Do you find college/university worth it all?

This is a question that largely depends on many factors, such as family situations, scholarship options, the area you live in,etc.

Do you find college/university to be worth it? Since most of you seem to be attending, I just wanted to know how you feel about it. You go to college and work hard while accumulating loans while someone out of college works with what they got from high school and tries to build up their resume with experience rather than degrees. They'll be earning money and might possibly still receive aid from their parents. In the end you'll probably get higher pay, but have to spend x amount every month for x number of years to pay off your loans, and a lot of times it's not an amount to particularly scoff at. Of course, this is the point where it really depends on the person. If you're in a highly competitive field that earns high pay, then in the end you'd probably see the rewards of your efforts sooner. But if you have a relatively decent paying profession without much competition, do you think it'd be worth it?

Of course this isn't even counting on the possibility that you fail a course without getting money back. A lot of people like to think this won't happen to one that works diligently, but there are plenty of cases where hard workers simply can't pull all of the weight and really do try hard just to end up failing a course, and it's really nothing to be too ashamed of considering college is (supposed) to be difficult.

To you, do you find it worth it? What are your reasons?

I think it's a great experience but whether it's worth it or not depends largely on what you do with your time while you're there. I didn't take full advantage of the opportunities so I can't say it's totally worth it for me.

Oh right, for some people the social aspect of it alone makes it worth it, along with possible connections they make while in college via internships and stuff. Forgot to include stuff like that in the OP. I guess whatever makes it important to people can just be listed.

Not at all. Never have. The only reason I'm here is to get out and make money. If I knew a shortcut, I would skip this whole nonsense.

I have heard of people here who have changed their course repeatedly just to stay around in university. The social aspect is an overwhelmingly massive part of the decision process when deciding to go to uni'. It really is all about making the most of your time though (not that there's any pressure on you to do so), being anti-social in college/university is only worth it if you have others to be anti-social with if that makes any sense.

Exams and that can get a tad stressful, but only when you're unprepared for it. In terms of actual learning, very little you learn can't be learnt elsewhere for cheaper/free but what you do learn that can't be learnt elsewhere is probably the most important stuff IMO.

Absolutely not.

After struggling through my second year and barely winning an intense mental battle with myself, I finally built up the courage to leave. It wasn't pretty, and it surely wasn't well-received by anyone. Do I regret going? Yes and no. If I hadn't attended at all, I would have never known for sure. This way I can say "absolutely." I do, however, regret how much this nonsense cost me and the pain I caused the people around me because of it. I will never look back. I'm paving my own way to the life I want now, and I'm happier for it. Do I live a life everyone would be happy with? Surely not, but I am happy.

Regarding the issue with money. My University pays me to attend it. It is still not worth it. Only a minimal amount of information you learn from classes will be retained. Most of the time will be spent memorizing a textbook that has little to no actual real life value or relevance to the job market. College will teach you how to study a body of information for possible use, however the method of testing is rudimentary and mostly consists of regurgitation. The first year was exciting, the second year was workable, the third year was tiresome, and this year is skeptical. When you entire a high level course, you expect something different from an entry level course. Perhaps some higher level mental requirement of prowess, however I have not witnessed this within my own major and with most of the courses I have taken.

For example, in a graduate level course I am currently taking which involves bioreactors and using stoichiometry to predict / optimize reactants to products, the test consisted of problems straight from the homework or the problem set. In real life application, the problems presented in the textbook will not be copy-paste situations all the time. Colleges do not test for the realistic application of the courses which they concern, but rather stay isolated to the surrealistic textbook nature that has hard-found meaning when it comes to the day-to-day actions of a real life occupational worker in the respective industry.

Research opportunities should reveal that science performed at the level of graduation will constitute nothing more than being a low-pay pipette hand, a minimalist calculator, and a paper pusher. Very rarely will grand-scale hypothesis be designed by an undergraduate and very rarely will strong lab skills be developed as such a small amount of time is given to teach proper technique. The professors themselves usually isolate themselves from actual hands-on work with their research and as a result their abilities have degraded. Most of the work is relegated to paid technicians and graduate students who are being salaried to perform day to day operations & too busy juggling multiple projects to give the adequate amount of concern to developing the abilities of the undergraduate. Therefore most experiment, even in a self-pursued experiment will be fraught with problems and errors that would nullify the merit of the experiment and will instead most likely be chalked up to nothing more than an act of human self-improvement.

