College student here, and college has not been so amazing. I wish that the whole e-learning/computer science oriented college alternatives thing took off when I was still in high school. My tuition amounts to ~$30k a year (without grants), which is pretty ridiculous - especially considering the "quality" of the classes. Granted, the social life is nice, but it's hard to maintain that social life when I'm busy making up what school should be teaching me (namely undertaking a bunch of side projects).

Maybe I'm just an angsty young adult, but I am really unhappy with the higher education model in the modern world.

If you're not happy with the education then do something about it.

One great option that isn't presented often enough is to transfer to a different institution. Don't think that just because the school you're at sucks for you that all of them will. In some cases you can actually get into a better school than you got into out of high school as a transfer student (although some schools are weird about accepting transfers, Google can help).

Also, note that I said "for you", very few, if any, colleges or universities in the US suck in general. Some are stronger or weaker in certain areas, some emphasize certain aspects of education over others, and some will better prepare you for various jobs than others, but it is an individual evaluation.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether what you're hoping to get out of school is really what colleges and universities offer. Maybe college isn't right for you. Colleges and universities do not prepare you for a job (with a few notable exceptions like professional programs such as law and medical school, and certain business programs). Instead, they prepare you to prepare yourself for a job.

A lot of people like to trash the emphasis on theory in academic CS programs, but if you pay attention, and work hard (which it sounds like you are, with your side projects) the theory becomes pretty damn useful later when you get a job and you're shown a couple hundred (or thousand if you're really "lucky") lines of spaghetti code and asked to figure out why it is "slow", etc. A lot of people don't take the time to digest the theory they learn and therefore they aren't able to apply it to real problems when they go out into the world. Don't make that mistake.

However, does everyone need those exact skills? Nope, we need tons of people who can pump out relatively simple, relatively repetitive (though not enough to automate) code for relatively standard applications. We also need people who can maintain that (and other) code, write tests, automate processes, and a hundred other things each requiring a slightly different mixture of skills, not all of which are (or should be) taught in college. Additionally, and this is important for startups, we need people who have strong social and organizational skills, who don't necessarily spend all day writing code (not to mention the hardware people, everyone always forgets about them :)

So instead of plowing $30k/year into an education you aren't sure you want, you might want to think about a different path. Do some research. If other schools are stronger in what you want to learn, maybe you should transfer. It could also be that college just isn't what you should be doing right now, perhaps a program as described in TFA, or one of the other "code schools" would be more your style and better fits your interests. You can usually go back to college and pick up where you left off if you change your mind (although depending on the school your tuition might go up in that case).

Does a CS education at all prepare one to deal with spaghetti code? My impression from working with CS degreeholders is that maintainability and craftsmanship is completely orthogonal to algorithms and theory.

It depends on the programming. There are actual degrees (not a ton of them, but they exist) in "software engineering". Different programs also have more or less emphasis on such things. That was part of my advice, to think about whether the program was a good fit for the goals the student had in mind.

As for the spaghetti code example, there's definitely more going on there than I implied, but my point was that having an extremely solid grounding in algorithms and theory can be a huge asset, assuming the student has actually taken the lessons to heart. For example, I have spotted bugs and inefficient algorithms before just by looking at code or even hearing a description of what it is supposed to do that colleagues with less "theory" knowledge have missed.

Of course YMMV, there is no silver bullet. My point was just that a broad knowledge of theory isn't useless, but it also isn't necessary for everyone to have. We end up in the best place when every person gets the education that best suits what s/he wants to do, and having enough information up-front to make that happen is critical.

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

It's important, but it's also expensive. Unbelievably so. What I see happening is ambitious kids going here to gain marketable skills, and figure out what they like doing, and then using those skills to pay their way through college with a much better idea of what they want to do. That way you don't have to be saddled with a crapload of debt.

That's a nice ideal. Have you considered that people will tend to do the former part and not the latter, leaving us with a population of people with obsolete skills and lacking the foundation to easily learn new ones?

I don't see any evidence that taking college classes lays any foundation for learning additional skills later

I have seen evidence that a fundamental understanding of computing makes it easier to learn particular languages later.

