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Eric Schmidt On Why College Is Still Worth It
An anonymous reader writes "The wisdom of getting a college degree and saddling yourself with a huge amount of debt has been called into question recently, but not by Eric Schmidt. The Google Chairman says it's still worth it, noting that: 'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.' From the article: 'When asked about the difficulty in paying for college, Schmidt was adamant: "I appreciate it's expensive and we need to fix that," he said, but "figure out a way to do it." One potential problem with Schmidt's statement is that it was an argument for the average student. It may be more advantageous for students at the bottom and top quartiles of the talent distribution to go straight into the workforce (or get vocational training). Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.'"
With hindsight Zuckerberg made no mistake. But for every Zuckerberg who drops out and makes Billions anyway, there many more with equally good ideas that tried a similar path, and through worse luck ended up going bust. Anecdotes are not data.
And not every drop-out is going to build a Facebook/Apple/Microsoft.
They are the exception, so for most people, the best advice is to "stay in school".
'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.'
That has been true in the past.
And, let's take the bottom line: let's say it IS true and you have "significant compound greater earnings." - if you are straddled with obscene student debt while working at a shitty retail job, your net is going to be less than if you worked as a plumber let's say.
And let's stop this crap about how all unemployed college graduates majored in English or some other liberal or fine arts. EVERY major is having issues with employment in this economy.
If you go to the schools we like, major in what we like and are good enough to work for a company like us, it's still worth it. However, if you are John Smith Liberal Arts major at Typical State University, you've just guaranteed that four to five years of partying will result in at least a decade of misery assuming you can even make enough to pay it off.
there many more with equally good ideas that tried a similar path, and through worse luck ended up going bust.
But they at least had the experience of running a business. There are PLENTY more people that finished college, amassed crippling debt, and ALSO went bust - only they ended up with a degree that had no value for getting a job, and debt that is impossible to discharge. At least the dropout who failed had a debt that could be shed in bankruptcy, if they even amassed debt to run a business!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The reason even the top quartile needs to stay in school... is because even the top quartile person writing the lead doesn't understand that top quartile and top whatever Zuckerberg would be aren't the same. And not that Zuckerberg isn't smart, but he got insanely lucky with something that dozens or hundreds of other companies tried, but failed to do.... dropping out after you've already had your low probability event is an easy call. Doing it prior isn't supported by any analysis.
And let's stop this crap about how all unemployed college graduates majored in English or some other liberal or fine arts. EVERY major is having issues with employment in this economy.
From what I can tell that simply is not true. CS majors are not having issues finding jobs. It doesn't seem like engineering majors are either. If you learn a valuable skill you can still find a job.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Successful products need not only entrepreneurship but also knowledge to build. Often the kind of knowledge that one needs to invest many years of their lives to acquire.
The best college students are also self educating students. In order to make best use of college training a few students have great histories of forcing all kinds of self education upon themselves. The great scholars can not be stopped. A kid who is a born scholar who is isolated in a tiny village with poor schools will still somehow find a way to learn. These are the personalities that we need the most as a nation.
True, but for every Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, there are probably hundreds of others who drop out of college and never make anything of it.
Just because a small few did well out of it, doesn't automatically mean that everyone will.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The entire article is stupid. And the Zuckerberg example was just the worst stupidity in it.
Those two statements have ZERO correlation with each other.
Going into debt for college is EASY. There's no need to "figure out a way to do it". You sign the loan papers and take the classes.
The problem is paying off that loan AFTER you leave college. Whether via graduation or because you cannot get anyone to give you any more debt to finish.
Again, wrong. Talent only applies to the top percentage. And even then it is VERY risky.
If you don't have the talent then you don't have the talent. That has nothing to do with skipping college.
FUNDING is the reason to skip college and hit votech. If your family cannot afford to pay for college then votech might be your best option. Why start this generation with massive debt that you might not be able to pay off? Start saving for your child's education.
Zuckerberg met the group of people that created Facebook, and came up with the idea IN college, to solve a problem they discovered while AT college.....
Wow, one whole case. How many people are extremely successful that are college educated vs not college educated? One out success out of millions of non-college-educated is utterly meaningless, and to bring it up without additional context is intentionally misleading and deceptive. How about citing the percentage of people making 7 figures or more that are college educated vs. not?
Billionaire says "figure out a way to" pay for it. Meanwhile, he will be figuring out ways to collude with other companies to keep your salary low and to bring in thousands of people from Asia to compete with you for jobs.
" Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.'"
This would imply that Facebook is not a mistake...
'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.'
'The economic return to higher education over a lifetime _statistically_ produces significant compound greater earnings.'
There, fixed that for you.