If you have some notion of realism, then you will realize that university bureaucracy is rather surreal. The deeper you go, the more you see professors squabbling over stolen research, competition to get grants from similar companies, and backstabbing that occurs over common funds. On a similar note, the more you try to genuinely learn as a student and try to recall information from memory about prior subjects, the more you realize you have forgotten on what you have invested many thousands of dollars on and it should be immensely frustrating as the University and other institutions do not care about how much knowledge you have retained upon leaving. Rather they are more invested in how much income you will be able to bring back. After all, professors in the field of science are often given tenure based on how much research funding they can fetch back for the University. Save for a few professors that may win notable awards and must be recognized for their intellectual prowess, lest the institution be scorned for short-changing the idealism of academics.

Tl;dr: I live close to my school, money is not a problem, I get decent grades, I have had a decent job and am doing research, I have socialized, All in all it was not worth it in my honest opinion. I graduate in two months. Oh and not to get it twisted. I love my school, I think it was the best school for me. The educational system is just screwed up and has been horrendously brutalized by social / economic expectations.

In Brazil the better universities are the public ones so there is quite a lot of competition to get into them. You do get all your years for free after.
In Brazil you would normally go to the university in your region so you wouldn't necessarily be moving out from your parents (though it is the case for students who don't live in the capital) so you don't have the same student life experience.
I'd say it's worth it if you have a good university and you are studying something you like. I retained a lot of what I learned in 3.5 years of uni in Brazil and I don't regret it one bit.


In France they have 2 years of no social life with their "préparatoires" where they study like crazy to get into the best "écoles", after that they go into the most prestigious they can't get in (most of the times regardless if it's the area of engineering they want) and the prestige of the "école" goes a long way in telling people hiring you your worth in France.
Écoles have a very VERY nice student life, much different from universities in Brazil since there are much less students (my école here has about 300 people for the 3 years) and after they do their préparatoires they just don't demand as much from their students.
The system forms generally competent people but I feel they have their subjects in way too few classes. There's almost no time in classes to do exercises or to focus on applications, recent news or anything paralel to the course (compared to Brazil anyway).

Note that my vision is biased of course to the universities/écoles I've been to and only to engineering courses.


Finally, I think the university experience was very good for me. It made me feel good about what I like (both in academical terms and others like animes and other weird stuff), people tend to accept you for what you are much more (at least in the geeky environment of engineering) and it led me to grow a lot both as an engineer and as a person.

Not really. Universities are a waste of time, and what you can learn in universities, you can easily sit down at a public library and use their resources to learn. Universities are frustrating to me, because there are some classes that I feel are pointless because they just put it in there to waste your time and eat away at your money. Though I am enrolled in a university, and am currently working at it for my degree, I do hate some of the bullsh`it I have to go through. I'm also doing this just so I can make more money later on in life. I do not want to live in a dump of an apartment while working retail for the rest of my life, and that's my reasoning for why I go to college. That and I want to know more about things that I am interested in: computers.

Though once again, I can also sit down and just research everything through means of books and internet.

About the arguments of "you can just sit down at a library and learn", either you have very badly taught courses, very crowded rooms or too few hours of classes for a subject. A good teacher will take you very far on a subject much faster and better than you can learn just by reading a book. There is a reason pedagogy exists.

I don't really know how it is on the US though, in my university in Brazil it's possible to have both good and bad teachers (with a better or worse ratio depending which course you are taking), but I have been generally happy with the teachers I got.

About the arguments of "you can just sit down at a library and learn", either you have very badly taught courses, very crowded rooms or too few hours of classes for a subject. A good teacher will take you very far on a subject much faster and better than you can learn just by reading a book. There is a reason pedagogy exists.

I don't really know how it is on the US though, in my university in Brazil it's possible to have both good and bad teachers (with a better or worse ratio depending which course you are taking), but I have been generally happy with the teachers I got.

