting most of her life.

Also right now the career prospects in engineering are good.

I work at a university so I see the downside often of student debt and bad major choices.

The best class I took at Babson was a combination biz/engineering course at Olin called Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship. The lead instructor, Ben Linder, is amazing.

Wrote more about the project/experience here if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13312978

Olin is a great school (can't beat the price), and every student I've worked with and learned from at Olin has been great. So congrats, you should be very proud of your kid! Definitely making a smart choice.

Edit: added a "Pretty cool"

Pretty cool project. Thanks for sharing.

The major downside to Olin is that it's very small and the humanities offerings are very scarce and not comprehensive at all. Olin has a four class humanities requirement for graduation and you're required to have a "theme" to the classes so that you have a sort of "humanities concentration." Some students don't really think about this until senior year, at which point they panic, take a couple more classes, and submit some sort of hand-wavey statement that tries to tie together all the extremely different classes they took.

I took Russian 101, 102, 201, and 202 over the course of 2 years at Wellesley and it was fantastic. I would highly recommend that she think about, not just her engineering major, but what topic she wants to pursue in the arts or humanities. If you make a decision in your freshman/sophomore year and pursue a specific set of classes it's an amazing opportunity to pick up a new skill/hobby, or expand on an existing one.

I now have an almost unhealthy fear of debt, to the extent that I don't even want to own a home until I can pay cash for it. (Though, to be fair, living in Silicon Valley right now with housing prices swinging $500k for what was a $500k house in a few years that fear may be somewhat healthy).

So now we're living with the consequences and it'll definitely shape how we talk to our kids. We'll lean on them heavily to live at home through college, go to community college for the first two years, and then finish at a state school. The less debt they have out of college the better their choice set.

I was in a meeting yesterday where a professor was lamenting that too many students are majoring in business and not arts and sciences. The interesting thing about that is our biggest alumni donors are business school majors and not A&S. If you can't major in a science, CS or engineering then major in business.

I guess you can't fix stupid.

I am so glad my youngest will be attending an engineering school next fall and will get a mechanical engineering degree with an emphasis in systems.

When I was in school, people had the most contempt for business majors.

The engineering people got respect for the technical difficulty of what they did.

The liberal arts folks got respect for the intellectual pursuit.

When we would look at a business major, all we would see was style with no substance. Almost all their education was geared towards appearances. When my undergrad forced all business undergrads to own laptops, the reason was "No one will take you seriously without one". A business professor told me that when students give presentations, he never listens to the content. His feedback is entirely about appearance (suitable clothes, appropriate voice, sexy presentation, etc).

As far as actual content goes, you could more easily learn it all on your own than you could for, say, software or programming (since that is a concern in this thread somewhere).

The primary utility of the business degree is:

1. Learn to look good.

2. Join a somewhat exclusive club.

I got so much shit from my parents and teachers. Not going to college was unacceptable. You HAD to go, it didn't matter what you majored in or how much it cost. People who go to college get good jobs and join the country club, people who don't wind up in jail or something. I'm not exaggerating, that was the message.

Of course that's just my experience, but for whatever that's worth, OP's experience is definitely consistent with mine.

I think it made sense to the people giving the advice. That was how their lives had worked out. They got degrees, then ended up employed to give high school students career advice. (this is a low-paying job) For some reason it never occurred to them to say "Whatever you do, don't go down the path I went down!!!".

My school counselors were always saying "School is expensive; you need to apply for scholarships!"

And then there was career day, when you quickly figured out some of the realities of work.

Plus the STEM folks always said things like "The US needs more engineers!", "Math + science is important!".

Perhaps because I lived on Florida's Space Coast (east central Florida, the general vicinity of NASA) my experience was different than most?

There was a study a while back concluding that it doesn't matter where you go to college - provided you major in STEM. It's a little more complicated than that (attrition rates, quality of curriculum), but overall, there is some truth to this - if you want to get a good job and keep costs down, majoring in engineering at a reputable state school can be a good way to go.

There is an interesting corollary to this, though - it does matter where you go to college, provided you don't major in STEM. This might explain why "elite" US college students are so allergic to engineering. Why go to Harvard if it doesn't provide you with any advantage. If computer science majors from San Jose state have access to the same jobs, what good does Harvard do you?

If you go to an elite college, you can major in economics and go to business school, or hell, major in international relations and go to law school. Jobs prospects for lawyers aren't generally great, but pay and prospects are very good for people who build a network at an ivy and go to a very elite law school.

So your comment about a slate-mining town may be particularly relevant here. People who perceive college from a low income perspective see no point to majoring in Art History, because their chances of becoming a six figure salaried director or an art or cultural institution are basically zero. For a Harvard grad, however, especially one form an upper middle class family with the right connections, it may be a very achievable possibility.

Similarly, why would. a Harvard grad be a senior CRUD bug fixer for 140k a year when he or she could run a nonprofit or cultural organization for a similar salary?

Perhaps the value of elite colleges isn't so much that they can get you a higher salary, but that they can give you a path to a higher salary in culturally interesting job paths that are closed off to most of the populace. Harvard allows you a crack at that salary without having to be a senior CRUD bug fixer.

As an aside, I think one big thing may be overlooked in the "it doesn't matter where you go if you major in STEM" study, because there's a lot under the hood if you only consider salaries. Just as there is a big difference between being a senior CRUD bug fixer for $140k a year and the "director of the American Heritage Film foundation" for $140k a year, there's also a difference between ostensibly similar titles in tech. It could be that elite tech graduates don't show a big difference in salary between grads from less celebrated schools, but do they end up with more autonomy, fewer deadlines, more interesting and exploratory work? "Machine Learning Specialist for Election Results analysis" for the NYTimes is a very different job from "Manager of Payroll and Benefits Data Migration" for a bigco. I'm not 100% convinced where you go to college plays no role in this.

I got a view of this going to a "reasonably top" (not Harvard or Wharton but close) MBA school. I had lots of classmates I'd describe as "irreversibly rich". Not bad people by any stretch, but just from a different world than I came from. The few of us with blue collar backgrounds kept to ourselves and studied our asses off. Those guys, although they studied too, also socialized and partied quite a bit more. I mean wouldn't you, if your success was a foregone conclusion? If they wanted to, they could[1] go off and direct a non-profit, or run a hedge fund, or take 5 years off to contemplate life and fish. I had to make damn sure I got some kind of job straight away so I could immediately be able to not default on $2000+ loan payments.

1: and by "could" I mean, "have the opportunity to", not "have the ability to". Hell, _I_ could run a hedge fund. Will I ever have the opportunity to? No.