alt Hacker NewsThis is probably the biggest value from going to college, or at least it was - making those connections. I got my first job from a college connection, and my second one as well. I'm not sure how useful the actual classes were, or the degree - my first job certainly didn't require one, and the second one would have likely waived the requirement for one since I was already employed as a software engineer.
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> This is probably the biggest value from going to college ...
It's a popular argument that doesn't make it's point very explicitly nor offer any support for it, but the main point is that college education itself has no value. That mode of expression is an old technique that people unintentionally use when they repeat the argument: By not being explicit about the thesis or any support for it, it's impossible to address - the thesis is invisible to many. (In college, you learn you have to explicitly write your thesis and your support for it.)
Necessary to it is the argument, again implicit, that the only value in the world is income. Once you see that explicitly written out, you know it's obviously absurd. (It's absurd for another reason too: knowledge and intellectual skill are great aids to income.)
People on HN highly value knowledge and cognitive skill. They spend significant time on gaining it, including right here. How much would they value years to dedicate to the very best of those things, learning from each of the very best humans and ideas from any time or place, guided and advised by other people who have spent their lifetime studying each person or idea, and who can introduce you to the best of it and to the most powerful counter-arguments, flaws, and alternatives. It sounds like a fantasy, but it's real.
There are powerful people who don't like those thinkers and ideas, because they undermine power. So they devalue them, ostracize them, defund them, ban them - all to stop you from reading them. Those must be powerful ideas.
To some degree (no pun intended), it depends on which college you attend. I went to Random Public University; my university contacts were the kind of people who go to that kind of university. If you went to Harvard/MIT/Caltech, your contacts are the kind of people who go to those places. Those are not equivalent groups.