What were the consequences of you going to college? Do you think it helped you in life or did it only hold you back?

A bachelor's degree is a ticket into a lot of jobs, no matter what it's in. That doesn't mean you have to go to an expensive school to get one.

Co-worker pretty much put himself through school just going to community colleges. Graduated without debt and I'm sure he makes more than I do (I have a Masters degree from a University).
- While it's hugely lagging, the US higher educational community is slowly accepting that for most people a bachelors degree is nothing more than a quasi-mandatory general purpose professional credential. Many community colleges now offer a couple of 4-year degrees, and many more reputable schools are opening extension campuses and offering remote degrees or hybrid programs that skew strongly towards remote learning.
  
  For 90% of students, there is no specific, identifiable benefit to a traditional college experience, and dear god (most) people need to stop going into mountains of debt for little private schools or out of state publics. I didn't take on any significant debt until law school, and while I noped out of that career path because it's awful if you don't have a passion for either your clients or defeating your opponents, it still paid for itself versus my original plan at 22 to teach high school English. If I'd had 6 figures of undergraduate debt, though, I would have been miserably trying to make lawyerin' work out for me financially.
  
  I will say, contrary to what I see online a lot, that a degree actually is a nice credential to put on a resume, though it's often TERRIBLE value for the money outside the social expectation. It shows that you had the motivation and/or support structure (which is its own inequity vector) to stick with a 4+ year project and pull it off. It should have introduced you to outside people and ideas that could show you'll be more adaptable in the work environment. You will have had to make it through subjects that may not have interested you and provide "deliverables" to a "manager" at an acceptable quality level. You will have been asked to do formal communication, both written and oral. Then, finally, to one degree or another, and whether explicitly or not, you will have received training in critical thinking and justifying arguments with evidence. Even the biggest blowoff freshman comp class will force you through the exercise of writing a thesis and finding quotes from the book to back them up, and even "Rocks for Jocks" has the scientific method as an underpinning for the labs and the information taught.
  
  Given how many people have degrees, it's an easy and not unreasonable filter for HR and hiring managers, though as with anything institutional, it ends up used well beyond its value. If you aren't getting a very good deal to go to a place with a name that will do networking for you, though, there's no practical sense in paying extra for anything beyond two years of CC gen-ed and two more at the nearest public university. If Bumblefuck & Dickwash Wesleyan Presbyterian College (est. 1833 and a half) is the only place you're going to actually manage a degree, then I guess it's worth the debt, but that population seems... small.

Getting a BS in Computer Science was huge towards my success. I had to work while in college due to lack of funds. My job as a programmer paid very little before I got my degree. Even with years of experience, I had a hard time getting a dev job with an employer that paid better without my degree. With the degree, it was significantly easier.

I've heard of stories of folks that "made it" in dev without a degree. I did not have the charisma or whatever other skill they had to do it...

I will say I have quite a few student loans because my scholarships weren't enough (I was an average student at best) and my family made a lot of money but didn't help me so I didn't get other aid I would have normally qualified for. For me, my very well paying job outweighs the student loan payment. My gamble paid off. (It was a fairly safe gamble, but one can never really know in the uncertainty of life.)

However, even in the last few years school has gone up in price A LOT so that may change the calculations for future folks.

I've made a career out of website development, despite not having my degree, but it was a very hard path in the beginning. Things have changed a lot, and it's easier than ever to get an engineering job without a degree, but I used to strongly advise people to get their degree if they want to enter this field. The amount of work I had to put in to build a good enough portfolio to land a corporate job was ridiculous. There were times when I was working 15-17 hours per day, 7 days per week, for months on end, and still broke as fuck. That was after spending years acquiring the skills, and building the connections required to land that work in the first place. The way I see it, you can either go have fun in school for a few years, and then land a bad-ass job at some fortune 500 company, or you can bust your ass for years on end, starving and being broke, while never knowing if it's actually going to pay off or not. In my case it paid off, in many cases it doesn't. Of the two paths, school is the far easier one.
I managed to get into web-dev without a CS degree, but I definitely consider myself one of the lucky ones.