Even though I am in a technical position I decided to major in business. I now know the mindset of accountants, finance, and management. I can speak and understand the language. If I want to progress my small business I know what an asset and a liability is and how to setup books.
For my electives in computer science I learned what object oriented programming truly is outside what I read on slashdot and books. I know what algorithms are and real time means. I may not even have that much as a real computer science major but I recieved an education.
When the economy tanked after I graduated no one would hire me except for one temp contract job. It required a degree and that is how I got it. Without that I would be substitute teaching and working fast food at night to make up for my crappy wages.
Those who argue I DO NOT NEED A DEGREE got in in 1999 when you didn't need one. If you are one of these try being born 15 years later and getting a job today? ... no degree? How does $12/hr aka 20,000 a year sound? Great! Here is a set of headphones and go read this script at the techexpo call center etc. Make sure you mommy reminds you not to be late since we do not pay you enough to move out etc. That my friends is what the economic reality is today regardless of skillsets if you have no experience or education. Programming wont mean shit as HR will throw out your resume if it is not work related somehow.
Point is the degree is required in 2014 to get your foot in the door unless you feel working at techexpo call center can get a you a programming job as that and GeekSquad is all you are going to get.
http://saveie6.com/
Also, one can't look at the lifetime earnings of people in their 40s or 50s to do this analysis. the question facing the high school graduate today is a looking forward one, not "what was the effect of choosing college or not in 1970-1980". In 1970 the job market was very different today. Manufacturing and similar jobs which did not require a degree were still a large part of the market. Today, there's many fewer non-degree jobs beyond the "would you like fries with that". (Not that a degree is required for most of those degree required jobs, but it's a easy discriminant for which resumes/applications to throw in the trash).
There is also a HUGE effect on life time earnings from what you made in your very first job, which in turn is very much affected by the overall economy. Be unlucky enough to graduate in a recession when pay is low and you are literally cursed for life. Most companies ignore issues of "internal equity" and pay wages for new hires based on what it costs to get someone today, and do not readjust wages of employees already working there as the market goes up and down. This has the advantage that it tends to damp out wild fluctuations, but it also means that employees aren't really paid "market rate" at any given time. There is also a significant cost for an employee to change employers: that is, if you're doing "ok" at your current employer, you require a substantial increase in pay to change jobs to make up for the overall inconvenience and financial penalty in changing jobs. (Unless you're unlucky enough to change jobs because of a spouse or moving, etc.)
Upshot is that statistics like "college graduates make X million more in their life" are very, very suspect when predicting future market behavior.
No matter how intelligent you are and how well you learn on your own, nobody can sort through the entire cumulative body of knowledge built up by human civilization and find what's significant and what isn't. No matter how smart you are you still need to learn to formulate your thoughts on a variety of subjects (not just programming) and have those thoughts critiqued by experts and peers. No matter how smart you are, you need other people to show you what intellectual pursuits other people and other cultures find significant, whether that's literature, poetry, philosophy, etc so you can understand civilization better and other people better. You need to be challenged by a variety of subjects other than your core interests to think critically about the world.
You can be smart but still be uneducated. However, when you are uneducated, the danger is you don't realize how little it is you actually know, which is what separates the top quarter from the top 1%.
Increasing the supply of trained workers lowers the cost - economics 101.
Of course tech companies always more workers, even if they are looking to offshore as much as they can, and replace the rest with visa workers. But, just in case, doesn't hurt to lower the cost of domestic workers.
Forget the situation today, look towards the future. There is no way for western workers to compete with third world wages.
As the executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt has a vested interest in promoting college attendance regardless of whether or not the gambit pays off for the individual student. The reason is simple, Google requires a steady supply of talented and well educated employees to continue growing and increasing profits. If some of those students take out loans and fail to graduate it costs Google and Eric Schmidt nothing so why wouldn't they encourage others to take that risk? If they succeed then Google and Erich Schmidt benefit and if they fail then only the ex-student without a degree is left holding the bag. Corporate executives are concerned with maximizing profits and will do or say just about anything to achieve that goal. Anything they say in public about anything must be viewed with a critical eye towards where their true interests are.
The article seem to imply, that real and best enterpreneaurs only make software companies. But actual innovation takes place in many other filelds. My point is that what makes the difference and is precursor to success is knoledge and ingenuity. While you can argue that the latter does not require formal education, for knowledge that might not be true. For a software company once you actually master the tools required, education is probably not always needed (although, it won't hurt or actually may be beneficial, see Jeff Bezos). The "kid coder" prototype is what made Zuckerberg and the likes. Other fields are much much different. How can you run a biotech company based on your own non formal education? Or a nanotech company? All of the companies where knowledge cannot be acquired simply by having a computer at your disposal, require some form of formal education. Look at any biotech management to see what I mean.
