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).