I got a bachelor's in Chemistry, but realized very quickly after graduating that there are precisely zero decent paying jobs for a bachelor's in general chemistry. Literally the only place that even called me back was offering $14/hr to do urinalysis... working the graveyard shift.

I ended up getting a job doing content review as a contractor for the largest video sharing platform (you know the one). A lot of the work was really monotonous, mostly just copying and pasting stuff. We had a quota that once we hit, we could stop working (and still be paid a full day). I could already hit the quota in around 3-4 hours, but I realized if I didn't have to copy/paste, I could cut that down to only 1-2 hours.

So, in my spare time at work I ended up learning JavaScript and making a chrome extension to do just that. I showed my bosses and they ended up putting me in a full time programming position.

I don't use my chemistry degree at all, but my math minor definitely comes in handy.

It changed my life. I encountered so many new ideas that challenged my upbringing. I was also able to travel through exchange programs.

I hate recommending to people that they should put themselves into crippling debt for a college education. Unfortunately, I don't know another way to rigorously challenge your beliefs, ideas and skills outside of college. You have to be somewhat special to read diversely and vociferously to do that.

I am a huge advocate of formal education, and I think there is some undefinable benefit to "going away to college," but in general I would say never, ever go into more than the absolute minimum of debt (based on your situation) for a bachelors degree. If you engage with the material and your professors and your classmates, you can get the real benefits a university degree actually provides.

I'd also say that while there is a certain danger in getting trapped in musty old college attitudes about what is "worth" studying, going the other way there is at least as big a risk in falling into the autodidact traps of either having no breadth of exposure or, god forbid, not having someone guide you through and out of some crazy rabbit holes (cough-ayn-rand-cough).

Went to school for environmental engineering almost twenty years ago and graduated with one of the first accredited degrees in the field.

For the last twenty years I've traveled the country helping clean up the environment or prevent land from being further contaminated. Yeah the system is fucked up, lawyers and politicians and society don't value the environment over a quick buck. But I've done some good as opposed to wave a sign around at a protest.

Built up enough experience that I'm now part of a specialized team with the EPA that goes to all states and territories to help with case development on complicated or high profile sites that states and regions don't have the resources to handle.

Doing exactly what I wanted to do for my career, and directly because I got a good education that opened the doors to do it. I make a decent salary and have a skillset that makes employment easy and secure.

Thank you for what you do for all of us!

it absolutely helped me land my first job in a better position than I would have gotten otherwise. A degree was a prerequisite in my industry, that has since changed, but there was no way I couldn’t get the degree at the time.

It was a shit job, but it still got my foot in the door.

no employer gave a flying F about my education after my first job other than ticking the box by “has degree”.

I had a very similar experience. I had a degree, didn't do anything with it. Got a cheap certificate and it got me into a good admin job. Since then I've done absolutely nothing to do with my actual degree but it works great when applying for internal positions for upward mobility because I check the "has degree" box.

That being said, I absolutely loved my college/university experience and wouldn't trade it for the world. While I don't think anything that I learned in the curriculum helped me significantly, everything else I learned has.

It helped massively. Before I was a web frontend Dev and despite me trying to get more waried work they didn't want me to learn new stuff because I was very good at what I did. So no possibility for my for any better job.

After I got into the automobile industry worked as a programmer, integrator and had so many opportunities for different career paths. I went on business trips to the US and Korea, found love here and moved. Now I'm partially in management and make so much more money which would all not be possible without going to university (in Sweden).

My masters degree in statistics has been instrumental in my job, both in getting the job and using the skills I learned on a daily basis.

My degree 100% improved my life and opened doors for me that I wouldn't even have known about without it.

What do you do?
- I'm a data scientist for a mid-size finance company.

Tldr, get a basic associates degree. Do more later if it will prove advantageous.

My perspective is from living in the US.

It's always worth going to a local community college, even if you have no idea what you want to do, and taking basic classes (writing, speech, etc.). You can come out with a general associates degree without any specialization, low cost, and learn a ton of skills that are broadly applicable in any profession. And if you decide to get a specialized degree later, those classes should transfer in, saving you time and money in the more advanced/specific degree. But there are currently lots of jobs that don't require a specific degree, or any degree at all.

