College for me was lots of work (and b.s.) but lots of fun also. Work hard, get good grades, party, have fun, screw girls... repeat. Eventually gets tiring, but remember, you will be working for the rest of your life, why start the pain earlier?
There are plenty of very successful, (and very rich) people that skiped, or quit college, but you don't hear much about the hundreds of thousands that quit college, and had much harder time on your life.
I don't want to work for someone who places such an importance on having a degree anyway. I want to work for someone who hires me for my ability to do work, so I think demonstrating that ability to do work is more important than getting some piece of paper.
A Bachelor's degree is just a certificate of minimal competence anyway. A significant fraction of people with BS CS degrees can't even write simple programs. There's plenty of other ways to demonstrate minimal competence than to get an undergrad degree.
So, anyway -- why's it so important to have a degree? Everything they teach (and much more!) is available in the form of dead trees at my local library. I can party with my friends regardless of whether I'm in college or not, plus now I can afford awesome beer. What else is left?
"Taking advantage of my location in Cambridge, I have sat in on some classes at MIT in Atmospheric Physics, Biology, and Geology. I also teach a software engineering lab course at MIT every three or four semesters (textbook). But for me, the university has mostly been a source of entertainment; I have never looked to it as a source of income."
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science (Appendix E)
So the compelling reason might not be that getting a degree will impress other people, but that learning is a fun and enriching experience. Yes, there are dead trees in libraries, but lectures, being able to ask questions to someone who is an expert in what you want to learn, and collaborating with peers who also want to learn are difficult to duplicate with only dead trees.
CS is a brand-new discipline, which means it's in the process of generating a lot of shallow observations right now [1]. In another generation or two, some brilliant synthesizer will come along and produce a real theory. For now though, most of the stuff you learn as a CS undergrad (other than a few senior-level theory courses) should be obvious if you know how to program.
If you do go back, pick another discipline and study it like a computer scientist on vacation. Pick ONE powerful software package (python might be good, or maybe (sic) Mathematica) and use it to do ALL your assignments. Focus on simulation and visualization. You get to learn something real, and you get to do cool software work at the same time.
[1] Graph theory is almost 100 years old now, and we're starting to see the discipline collapse into a hard core. You still need a lot of loose terminology to get started, but after that there's a clear progression through the different concepts.
By leaving college I was able to get rid of a humongous stressor in my life, and this new mental freedom let me pursue my interests and study what I liked. Now I've figured out how to actually sit down and study, and I could actually take an interest in all the GenEd courses that pissed me off so much in the past. I bet now I could go back and actually finish an undergrad degree with good grades... but now I need it even less than before; I've learned how to study on my own. If for some perverse reason I do end up going back, I'll probably study math. That's one area that I'm still figuring out how to self-study.
http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/diestel/books/graph.theo...
I like to think that I'm on the billionaire path.
It's not clear that there is any billionaire path.
Multi-millionaire, sure. There are lots of ways to achieve that through skill and hard work. But the billionaire path is being on the multi-millionaire path, having an extremely rare opportunity serendipitously present itself to you, recognizing it, and then making a long series of good decisions without any major missteps. There is a lot on that path you have not control over. Talent, effort, and even wisdom are probably not enough to keep you on it by themselves.
I'm dropping out after this semester and never looking back.
Like any generality, there are specific counter-examples, but the people that will need to judge you quickly by little pieces of information are very likely to skip over you. That is unless you have some amazing thing on your resume.
I did ok in undergrad (3.4), but I'm finding that as I tackle a masters full-time will working full-time I am rocking... Funny what perspective and motivation working gives you.
I know that not having a degree hurts me severely in a traditional job pool. I don't care. If I need to submit my resume to get a job, I will have failed miserably. I think I would choose street life over working for the man. I probably couldn't get a real job anyways, because I don't have very many skills or qualifications. Despite my lack of skills, qualifications, and especially motivation, I am confident that I have the instinct necessary to manage successful and obscenely profitable companies.
Exactly, so we should be telling people that college is the backup option. Try to do some impressive and interesting stuff, and if you succeed, you've got a free ticket out of college. If not, you can always just do the safe thing and go to college.
I admit this wasn't my plan, and that dropping out of college was an act of desperation in response to the pain it caused me. I just happened to have enough stuff with which to fill out my resume since I had been interested in CS and programming for a long time.
--Or you can be really smart, and get a free academic ride as I did, or go to schools (state schools) that don't cost too much and are decent.
You can get a DECENT (maybe not the greatest) education for LESS money in this country, you just have to try hard.
Remember, often in undergrad, it is what you do that matters the most. Once you go for Masters/Ph. then the school where you go matters a lot more.
For some wierd reason, the people that I met that didn't go to college but went straight working (usually during 98-2000 boom), even thou are very smart, and did well are somewhat rough on the edges. It is hard to point it out, but they just don't seem well refined...
I'm not sure if you're talking about all degrees, or just CS... However, speaking specifically about CS, I believe that my lack of refinement comes not from lack of Computer Science courses, but from lack of Math.
There is not much that an undergrad CS education teaches that I have not learned on my own over the past few years. However, I find that when I'm delving into deeper magic, my lack of math comes into sharp perspective. Most recently, this came up while I was hacking together a recommendation engine.
Sure, I can read a few articles and throw something together that works. But, when it comes to fine tuning it... I'm lost.
By the way, I'm a 22 year old hacker who did not go to college (yet). And I'm taking a Linear Algebra class right now to alleviate some of this problem anyway... heh.
The second thing that will help you is studying data structures algorithms. What is the average case for a search over x items? How long does it take to insert into a linked list? This way you can begin to identify bottlenecks, and get an idea as to how to approach solving problems with performance.
I didn't go to any parties or have any significant involvement with girls when I was doing my undergraduate degree (unless departmental awards ceremonies count as parties), and I'd say that my years were not even remotely wasted. Neither were the years when I was 20-24 years old (when I was doing my doctorate).
Of course, if you're not interested in learning, you'll find college/university to be a waste -- and in such circumstances I would very much encourage dropping out. For those of us who enjoy learning, however, it's the partying and girls who are a waste of our best years.
That's the problem, I was, but that was not the focus of my school. Most everything I learned, I learned on my own time. After school I learned much more on my own time. Had I been able to skip the first two years, I probably would have learned more on my own.
I had the chance to get some good art clases (which were fun, and a good way to meet girls), minoring in physics, math, doing some finance/accounting.
I did things that I wouldn't normally do, i.e was forced to go beoynd my level of comfort, which is a good thing, as it forces you to learn new thigngs and it broadens your horizons.
Whoever says that college is a waste probably didn't know how to take full advantage of it. (in academics, fun, creating life lasting connections, and learning from interacting with so many people of your age).
In the "Real World" you just don't face the huge amount of interactions in such a confined space, with some many people of your own age.
I have some kind of allergy to pointless busy work and institutional bullshit.
Anyway, I don't understand the point of the question... :)