If you get a degree, speak mandarin fluently and decide to revoke your US citizenship and leave, then it can be a good investment.
Despite your rant (or actually because of it), especially with this line, I imagine that you must be in a rather upper-middle class environment. Learning Chinese to improve job prospects? Um... okay, have fun with that.
we do need more vocational training that can buildup to some thing as well more being put on 2 year schools.
Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake
Zuckerberg may not have graduated from Harvard, but he is the product of a traditional liberal arts education:
He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year in high school, where he won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and classical studies. On his college application, Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was captain of the fencing team. In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad.
Napster co-founder Sean Parker, a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was "really into Greek odysseys and all that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from the Roman epic poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.
Mark Zuckerberg
OP concludes that because zuckberg didn't graduate from harvard, he didn't need his harvard education. OPs complete lack of logic is fascinating... can you really go through life being such a complete moron?
the only reason zuckerberg invented facebook is because he was a student at harvard...
Here is a very good article on the subject:
The True State of the U.S. Economy: Caviar Facials and Desperate Fire Sales on Craigslist
There are lots of solutions that cost less and dont require loans. For example, go part time, get a 2 year degree a at a community college, etc.
The common thread here is that Multinational companies are saying "get a degree" but opportunistically seek the "same work" from international sources instead. How can anyone afford to repay the loans when the cost of life in a metropolitan area is so high?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08...
Germany Backtracks on Tuition
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE
Published: August 25, 2013
(German colleges are now free again, like the Scandinavian countries. Under the German constitution, the 16 state governments control finance and education. A 2005 federal court decision allowed them to charge tuition. 8 states, in former West Germany, did, but it was unpopular and they reversed their policy. Lower Saxony charged €1,000 ($1,300)/year. An economist estimated that tuition caused 20,000 potential students (6.8% of all students) to forgo enrollment in 2007. Denmark, Norway and Sweden have free tuition, although Germany, with 2.5 million students, is the largest. Britain raised its tuition caps to £9,000 ($14,000). In France, most public universities charge a few hundred euros per year, though the grandes écoles are more expensive.)
Sure Zuckerberg is currently worth billions in theory. But if he were to try to cash out his stock options into actual money on Monday the market would react so swiftly and severely that the last shares he sells would be nearly worthless. And frankly, in another couple years, the company will likely be worthless regardless as they have no long term business plan beyond "acquire and sell users' information" - which is not a meaningful plan for growth.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
All genuine degrees have value in getting a job....But the practical advantage of the skills they've gained, and the character that has been built.
I personally think all degrees of any kind can have value in getting a job - but not many have value equal to the expense it took to get the degree.
The problem is that a degree itself matters more to getting a job very short term - say three to five years after the degree. After that point what matters more is skill and "character" as you say.
But both skill and character are easily accumulated without amassing college debt. And lack of debt gives a young person a lot more choice in how they can gain skill and build character, in a lot of cases if someone applied themselves they could easily be in a better position to get a job at the time most people are leaving college, than the college graduate would just after leaving school.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Everyone assumes similarity to themselves and their lives.
This is why rich people look at poor people and don't see how poor people live, but how absolutely lazy or irresponsible someone who grew up rich would have to be to wind up in those straits. They cannot assess the huge differences in opportunity, education, social connection, or positive expectation. They can't imagine seeing the world from a place of limited opportunity. Even the best-hearted of them can take a "poor vacation" and try to live the subsistence life, but growing up feeling you can't just walk away from that is one of the biggest aspects.
So what to Eric is expensive college tuition is ridiculously impossible for many others, especially considering that jobs aren't even available to that many college graduates anymore.
Higher education has been made the tool of class stratification. You're lucky to be born with the funds to have the odds on your side. And even if you give education all you've got, heaven help you if you're one of those who doesn't have health care coverage - recent changes being a bit late for those I know who tried to bootstrap when college was all they could afford.
The reason college degrees were valuable: they revealed extraordinary ability on the part of the student.
Why they're worthless now: everyone has them, and they're easy or at least predictable enough that they have little predictive value.
How to fix this: make high school more challenging, and test problem-solving as opposed to recombinant memorization.
Futurist Traditionalism
The world is basically starting to overflow with way more people than positions. As a result, it's dividing into societies with vast gaps between the very few people who control the money, and everyone else just looking for a chance to serve (or be employed). Some societies are further down this line than others, but you can look at China as an example of what the end-game will be like for the rest of the world within the next 100 years. All the nice things in life will become scarce enough that only the wealthiest can afford them. The rest of us will simply work to make them happy. Upward mobility will become as unlikely as jumping across the Grand Canyon, without the middle-class as a bridge.