I personally feel like much of my time in college was wasted. I spent 6 years in college (4 is typical) pursuing degrees because I felt pressured into going to college, rather than working some basic jobs, saving money, and figuring out what I wanted in life. I was fortunate to come out without debt (thanks to some fortunate scholarships and hard work), but also with no money, a 2-6 year lag behind all my friends, and a degree with very little earning potential that I've ended up never using. I was fortunate enough to stumble into a great career where we do look at what degree someone had on their resume, but only as a point of conversation - it's fun to see what studies someone had, and ask them to share what they learned. For the job, we don't care what the degree is or if they even have one.

I went to university, and I currently work at university. Unless you know what you want to do, and that absolutely requires a degree, and you are 100% certain to get a job in that field, then go to university.

Otherwise, go learn a trade and join a union. By the time your friends are graduating college, you'll already be well established in your career and making much more than they likely will straight out of school.

The income ceiling is lower without a degree, but you get there much faster, have great benefits, and get to retire a lot earlier.

Also, there is nothing saying that you can't eventually go to university and get a degree.

That might be true in the US, but that is certainly untrue in other parts of the world, where college/university is way cheaper/free and the pay difference a degree makes can be huge.

I live in Germany and I think it almost always pays off to ge to university, at least if you are interested in anything even close to MINT.
And even in non MINT areas a higher degree opens many doors that otherwise are really hard to get into.
Otherwise, go learn a trade and join a union.

My kid fell for this. They promise you'll get paid while you learn. What they don't tell you is that IF you manage to pass the entrance exam (he did) you get put on a list for open apprenticeship positions, waiting to be called in at any moment. While you're on that list you don't get paid. If you do get a spot, contracts only last a couple of months. Then you go back on the list. Rinse and repeat. And the longer you've been in the union the higher up you get placed on the list. So the older members get placed before the newer ones no matter what number they were in line. This "join a trade" push is similar to the charter school scam, siphoning up state and federal training funds without delivering results.
I think this is a bad take.

First of all, there are very few guarantees in life.

Second of all, I think society’s way of expecting 18 year olds to know what they want to do with their lives is not realistic. Going to a university and meeting and interacting with new people you haven’t just spent the last decade with can help shape what those ideas for the future should be.

Learning a trade and joining a union is a great option for some, but I think it takes a special type of person (the same way it takes a special type of person to work with kids, or in the medical space, or with technology). I would never discount that as an option, but certainly not encourage 18 year olds to default to that either

My bachelor's was pretty useless, but it was the key to getting my much more useful masters degree.

What major? I don't think my masters has ever directly benefited my career (maybe it helped my ability to do my job).

I graduated university with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. It was probably the most difficult thing I've done in my life but I learned a lot, not only about biology, but critical thinking and debating ideas.

I had a hard time finding a job with such a general degree so unfortunately I needed to to back to college for a 2 year diploma necessary for a licenced job. College was a breeze after university.

I eventually quit that licenced job and now work a basic job in manufacturing that requires only a high school education. It's the most money I've ever made despite it being the easiest. Figure that out (hint: I'm in a union now).

Despite not really needing my education for my job, I still feel like it has drastically improved my life. Ever since university, learning new things has been easy and calling out bullshit even easier.

Both. I studied journalism (strike 1) and graduated in 2008 (strike 2). I chose "print" as my option (strike 3).

Consequences: never worked a day in journalism in my life. Judging by the state of journalism globally in 2024, I can't say that I mind. Having "a" degree is still a necessity for most non-menial jobs, so in that regard it always came in handy. Cost of the education wasn't through the roof, didn't have to take on any loans or such. To this day my only debt ever is my mortgage to the bank, looking to keep it that way.

For me, I wouldn’t say it held me back, but the benefits were not direct either. There was never the, I got x job as a result of y degree. My path was a bit more non traditional than most, but it’s my path.

For context, I just turned 40 a few weeks ago.

I went to community college after high school for finance because I was good at math and wanted to make a lot of money. I made it through, got an associates degree and went to a 4 year university after to finish. I dropped out after a semester or two because I had a lot of stuff going on in my life.

