Education, without the degree

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/09/21/education-without-the-degree/

“You don’t have to go to college.”

This is the sincere advice I’ve started giving to parents and teens about going to a four-year, residential, selective college, which has become expensive, wasteful, and hard to justify. I’ve lived next to Boston’s college campuses for almost 20 years, and statistics show many of the students I’ve met are headed to debt and disappointment. Fortunately, the technology revolution is providing new ways to become highly educated, and “going to college” is no longer mandatory for so many who believe that it is.

Three things inform my opinion about the declining value of a college degree. First, my industry, computer science, has been a pioneer in breaking the link between college and employment. Second, I have spent 20+ years consuming a wide variety of low-cost, high-quality college classes in my spare time. Third, I spent a year as Chief Technology Officer at a college admissions startup, where I learned a lot about the winners and losers in the great game of higher education.

Getting most jobs in computer science once required a college degree, and in 1996, I wouldn’t have gotten my start without one. But things are very different now. In the past 15 years, I’ve never asked about a college degree as an interviewer or been asked about one as an interviewee. The focus now is on experience, certifications, and available portfolio work. It is now common to give coding examinations during the interview process, and they can be quite difficult. This shift away from degrees has resulted in many people entering the field who did not study computer science in college, including my wife.

Yes, many American colleges offer good computer science programs. For instance, I am confident that a great school like Boston University can turn you into a decent programmer. But at $50,000 a year in tuition, that’s about $85 per classroom hour for your classes, which balloons to about $140 per hour if you borrow the money at 6 percent interest and pay it off over twenty years, which is now common. Even if the computer courses are great, do you want to still be paying for them when you’re 35? Why not take the incredible free computer science courses online at Cambridge-based edX? They’re probably of higher quality.

EdX is one of many ways to obtain computer science skills. There are other programs, an endless array of computer certifications, and public domain projects to get involved in to get practical experience.

I recognize that many fields still require degrees, but that is slowly changing as online learning and certificates gain acceptance. We are already seeing hybrid online-offline programs appearing at traditional schools, such as MIT’s “Micromaster’s” program, where you can take classes online and then go to campus to take a comprehensive examination.

Degrees, of course, won’t vanish. They will change into something more flexible, less expensive, less in-person, and more relevant to employment. More fields will go the way of computer science, asking you to show what you have learned, rather than where you went to school.

In response to my arguments about certifications instead of degrees, parents tell me that they want their children to be well-rounded students, rather than just get training for a job. I agree wholeheartedly! We need our workers to be enlightened citizens. I tell them there are many ways to learn the material contained in the typical bachelor of arts degree.

For example, over the past twenty years, I have listened to more than eighty classes from The Great Courses on a wide variety of subjects. There are no assignments or exams, but the lecturers are highly regarded college professors who are masters of their craft. They have had a bigger impact on my life than the professors I had when I was in school. Yet, all these classes have cost me less than $2,000, though the lecture time would fill a decade of college instruction.




College professors and administrators would jump in here, and say the interaction with other students and professors, as well as graded assignments, make their methods more valuable. They’re probably right! But is their model worth literally 100 times the cost for every class in a college degree? Not to me. I’d definitely consider a class or two on a college campus if it was what I needed. A degree? Never again.

You can also mix methods. I sometimes say to a teenager: if you like a subject, such as history, why not watch some high-quality, inexpensive, college-level courses about history for several months at night? If you love it, great! Maybe a year of college after that. If you don’t love it, wouldn’t it be great to find that out without spending $50,000 for your freshman year at BU, leaving you sitting in your adviser’s office, desperately trying to figure out what else to study? A traditional, four-year college degree is now too expensive for big mistakes.

When you’re ready to take classes on campus, why not try a great option at significantly less cost, such as the Harvard Extension School? Anyone can start taking classes there, and the quality is excellent. Many great colleges now offer similar flexible programs, with no commitment, online components, and far lower costs. You don’t get the same diploma or status as the traditional degree from that college, but your risks are vastly reduced while you are gaining the knowledge you need.

In light of all these options, it’s hard to justify “going to college” in the same way it’s been done for years, especially at what it costs now. If it’s a great education you want, go get it! Don’t worry about the degree.

Ed Lyons

Ed Lyons

Ed Lyons is a computer programmer and a writer and lots of other things. Read his past columns here.