These weird educational issues are just symptoms of it happening here in America. We're pushing everyone to "go to college" while the businesses here continue to eliminate employment opportunities due to outsourcing and automation. Even the outsourcing strategy is starting to backfire, due to companies realizing that when they aren't employing people in America, then they can't sell stuff to the people in America. It's why most companies right now are looking at China as the next (and final) phase. The "1%" in China is still a huge number of people, so that will work for a while.
I'd be surprised if we don't have an "Arab Spring" or "French Revolution" happening in this country within the next 20 years. The average white conservative male has been able to blame the misfortunes of minorities on rap music, or skin color, or laziness, or whatever, but now that they are starting to share demographics with such "undesirables" shit is going to hit the fan.
You can make MUCH more money as a skilled tradesman right now than you can as an engineer (software or hardware). Plus you don't have a 5-8 year delay in earnings, meaning you can start saving for retirement much sooner, and that compounds.
A skilled machinist can make 150-200k/year in this market, because there is a dire shortage of them.
This is utter bullshit.
Period.
1. Go into debt to obtain college degree ...
2.
3. Profit!
So, all this time, step (2) was "figure out a way to do it"!
This article needs to distinguish between education and college.
Education is worthwhile. But is college still the best way to get an education? I'm not too sure, not with the ever greater swing in thinking towards profiteering and monetizing. Was bad enough being vicitmized by the occasional parking ticket over a cheap technicality (your front bumper was hanging 1 cm over the line of the deliberately too short parking spot, etc.), taken for hundreds by textbook publishers, and finally, if you graduate, hounded for donations to help out your poor, poor alma mater. But now I hear tuition has rocketed up far faster than inflation, and many professors are the new victims of the relentless push to turn every job into a temporary position with no benefits and no security, and their research is being patented and locked behind paywalls more than ever.
College should be free, just like high school. Students pay for room and board, but not tuition or books. I'm hopeful that copylefted MOOCs and ebooks will break 2 of these rackets. For those who think students should pay tuition, should all things of value be paid for? Sunlight and air are quite valuable, should people pay for that?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Even so, they didn't do what they did with a high school diploma. They all had at least some college exposure, networking and experience. There are plenty of studies that show that just some college can make a world of difference in the prospective level of success for anyone.
In addition these examples were themselves high achievers who were already being exposed to "college level" material in high school in addition to what little they may have experienced in college before dropping out. The problem is when you have anyone of any authority suggest college is not worthwhile, you have a bunch of arrogant otherwise capable children forgo it and go nowhere.
I would also add the old argument that education is not just about career success, but a well educated citizenry. Oh, fuck it, we don't value that.
Places with state-paid or state-assisted university programs tend to have a sieve mechanism (like entrance exams) that sort people into programs of different cost (and life outcomes). E.g. a test determines if you enter vocational school or a university program.
In the US, there is still a test-score aspect of things, but if you pay for it, generally, we let you do whatever you like. That's good, in its own way. Some people are tremendously motivated folks who are bad at taking tests. They ought to be free to choose a difficult path and rise to the occasion.
The problem in the US is the state involvement in financial aid. The policy of "college for everyone" may not make Americans smarter so much as it makes college dumber.
If the state has any interest at all in funding college educations (and this is debatable), presumably, that funding should go to people with insufficient means, better than average motivation and/or talent, and only in subjects for which there is a compelling state interest (I'm looking at you, STEM).
Furthermore, such financing needs to be contingent on them NOT taking a job on wallstreet when they are done. The public already funds those bozos enough; there's no reason to use federal scholarship money as a 4 year long interview for some wallstreet firm. Wallstreet can start doing its own talent recruiting. If those guys are as good as they tell their clients, it should be no problem for them to predict the "winners" and only offer private scholarships accordingly..
What also doesn't make sense is that the government allows anyone with a pulse to borrow 30k/year to go to school for 6 years and maybe get a communications degree.
This is simply not in the public interest, nor is it in the interest of the students, nor is it in the interest of the higher-ed system.
I absolutely agree that there is an education bubble. I think certain people should attend university in certain situations. I went to a small state school with an academic scholarship. I make the same amount of money as people who went to much more expensive places -- without scholarships.
I think University was valuable in my case -- but it was much cheaper back then, and my field has much higher salaries than average.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Is it that people do better because they went to college or that people who are willing to delay gratification, work hard, broaden themselves intellectually, converse with smart people who also become successful and build a network of successful people?
The kind of person willing to shoulder debt and phone it in will never win. Just because you attended a college and got a degree doesn't mean it did anything for you.