I ended up getting new jobs and eventually starting a business doing web dev and digital marketing many years later. I decided I wanted to finish the degree for no reason other than I felt like I was the type of person who should have a degree, so I did.

Fast forward 5 years and I’m tired of the business. I decide I want to sell it and get a masters degree in cybersecurity. In order to do that, I need to take another course first - it’s essentially a condensed cs degree. I learned a ton, got into the masters program and finished it.

The problem now is that I kind of fell for the schools marketing. It’s not easy to find a job in cybersecurity. And I’m also finding that being a cybersecurity engineer or a pen tester or a soc analyst or any of these “desirable” jobs are not really that interesting to me. After I sold the business, I found a direction, career wise, that I like. It’s in a technical space but not as an engineer and not in cybersecurity. And I think I’m ok with that. Getting my masters, I learned a lot, technically.

So to answer the original question, I don’t think either of the degrees helped me in a traditional sense, but they overall did more good than ham by a lot. Given the chance to do it again, maybe I would study something different, but I wouldn’t skip either of the degrees, even if I’m not directly using the skills today

My undergraduate education was absolutely invaluable to setting me up on the path I'm on today. In part because of the academics, but also because of the opportunities I was afforded through internships and organizations which have morphed into a career. My best friends to this day came from those experiences. It gave me an opportunity to learn about myself, make some mistakes that thankfully didn't set me back too far, and the flexibility to give me room to grow into who I am today.

My graduate education on the other hand was simply a checkbox for job recruiters. I did the bare minimum to get the grades I needed, but my heart wasn't in it. I figure the hiring manager will see the benefits of my on the job training, and HR will use my degree in their matrix to decide what salary I'm worth.

I dropped out 20 years ago and I've done alright but have grown into a management role and now it is very hard to move into other management roles without a degree. I am considering going back to school to finish it.

College completely expanded my understanding of the world. It was an amazing experience all-around. I didn't go straight to university though. I was a poor kid who had some behavioral problems in highschool, so I went to community college first, and then university.

My world view was pretty narrow growing up both in a world without internet, and as a child of fundamentalist Christians. My cultural anthropology class shattered so many paradigms that I was wrestling with my core identity for months. The coolest thing about college was learning about all the things that I had no idea even existed. We do not know what we don't know. Learning of a hundred different possible life-paths that I was completely ignorant of was an enriching experience.

Attending classes in person was great preparation for the working world, and it plugged me into a social network of like-minded people, so there was never a weekend that I didn't have something fun to do. I only made a couple lifelong connections in college, but the information and education I obtained was invaluable.

I had to support myself and put myself through school, working the entire time I was a student. I never did graduate despite having more units than needed to graduate due to them changing the curriculum every time I had to quit for a while to focus on not starving. But I'm still glad I put in all that effort and obtained an education. It has helped me throughout my life, and probably a little with my career too.

It reinforced the idea that I love learning. I also reinforced the idea that I don't learn well by sitting in a lecture hall and listening to people talk to me.

Hell no. Go to school for welding or HVAC or plumbing or something else. Where you can not spend a crippling amount of money and have debt for the next 60 years.

How much do HVAC installers and welders make?
- according to this site the average welder makes over $47,000 per year in the United States and according to this site the average HVAC technician makes over $56,000 a year.

I am somewhat reluctant to say it, but if you get into a top-branded school, it will absolutely help you as it will open doors that otherwise would be closed. People will look at you differently, expect from your differently, and you'll expect from yourself differently.

OTH, look at Bill Gate, Steve Job, Michael Dell, etc.; extraordinary people will be extraordinary given the right circumstances, ideas, and perseverance.

Also given a lot of money and not having to worry about bills can help quite a lot with creativity.

I went to school for engineering ( wanted to R&D green tech), due to a transfer program mix up I never completed my degree. However even without a degree I still landed in a field that works for me and am doing okay. I suspect I would have been in a substantially worse life position if I continued college due to:

Finances: I make about as much as I would as an engineer and tuition would've broken me.

Job: as much as I would've loved it, I think I peaked with the environment I work in now as it's reasonably low stress and taking your time is paramount over hard work crunch and massive hour commitments.