There's enough people in tech right now that don't have degrees. I'm one of them. So I doubt this would become a huge problem.

I submit that bootcamps are creating this problem right now. Many bootcamp graduates have poor grasps of the basics of computing, which will tend to limit their skill and career growth. For instance, it's difficult to grasp functional programming if imperative PHP is literally the only thing you know.

25% of your salary for 2 years is not a crapload of debt?

In fact, if your starting salary is 80k, this is ten thousand dollars MORE THAN the average college debt! And no opportunities to branch out of software engineering. Your starting salary would have to be around 55-60k for you to take on less debt than a typical four year degree, even accounting for subsidized interest rates.

edit for downvotes: here's the math: Average college debt is 27ish k. Bump it up to 30k for interest.

    80000 * .25 * 2 = 40k.
    60000 * .25 * 2 = 30k.

Is there something I'm missing?

--

You could argue that there's a two year opportunity cost here. I'm not so sure:

1) If your only goal is to become a web dev and you don't want any other background knowledge (that is, knowledge otuside of computer science), then you can do that in two years at most universities. What I mean by this is that the CS major portion of a degree is a little more than half your courseload most places.

2) But IMHO it's silly to major in CS without picking up a secondary major/minor in an interesting application area. So I it's at least debatable that there's a real opportunity cost benefit here.

Finally, to be fair, they seem well-connected. The YC etc. connections might help offset the comparatively high price.

I think there is an assumption that this enables such a job that otherwise would be unattainable. As an individual, of course you want the $80k job, despite the $60k job "requiring less debt", plus you then get to keep the $80k job after the 2 years.

If I want to optimize for longevity of career and salary, then a college degree is the obvious choice.

My assumption based on your posts is that you have a degree you are proud of and look down on those that don't. Anything that makes that choice seem unwise is quickly put down or dismissed. I find this attitude quite common with those that spent a lot of money for a piece of paper.

it'd be interesting to read the fine print

it'd be interesting to know the tax implications of that 25% (is it pre tax/post tax)

it appears to be risk free, as in, what happens if you flake out and move to India, or develop a debillitation illness, or simply decide that programming isn't for you

which is substantially different than the non-dischargeable debt that you might take on to attend college

The fact that the educational institution takes on the risk of graduating students who cannot get jobs is a welcome change from the consumer's perspective.

But I fear at scale (and even now) it's paid for by higher prices. See my comment below -- at standard SV salaries, they're burdening students with much more "debt" in two years than typical four year institutions.

And it's not like the unemployment rates for CS majors are atmospheric... most CS majors with the social skills to make it through the non-technical portion of an interview will find a job somewhere.

fair

what's the going rate for a developer boot camp these days?

10K or so?

if their placement rates are as good as they advertise (I don't really have a way of know if they are or not), this seems hardpressed to compete with those, especially if you combine a bootcamp education with the available MOOC options

It's expensive when you just flat out decide to go to an expensive school taking out a massive amount of debt when you're only 17/18. Whereas the same kind of education can be gotten at a public school.

The average cost of a public, 4 year university was $16k per year in 2012 [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76]. It's expensive everywhere. You can definitely rack up higher bills at some places than others, but going to a public university isn't going to save you from having debt. I went to a public, in-state university, didn't live on campus, and it still cost me about $10k a year for tuition (including the $500 of miscellaneous registration fees that they would tack on each semester, and textbook costs). That's near impossible money to make if you can't work full time and can't get any jobs that require a degree. The only reason I didn't go into debt was because I lucked out and got a good scholarship, and had a mother who put away a fund for me while I was younger.

It's important to some people. But others don't really care, and would prefer a cheaper and better way to do what they want to do (in this case, become a founder or developer).

I think this is more aimed at the college-dropout techie / entrepreneur type than your typical CS student.

No, a wide-ranging formal liberal education is not that important. We're in an era of specialization and autodidactism. I've learned far, far more myself with the internet than I ever did in my useless, overpriced English and History classes in university.

> Getting a wide-ranging liberal education was never really that important, huh?

I haven't heard of many people who have gotten that where I live. So maybe it isn't.