College is an opportunity to intern, find mentors, meet peer groups and try things you might want to do for a living. It's also a place to expand beyond the modalities of your earlier life. A Liberal Arts degree requires subjects that allow a person to appreciate the world in a better perspective.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
New York University is now $42,000 a year tuition for liberal arts 4 year undergrad. Add $13,000 for housing, $4,000 for meal plan and food, and $1,000 for books and supplies and you are at around $60,000 per year undergrad at NYU, or $240,000 for a 4 year liberal arts degree. This is for a school that ranks 32d nationwide in universities. (http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/new-york-university-2785)
Tuition: (http://www.nyu.edu/bursar/tuition.fees/rate13/ugcas.html)
Housing: (http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/resLifeHousServ/documents/AY20132014_Rates.pdf)
Meal plan: (http://www.campusdish.com/en-US/CSE/NYU/MealPlans/)
Books: (http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/financialAid/documents/financialfacts.pdf)
US News and World (http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2008/10/30/how-much-is-that-college-degree-really-worth) reports over a graduates lifetime, that degree really only adds $300,000 extra salary as a direct result of a degree. Why would you give up the opportunity cost of earning for 4 years at a job as well as $240,000 to get $300,000?
Because the jobs you get for the rest of your life are not the ones where you ask "Paper or plastic?" Not the back breaking, "working for the Man" bullshit jobs that you get without a degree. Instead of jobs, graduates get careers: with health insurance, vacation and promotions. Quality of life is better.
I am quite happy with what I got. I still talk with people from school. It was hard, but I feel I got my money's worth.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I've experienced the same frustration. There are certain technical circles in which I am well known, yet when I decided to get an 8-5 I had a heck of a time because I left college to run my business. I eventually took a job making half as much as someone with my experience would normally make.*
Not long ago, my boss ask me to look over some resumes for an opening we have. Most of the resumes looked pretty similar. It's one page, after all, and they are all applying for the same position. Those that were different had positives and negatives, so they all "scored" about the same. How to decide who to call first? It felt like forensic science, trying to find some clue of who might be better among the pile of nearly identical resumes. A typo MIGHT hint that the person isn't as careful with their work. That seems silly, but those were the kind of clues we had to go on.
We interviewed a couple of people and it was similarly "tied" - both seemed like they would be a decent fit. Without actually knowing either of the candidates, we had to choose one based on the tiny bits of information we had. Compared to the tiny clues we were looking for, a degree vs. no degree would have been huge. It's not a great indicator, but it sure is better than any of the other differences between two otherwise good resumes.
To look at it another way, suppose you have ten resumes that look okay, ten that made it past the "obviously no" filter. You have to find some way to narrow it down by eliminating nine of the ten candidates. Four years of study and carrying a four year project to successful completion obviously helps narrow it down.
It's now time for me to get off Slashdot and get back to my studies. With 17 years of experience I don't want to be narrowed down for lack of a degree, so I'm getting my degree from WGU. The "final exam" for most courses is an industry-recognized certification exam, so I'll end up with a degree and about a dozen certifications.
* The "low paying" job turned out to be a blessing, due to working with wonderful people.
Schmidt forgot one fact. Not all degrees are equal when you are done. Today college offered everything from professional degrees like engineering, medical degrees to non-professional underwater basket weaving degrees like music appreciation. Both have different earning potential.
If your argument was valid, then it would be reflected in the numbers.
Those numbers codify a truth that was, not a truth that is or will be.
The "numbers" would also have said a country could not best the British Empire, until it happened.
Also another point to consider, is that the numbers are obscuring a possible truth - that someone who can succeed in college would not do just as well financially over time by skipping college. It just happens that in the last few decades pretty much everyone went to college that could, so it's obscuring how many people could have succeeded without college too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But now, credentialing is a process that rewards the slow and dutiful, not the thoughtful.
Rock star status is achieved through acts of dubious worth that nonetheless demonstrate desired skills, but not thinking ability.
The private colleges have jumped the shark on this one.
I agree on PhD programs however.
Futurist Traditionalism
Pretty strongly for the last 10 years, the whole dialogue one way or another is to urge people to get a college education because it makes them more employable.
The equation being debated, whether you agree or not is "education == employment".
The problem with this entire line of argument and thinking is the focus is too narrow. In the 1500's duriing a cultural period called the Renaissance there was an idea about a very high level of human accomplishment called "The Renaissance man". Colonial America had self-taught individuals like Benjamin Franklin.
The scale, depth and vast span of knowledge and level of complication of modern products and processes makes being a Renaissance man still a full lifetime challenge.
For the project of becoming a Renaissance man, it is very helpful to go through college and get the full dose of undergraduate Liberal Arts electives plus a full dose of physics, chemistry, geology, biology, biochemistry, medical science and also art, drafting, music and composition and also child development, human development and psychology. And might I say, not by sleeping through the classes but rather interacting and thinking through all of them.
