Everyday I heard people tell me that a college degree is worthless and the student debt will destroy my life. Im a sophomore at university ($75000 a year) majoring in computer science. What are your guys experiences? What the pros/cons of being self taught / getting a degree? I just want to set my life up and be able to provide for my family

Just doing a degree without analysing if the industry you want to work in has any jobs available is worthless.

Which is why 99% of Arts degrees are worthless - theres only so many jobs available for teaching Arts degrees which is what you end up doing after an Arts degree.

However - if you pick an industry with plenty of employment potential (eg IT) then a degree can be useful. Perhaps not immediately but later on you'll start hitting a pay ceiling if you have no official qualifications.

I paid off my $50,000 NZD student loan in about 9 years - and I don't regret doing a degree. Did I learn most of what I needed on the job? Of course, same as everyone else. Was the degree still useful?

Absolutely - many job adverts require a degree as a filtering mechanism in order to get to the interview stage.

@unsignedint I go to a liberal arts college so my degree will just be in computer science. I want to go into cybersecurity but my university only has one class for that subject. Should I start thinking of another concentration?

@DeepHotel so IIRC cybersecurity is a field that has very few skilled people in it. You might get a basic understanding from a course at your college but actually for cybersecurity I would recommend industry certification instead.

If you take all the programming / networking papers you can from your Computer Science degree you can learn how software works - and thus how to exploit it.

Eventually if you still want to do cybersecurity then I would work towards a CISSP industry certification: https://isc2.org/Certifications/...

If after doing CompSci you actually find software development more fun - great, theres plenty of jobs in that field. Even if you don't - working as a developer while trying to obtain a security certification will give you insight into how systems and people function in the average business (and again you can start thinking about ways to exploit them).

I'm just curious, why did you pick a college so mf expensive? lol

There's 2 colleges I'd go to that are $50k+ and it's Duke or Standford.

Take your time and make a degree. After you loose your pride and dignity you won’t be left with nothing.

Don’t be a fool stay at school.

My degree is worth something. I work with plenty of other professionals who have different degrees (not IT) and I fix their messes all the times. They're great people and they are great at what they do. But still I have competences that they don't. I met a self-taught guy and he was usable but he missed some things that you usually do not learn and he hacked his way around those.
TL DR: a degree has value if you can then get a job in that area but it's not mandatory to work in that area. It's still a plus however (in some areas it's mandatory so consider what you want to do in your life).

As others have mentioned it depends who your aiming to get hired by in the future, I work at a big company and degree students are definitely considered first. My degree really helped me with general learning but you need to do some learning in your own time too to really start adding some meat to your knowledge on some subjects.

I am doing a bechlor degree in Business I am in the last year, I took this business degree by wrong guidence I always wanted to do coding when I was in school but people scared me its difficult not for people poor in maths. I found a mentor who encourage me start it I started self learning coding alongside my Business degree. I learned C in 2months made some projrcts like Library Management System,Car Parking etc. Now I have started learning Maths from of a Computer Science degree I think it will take 1 year to complete maths so that I can start DS&Algorithms for Competitive proframming. I can say from my experience college will help you boost your learning because professors are there to help you but 90% of the time you study yourself. I have self learning through read books and sometimes its hard moments when no real person is around to help you but only internet.

No degree is worth 75k per year if we're speaking US $ and not Zimbabwe $.

The only thing that may be worth it is networking for future nepotism, and then the 75k per year have the purpose of shutting out anyone besides offspring of people who are so rich that 75k is small change for them.

@Fast-Nop I second that best way to gain something from it is make lot’s of friends that you can ask for favor in next 10 years and make sure one of them will be senator or someone important. Make lots of photos with them wasted. Then the life is easy road unless it isn’t 🙂.
Never been there never done that.

Jesus Christ that's so fucking much money

You're personally paying your professor's salary holy fuck dude

@AlgoRythm, @Fast-Nop, @Stuxnet
The reason I picked such an expensive university is because my Dad convinced me that it would be best. He said that because the school has such a "good name" it'll be easy for me to get a good job right out of college. He also said he would help me pay some of my debt but I would feel bad making him pay so much money. I've been debating staying for this year and maybe transfering to a cheaper school next year

@M1sf3t I am a B+/A student so hopefully that will help in the recruitment process. As mentioned before, I think I might want to go into cyber security but I'm not sure yet I don't have any experience in the subject. I love comp sci but I'm having a hard time narrowing down into one field / subject

@unsignedint I will definitely check out the CISSP, Thank you!

@ant0ny That makes sense to me. I've really been trying to do some practice on the side with websites like sololearn and exorcism.io which makes things easy and a lot of the time pretty fun. I only have a year of computer science under my belt so I still kind of beginning but I feel like I am making good progress

@DeepHotel Looks like he didn't understand the use of the "good name". If you don't belong to the right social class, you simply won't be making good networks because you're not supposed to be there, and then it's wasted money.

@DeepHotel a name will only go so far man. And in today's world, a lotta unis are good enough.

Plus you gotta think about the salary you'll be making to pay back the loans. Ik someone who went to a $35k a year uni for 5 years to get their teaching degree. But here's the thing: most teachers here barely make that much a year. So it's dumb to go to a school you'll be spending forever to pay back.

Also, at the end of the day, it's your choice not his. I understand he might help pay for groceries or for your phone or whatever, but it's your life, not his. He gotta understand that.

@Fast-Nop that makes sense. I'd say im around the average social class (maybe a little lower) here. With the time I have remaining, I'll definitely put more focus into networking and making connections. Thank you for the advice!

@Stuxnet that also makes a lot sense. I hear a ton of stories about people drowning in their own student debt and it's pretty scary to hear as a college student. I think my goal for my new school next year is to get find a good technology school around $20k-40k (40k at absolute max). I know that my Dad is just trying to help me set up my future but maybe the tuition at my current school is doing more harm than good

@M1sf3t Sorry if this rant got you a little riled up hahah. I definitely don't want to be in my mid 30s with a clear path in my life/career. One of the reasons I picked computer science is mostly becasue I like knowing how things work (software, certain programs, etc.) I will do my best to narrow my search. Thank you!

@M1sf3t I agree, I'd be stupid for me to waste all this money on this uni if it's not going to be the best one for my future. Sounds like I have a lot of researching ahead of me haha Thank you for all your advice!