It does depend on a lot of factors, you're correct. However, this more-so applies to general concentration courses, such as ones that does not pertain to your major. Writing, English, Business Communications (lolResumes), etc. The only class that was outside of my major that I thought was filled with information was Economics, and even then, most of the studying was . . . at home.

In most of my computer classes, everything's at a normal pace. The only classes that I felt I was very challenged in were programming courses and networking courses, because I started out with very little to no knowledge on the subject, and had to learn from scratch. Those classes were major exceptions.

About the arguments of "you can just sit down at a library and learn", either you have very badly taught courses, very crowded rooms or too few hours of classes for a subject. A good teacher will take you very far on a subject much faster and better than you can learn just by reading a book. There is a reason pedagogy exists.

Differs based on individual learning styles.

Not there yet.

Benefits of going to college:
- Degree (consequently, higher paying job)
- Knowledge (although much of it can be gained outside of university, with some determination)
- Social interaction (because the thought of only interacting with coworkers and former high school classmates depresses me)
- Connections

Costs of going to college:
- Tuition and fees (so happens my parents can cover it for now, but financial aid would've helped otherwise)
- Four years of wages
- Four years of work experience (although I do intend to pursue research opportunities during my college years, or something)

The price is steep but the exposure to all different kinds of people and ideas is essentially life as I know it and worth anything to me, even beyond the academic gains and the associated slip of paper.

I hope it isn't as bad as you all make it out to be. How else can I be expected to get a well paying job without going to College?

It's pretty much a have to if I want to live alone.

i dont know whether its worth it or not but im deciding to stop my education once i get my diploma(polytechnic).

and it surely wasn't well-received by anyone.

What did your mom and sister think?

I hope it isn't as bad as you all make it out to be.

How else can I be expected to get a well paying job without going to College?

It's pretty much a have to if I want to live alone.

You have a lot to learn about the world mah boy. Though since you want to be a professional translator (If I am remembering correctly) than a degree would help you a lot, but there are still other ways.


I've said this before in another thread like this so I'll say it again, no. The experience can be fun, but it's not worth thousands of dollars, not even worth it if you get in for free or you have a ton of money to blow on whatever you want.

Not there yet, but I say no.

My sister has her teaching degree, and is probably in 100k debt due to teaching overseas, added to the school loans she needs to pay off. With the internet becoming what it is today, you can make just as much, if not more than someone with 4+ years of college/uni.

I can't be what I want to be without going to college... so... it's kinda worth it, yes. Law school here is public and free, so it doesn't really matter in terms of money. Plus, unis here tend to be a f'ucking mess. Bureaucracy is chaotic and it always feels like they're shaping you up to what life is, which really pays up later on haha.

All in all, almost every major I can think of is in the program of my public university so there's nothing you can argue against going there to learn for free.

Interesting question, and I'm surprised to see so many people hating on college because, ultimately, all they care about it whatever gets them the job they want with the salary they desire, yet I'm sure many people here posted on that thread a few months/years back that talked about enjoying universities for the educational aspect of the material presented. What I recall from that thread (which basically said that, if money and the future wasn't an issue, would you still go to college/university solely for the learning aspect) was that everyone pretty much said "yes" to question posed. Yet now everyone's saying pineapple college, go to the public library?

I love my university and find it completely worth it. Perhaps I'm biased because I came out as an openly gay male by building friendships and networking with people at school, but then again, that's a huge change in my life that wouldn't have happened had I stayed in my hometown (well, it probably would have happened eventually, but not as quickly or smoothly). My school has provided me with wonderful experiences I couldn't find elsewhere (sitting behind President Barack Obama when he came and delivered a speech, protesting these past 6 weeks at the capitol in the eyes of the world), which, I suppose, are once again biased as they're individual and unique to my university. But I suppose that's just the point - college/university is a place to utilize the resources available to do and experience great things. I've seen a lot of comments in this thread about paving one's own life without higher education, and I totally believe in those people and know they will have wonderfully, happy, successful and fulfilling lives. But when I sit down and look at what I have accomplished - and will over these next two years - and try and see how it could have happened to the same degree without being at the university, I can't imagine it would have happened. I have the ambition, drive, know-how, etc., to do everything I've done on my own, but it's that much harder when you're doing it by yourself as opposed to going through the channels provided in the setting of academia.