In the setting of having that kind of lifetime pursuit, college is helpful and having a job is helpful.
Not a consumer but a creator, critic and teacher it is better to be.
Probability of your graduation in the degree * Probabiity of the degree getting a job that pays for the degree in a reasonable amount of time
There were plenty of people trying to take the place of MySpace. I assisted one such company. Only Facebook succeeded, beating not only MySpace but also all of the others trying to do the same thing. Clearly, Zuck did a lot of things right. In all likelihood, he must have been very good at hiring really good people, keeping them, and motivating them, along with leading them toward a unified vision.
Then Google spent a billion dollars or whatever trying to compete . With all of Google's resources - money, great engineers, captive eyeballs - they couldn't touch Facebook. They are obviously doing a lot of smart things.
The guy might be an asshole, I don't know. I'd bet he's obsessive, most people who are ridiculously successful in one area of their life get there by being obsessive about a goal. Most certainly, though, he achieved what thousands of other smart people couldn't.
I won't claim to have to ultimate solution, but perhaps something along similar lines as apprenticeships might work? Ie. while you study, you earn a modest, but adequate salary in return for doing work that is relevant to your studies.
It is no wonder that young people are less and less interested in studying at university. I don't think it is only about debt - it is debt, combined with the feeling of seeing your less gifted class mates getting an apprenticeship, then job, family, car, house and going of on holidays every year, while you are still struggling with debt in a job that perhaps only just pays more than the average plumber makes. And to top it off, you find that you are regarded with something rather like contempt in the wider society - you are "a nerd", and there's all the tired jokes about graduates only being able to find a job in McDonald. Being intelligent and well educated is something that increasingly feels like low-status, and definitely not attractive. If society genuinely needs people to bother with education, then these things have to change.
If Zuckerberg never went to Harvard there would be no facebook as we know it. First of all he wouldn't have met the person he stole the whole thing from, second of all he would not have had the first enthustiastic test group of people to join the service. Without those he would not have had the money needed to grow the business. Might be selling fries somewhere, while planning to do something big on his free time.
Zuckerberg dropping out of school tells me something about his person. If I suddenly had extra millions lying around I'd go back to school to get a doctorate. Why? Certainly not for any monetary gain, but because researching and learning new things is something I would purely enjoy. Would be only a big bonus if it helped the mankind to progress a tiny bit on the side. Don't know what Mr.Zuckerberg does with all his money, maybe nothing, maybe plays with his company.
As long as the great majority of common workers believe that if they just work hard enough, so that they too can one day earn a piece of the pie, then they will work like slaves for peanuts. Occasionally people in charge will throw out a little scrap to keep workers motivated. A perk here, a small promotion for the best worker there, a 'performance' bonus for everyone, whatever token gesture keeps people working hard. Workers starting to demand too much? Just make a few people redundant to remind the others how lucky they are to have peanuts. Don't want to train your own workforce? Just pay educated workers a small education premium until all applicants get an education.
Who benefits from all this? Not the workers. It doesn't matter how hard you study, or how many hours you put in on the job, your chances of making it to the top are unbelievably small. In fact, if you are a good worker, then the people in charge want you to stay exactly where you are, because you make them richer. Is a CEO worth as much as 500 average workers? Hell no! But as long as everyone is too busy fighting amongst themselves for scraps they won't even notice the slice out of their paycheck.
People started to wake up during the last financial crisis. Nothing reminds you that capitalism isn't working for the workers like losing your job, your house, your marriage, and moving in with your parents. That’s why governments take such extraordinary measures to stabilise their economies. Now everything is back to normal, so people can go back to sleep. There will be no revolution here for now.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
The argument may have some merit, but it's hard to take it seriously coming from Eric Schmidt. He's already proven himself to be a dinosaur, completely out of touch with the current state of the real world.
Zuck was the son of two doctors. He came from a rich background. If Facebook had not been successful, would it have materially changed Zuck's life in any way? Would he not have just gone back to college? Like Bill Gates, who came from a wealthy family, the risk of dropping out of college seems minimal.
not if you can possibly get accepted and pay for it but if you can actually hack it. The "bottom quartile" lose their money. They have 0-100k in debt and don't have the marks/career prospects to payback or at least justify the cost of the loan. They are also down 3-4 years where they could have been earning money and could now be in a situation that now that they know that they should have done trade school they no longer have the money or time to do so.
I think we as a society need to realize that some people just simply have the makings of a really good janitor but a piss poor engineer. Lets not push everyone into going to college otherwise they and their parents get labelled a failure.
'On average' is not an indication of actual future personal return. It's difficult to measure effectively since a person can't go back in time, go to college (or not go), and see the difference. So we are left with studies which have to take hundreds of factors into account (social, economic, intelligence, motivation, etc) to even begin to match up people to see if one group does better than another. And since they can't we are left with flawed analytics that people use to justify their own opinions in many cases.
