Discussion about this post

User's avatar
mathew's avatar

I did two years at the local community college while living at home. Then I transferred to UCSB (still living at home) with an hour commute. Got a degree in business economics with focus in accounting

Going to community college first really let's you get your total college costs down, and IMHO, actually gave a better experience because the classes were 30 people instead of 250 person lecture halls. The CC classes really gave me a good understanding of debits and credits. Better than a lot of my peers in accounting classes. And have served me well in my career (CPA and MBA, head of finance at a mid sized company)

If you do CC first, and pick a good major, college definitely pays off. I would also probably stick at a state school unless you can get really good scholarships

Expand full comment
Tag Alder's avatar

Does this matter? Really matter? Perhaps in some fields, it may. But in many of the social sciences, I think not. If one is arguing that it is important to contribute incrementally to the march of The Enlightenment or even science, is that important? Were the advances of Eli Whitney or Henry Ford that important? Eventually, wouldn't someone have made the same contributions? From Edison to the first Mac to the first “20 meg” Apple hard drive to the Cloud, wasn’t the outcome inevitable?

Covid unleashed from the arrogance of children acting irresponsibly in the name of “science”? The power of Google -- to assist scientific inquiry and/or their practice of censorship and ideological fascism? At the end of your life, can you really claim it mattered that you solved a database sorting glitch that enabled Google's power, or that your personal invention eliminated dial-up modems? So you walked on the moon and brought back dust. Shall we consider the dust as Crypto before its modern iteration? Explain to whom, if anyone, should we really erect statues?

Careers, pedigrees, hard work? One might assume it matters. But who controls the power to hire or fire --- and do they have the intellectual ability to distinguish between those with real talent from those who merely possess the imprimatur of an Ivy degree? Aren’t most decisions made by those who don’t want risks -- those who find solace in the rationale that the quality of a graduate from Harvard or Yale is beyond qualitative doubt?

How many of those who make decisions actually have read, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”? Jordan Peterson, I suspect, certainly would question the wisdom of those who are charged with the power to decide.

Expand full comment
8 more comments...

No posts