I want to believe it helped me but I don't really think it did. I enrolled into a small and generally not famous university in my country which decreases your chances of employment. I worked retail and rarely went to classes, I was majoring in Computer Science. I had 0 college debt and I also got a car.

After graduating with an average GPA I thankfully got into an internship for Mobile Development thanks to a friend of mine. Since then I've learnt lots of things on the jobs and I still work as a Mobile App Dev. No one asked me about my degree or university because I can deliver fairly high quality apps.

Of course my chances of getting into FAANGs or big name companies is slim compared to people who graduated top of their class in a top university, but I'm content with where my career is currently heading.

The consequences of me going was I had to pay my bill still after I dropped that shit, went full time software development.

I went to college, got a bachelor's, and called it a day. I went right into the workforce after that. My first job out of college was a stepping stone, but it did eventually lead me to getting a much more favorable job.

College also expanded my world view and allowed me to meet a very diverse body of people. I made a lot of lifelong friendships there, and had the space to fully find myself. One of the big reasons conservatives rail so much against education is because they know it makes people more liberal.

It definitely helped my life with new ideas, good friends and a better career. It’s also free in my country, and you actually get paid to go there, so it was never a difficult decision.

I learned so much about the world in college. "But you can learn a lot on the Internet and from life experience." Yes, you can, but you are more likely to stay in your bubble that way. College forced me to meet and interact with people from around the world. I learned about the impact of colonialism in Africa from an Eritrean immigrant. I dodged protestors of every sort at the Campus Center. I discovered that I was an excellent writer thanks to mentorship from an English department grad student. I partied and had a few beers between classes with a woman from Ukraine who wanted to take what she learned and bring it home to help her people. I flirted with a woman who was leaving later that summer to do missionary work. I met my eventual wife - a girl from ultra-manicured, tightly planned suburbia who fell hard for a country boy.

I learned how to think more robustly then I ever had before. I had all of my beliefs challenged. I discovered that I was impressively talented in many ways while being completely inept in others.

I went in a boy with a limited world view, and I left a young man who better understood how much he did not know about the world

I attended a state school. This was years ago, but I left with no loans while my peers were piling on debt at private colleges. My education was not elitist, but it was elite thanks to everyone around me.

The gap between college and non college educated in the US is the non college educated vote for Trump in a 4to1 proportion. Oh also make in average $20K less, a year, than college educated people.

I don't think I would be as successful if I didn't have my degree, but I don't use it and I'm still in a decent amount of debt for it. I recommend everyone to get at least a bachelor's degree, but don't worry about going to some prestigious school, and certainly don't accrue any debt in the process.

I got a bachelor's in Chemistry, but I realized very quickly after graduating that there are precisely zero decent paying jobs for a bachelor's degree in chemistry. The only place I even got a callback from was an overnight urinalysis lab offering me $14/hr.

I've since managed to get into web development, and would consider myself pretty successful. I don't use my chem degree, but my math minor certainly comes in handy.

I went to a 2 year technical college, gained an airframe and powerplant license. I've worked as an aircraft mechanic since 1998, the longest I've been without work was a month in 2008. It doesn't pay as much as most people think but I've made a decent living worst part of the job was working inside the fuel tank of a Airbus A320.

Well it made me an engineer which was a really mixed bag. It also led to me transitioning at 20 and learning social skills which was very good.

So yeah it was pretty good for me. It’s why I can afford rent

Wish I was a bit more careful choosing my major. Shouldn't have taken nearly as many "fun" classes.

I'm in college right now, so it might not be as relevant as others who have graduated and used their degrees (or not), but I would say it really depends. College obviously is expensive, and depending on the degree you go for as well as what it's for can help or do nothing. For example, if your going to do power line work, you dont really need a degree unless your the person planning the project or leading everyone in the task. However, if you want to do welding or mechanic work on machines, you do need a degree and it will help you, not only in getting the job and better pay, but also in minor experience before you even start working.

It was absolutely a net benefit. My degree, just having it, got me into my last 3 jobs. My salary last year was 110k, 30% more than my dad ever made, and more than anyone in my family as far as I understand.