And it's a BS goal anyway. Who goes to college to get a return?? Either you want to go to learn something, or you don't. As long as you can earn a decent living afterward either with or without the debt, who gives a flying fuck how much it cost. Just be smart about it and either don't go into debt at all, or only go into debt enough that it doesn't impact your life afterward.
The facts do tell us that many people have gone to college and not seen any return. Many people have not gone to college and done very well. And many people have gone to college and done well. So there is ample evidence to suggest, in my opinion, that the person has more to do with getting a return or not that the institution itself. I've also known enough mart people with and without degrees, and enough stupid people with doctorates, to know not to trust a piece of paper. Or even use it as a filter.
In my experience, smart, motivated people really don't need to go to college to do well. Average students need to in order to get that paper that claims they can at least learn something and are trained to some degree (as was pointed out in the article). Everyone can learn something, it's all a question of how much that piece of paper is worth to you. You know, that piece of paper that shows you know how to kiss up to your professors and give them the answers they want instead of the right answer, and take tests. And don't give me that crap about how it makes you well rounded. Nothing makes you more well rounded than actually working around people from different backgrounds.
In my opinion, there are far too many ways to go to college over time to risk large debt over questionable future potential. The best fix for the system is for the government to stop handing out money so colleges have an incentive to attract students, instead of seeing a tide of people with dollars available that were lied to by some guidance councilor who told them that they have to go to college to make a decent living.
The best way, in my opinion, is to get a freakin' job and go part time. Live at home, and go to a community college for a couple of years. Save money and get grants or scholarships instead of loans.
Don't want to work at McDonalds or in a call center?? Think it's beneath you?? Then don't come to me asking for a job, your attitude sucks. I'm looking for someone who is willing to do what it takes to get what they want, but are smart enough to know that huge piles of debt isn't a smart way to begin a career. Attitude and some business sense are just as important as how smart or trained someone is.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I realize that a job is generally critical to one's future, and whether you develop the education in college or by yourself is largely irrelevant. You earn money however you feel you can: start your own business, get hired by another company, or swindle your friends and family.
I don't think college should be considered a vocational school. You go there to broaden and deepen, to expose yourself to new ideas and information, to open yourself up to new things and new people. You go there to be fascinated. You shouldn't go there and expect a job afterwards, at least not one based on your degree. Without deeper learning, without more perspective, people are always less that what they might have become. This is what higher education and its environs are for.
It's too expensive. I have no argument there.
A degree is no replacement for Stroustrup, K&R and the (Red) Dragonbook. Simply put, reading these introductory books will advance you much further than their equivlent college courses. As for Rhetoric and logic, math etc, just watch all the Noam Chomsky documentaries and get familiar with Plato and Aristottle, then move through the enlightment and rennisaunce with Lebeniz, Kaunt and Spinoza. Make the persuit of history, philosophy, and etymology (history of language) a hobby.
As for finding a job, while all the fools are photocopying copies of their precious degree make yoruself busy looking to your 2nd and 3rd degrees of seperation.
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As someone in a degree for math right now I constantly regret going down this path. Most of my education has been a waste and very little of all the brutal math I've endured is actually useful in everyday business. I think the article could have created a more interesting conversation by asking not whether to go to college or not is worth it, but whether to go to a four year university as opposed to an associate type program is worth it. For myself, I really wish I would have stopped at an associates. You have math through linear algebra at that point and guess what, you really won't need much beyond that for a typical job in IT. The debt burden is much much less, the stress is much smaller, and the experience is far better. Today, you go to a four year school and half the classes you must take in order to become a "well rounded person" are just a total waste of time and money. For instance, is it really worth shelling out about 9,000 bucks total for language classes if you're in school for math? No, it isn't and it especially isn't when you leave with an 8 year old's language ability after all that. There are many examples of these weird classes that have been built into curriculums that are just a total waste of time and effort, yet people somehow think without these you missed out. I have started to take the view that it is the ones who go do associates degrees and go into the workforce are the real smart people. They have a quarter of the debt, take maybe a year or two longer to reach the avg. income of the four year degree holder, but are accruing interest at a much much slower rate and in fact probably are paying it down much faster. In the end, four year degrees are a joke and need some serious revamping.
Eery damn time I see this bit about whether college is "worth it" it seems to me we are all approaching this the wrong way.
For most jobs, you only need to be able to red at an 8th grade level at most, and since calculators were invented there's really no need to learn math, right? Your smartphone will do it for you. In fact, looked at just in terms of what jobs are available and how many, there's really no need to teach much of the population how to read at all.