And that's not even discussing the learning aspect. Again, I'm sure it's possible to learn everything from public libraries and other sources on one's own time and volition. But I personally like the discipline afforded by knowing I have to go to these classes at these times on these days, have this work to do, and have these exams/projects to showcase my knowledge and therefore serve as a good goal within a reasonable time frame for me to accomplish those tasks. How many people can safely say they can personally set up - and stick to - a schedule like that if learning material from public library textbooks? I'm sure there are plenty who can, but is it more than those on a university schedule?

Who knows, and who really cares. What matters in the end is finding what works for you, and if the structure of academia is not conducive to your learning styles or will not prepare you as quickly or fully as you could prepare yourself for a job, if that's the only reason you're going to school, then do it yourself, or by whatever other means are best. All in all, academia serves as a wonderful guide for those who would like the assistance, as well as a phenomenal place of a plethora of opportunities from internships to networking to socializing and building experiences, etc.

P.s. - this is all not to say that people who go to academia are unable to "deal with real life" and "live in the real world" and "do things by themselves." There are definitely some who can't do those things, and for them higher education is a true assistant in transitioning them from high school to real life, but the majority of people I know at my university, myself included, are all capable adults who utilize our school as a way to accomplish MORE. By having the discipline of a set academic schedule, it becomes easier to not have to do that all that planning and accountability ourselves, which allows for more time to pursure extracurricular activities and opportunities, thus still building exemplary resumes, CVs, and worldly people.

In Brazil the better universities are the public ones so there is quite a lot of competition to get into them. You do get all your years for free after.
In Brazil you would normally go to the university in your region so you wouldn't necessarily be moving out from your parents (though it is the case for students who don't live in the capital) so you don't have the same student life experience.
I'd say it's worth it if you have a good university and you are studying something you like. I retained a lot of what I learned in 3.5 years of uni in Brazil and I don't regret it one bit.

This. In here, at least where i live. Universities are a must. It's not really that easy to get a job, so, you must accumulate a lot of references, capacities and knowledge to surpass the others that are also attempting the same job.
Everything always works like a competition. And everything counts to your professional growth.

Getting as a reference people that are in the age of just getting out of High School and going to colleges, the majority works like this where i live. You keep studying hard, in your last school year, you do an exam with all the subject from your last 3 years, and you have to enter some sort of a competition with the score you got with that exam with your state, or even with the whole country.

There's some sort of a ranking, that only the ones with the best scores are selected, each university classroom of the specific subject has a number x of students, these must be from the first, to x place in such ranking. If you don't get approved, what happens to many people, you can either wait a year to attempt getting into it, or attempt a paid college, which is much easier to get in, but it's not much different to get out and what to learn.

Due to these public universities being seen as "prizes" for the ones who studied most, when getting a job, they tend to prefer to contact someone who graduated in a public university than the ones who graduated in a paid one. Just because of the fact you have to get past a huge competition to get selected to get in, and they tend to see that the ones who get into a public university are better options than the others. Not necessarly true, but it's something that was built with the population and is not really easy to take off.

It gotta be pretty different from here, because it's actually pretty rare to see someone in the age to attempt getting into one for the first time, whose dream isn't to get out of the school and get into the university, which seems to be much better. And it actually is, at least according to the majority that i know. Maybe because of the fact you feel accomplished for getting into one because of the difficulty or any other reason.

I can't really say anything for sure because i haven't been in one, i'm in the last school year and am attempting to get into one, because of such competition, students are mostly obligated to study too much, and to learn to retain every single knowledge passed on by teachers, especially where i live, that the competition is a little worse this year, since the spots were split up into different exams for the public university to get adapted to the newest exam form. I can only attempt into 45% of the spots, which makes me feel obligated to get into at least 15th place from like 2x places to get in.

It's really hard, and that's why people tend to study and to put a ridiculously high effort into getting into one of those, to get an easier life after it. I've never seen something you can learn as useless. That's why i think it's completely worth it.