So from a purely vocational standpoint college is not worth it, and neither is public education.
But then why do we have public schools at all? Because we found out long ago that education doesn't just give you vocational skills. It makes you able to be a better citizen.
Now I know, I know, you have met a guy with a Master's who couldn't think and Zuckerberg dropped out of college. But learning to code wasn't why Zuck went to college. And I submit that successful as Facebook is there are a lot of blind spots he has that a reading of Hume or Orwell might have fixed for him. Heck, even taking to a few more mature, educated women might have helped.
When we look at higher education as the ticket to a better job, we keep asking about it in terms of marketable skills like coding or whatever. But there are less tangible skills we learn as well there, and i would say that much of what I learned was precisely because I was forced to read stuff I never would have picked up otherwise. I notice a lot of engineering types tend to scoff at liberal arts, but there's something to be said for being asked to stretch into something you wouldn't ordinarily gravitate to.
Now, there's the costs of college, which are simply ridiculous, but some of that is because unlike every other industrialized nation we've left much of our tertiary education in private hands. So we have a two-tier system from the get-go. (I am not saying public schools are worse, there are great ones, but it is really uneven). On top of that, we have a situation where lots of people have BAs already, and the relative value is less, at least from a job standpoint.
So there are two questions, maybe: one, is the cost of college "worth it" in the sense of paying too much, and two, what is it that we want college to do? Something tells me when they set up the land grants for UW Madison it wasn't so they could field a $100 million football team. (That's what the approximate costs to the college have been over time, factoring in inflation and $1 million coach salaries and building the stadium).
I submit that the purpose of tertiary education is the same as that of secondary ed, but more so: we want it to make good citizens, whether they choose to study something "practical" like engineering or less obviously so like liberal arts.
Yes, it's possible to get good educations outside of a classroom setting. There's a lot of good stuff that can be done online, for example. But there's also a lot of good stuff that professors and students do and that is a lot harder to duplicate remotely. There is a palpable difference between remote interaction, for instance, (via social media et al) and in person.
So the question then becomes: what is it exactly you think college should be fore? Vocational training? We have that already. i would say something more than that.
Less than half of Google's revenue is from search. Youtube is a big part and Hulu. They make money alot of ways - the AOL home page, CBS pay-per-view, many ways. They in fact have dozens of highly successful products and services. See https://investor.google.com/ea...
In all, they are about thirty three billion dollars smarter than me or you. You're pretty good at saying stuff that _sounds_ smart, so clearly you have some real intelligence. The one thing where I see you consistently make yourself sound and act stupid, even though you're not stupid, is your absurd ego where you think you're so much smarter than Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg, and everyone else who has proven they know what the heck they're doing. Your writing makes it clear that you've got some brains, but your brains are completely wasted when you refuse to learn from others' success.
If I was a high school Junior or Senior now and I knew that i wanted to be an iOS developer, I wouldn;t darken the doors of a college campus. There is plenty of material online for teaching yourself software development in general and more specific mobile developement. You've got tons of forums, tutorials, books, the free stanford IOS class for FREE on iTunes, etc etc. Also companies where mobile development is paramount, they aren't on the "only people with degrees need apply" attitude.
"Less than half of Google's revenue is from search."
Okay. I'll grant you YouTube and Hulu were successes. But they were also not something that Google invented or tried to develop in-house. They were already quite successful when Google purchased them. AND, Google was mainly smart enough to leave them alone (except for the "one account for all of Google" debacle, which has caused a huge drop in comments on the site).
So that's about 2/3 of their revenue that come from things other people invented and built up into successful businesses. And it totals 2 whole businesses.
How many other things has Google acquired, fucked up, and then dumped? Like Motorola for just one recent example.
When you take their history as a whole, I stick by my comment: Google makes bad business decisions. Other than those two acquisitions, the VAST majority of things they either bought or developed in-house were major flops.
s/on the site/on YouTube
Motorola Mobility was losing a billion dollars a year before Google came in. To claim Google screwed the company up is ridiculous.
However, as the inventor of the cell phone and a major market leader in earlier years with billions in R&D investment, Motorola had something Google wanted.
Google bought MM for about $7.5B net of cash and accrued losses, then sold the parts they didn't want for about $6B. Bottom line, they paid $1.5B for a patent portfolio with a book value of $5.5B. That's a $4B gain for Google, by flipping a company that was headed toward bankruptcy. Why did Google flip it so quickly? Remember Moto was losing a billion dollars a year. By moving quickly, Google limited the time they were paying Moto's operating expenses.
After ssubtracting the continued operating expenses, Google walks with a bottom line gain of $2 billion.
How did YOU make $2 billion in two years? Yeah, me neither.
Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.'"
You would if you don't think that making money should be a prime goal in life.