The most persistent (and consistently frustrating) debate in my social life is over the usefulness of a college degree. People fight tooth and nail to defend their useless degrees in conversation with me. I never went to college, so it's pretty clear which side of the issue I'm on. The people who argue with me typically have large student loan debts and few job prospects. I use this as evidence of the foolishness of higher education. An unemployed, unpublished, boorish English major told me at a mutual friend's party a few years ago that I couldn't be a great writer (like him, obviously) unless I had at least his level of education. I told him to get back to me when he'd made his first dollar as a professional writer.
Certainly there are useful degrees that have jobs on the other end of them. Anything in engineering, medicine, law, or science (academia/research or in a field that has a specific business application), for instance. If you go to medical school and pass all of your exams and go through your internships, you will become a doctor and there will be a job for you someplace in the world. Even if you fail to become a doctor somehow, you can still work in a variety of different jobs in the medical field. If you go to law school and pass the bar exam, you will become a lawyer and there will be jobs in legal services and politics for you -- again, though, even if you fail the bar, there is work for you in the legal industry. Engineering is a little different, but if you have a degree in some engineering field and can demonstrate some talent, you'll have many job opportunities available to you.
The majority of degree programs, though, are a waste of time. Robert Rodriguez famously tells aspiring filmmakers to avoid film school. "Spend that money on a good camera instead." The reasoning is that all you need to know about being a great filmmaker comes from time spent behind a camera and organizing your own film projects. School may provide you with the equipment and access to people who can help in some way, but that is a false production environment. In "the real world," no analogue exists for this environment of boundless resources, and going to school to get a certain degree doesn't mean you'll get a job in that field.
English is another prime example of a worthless degree. Not only does it not qualify you for any specific job, but the classroom time offers little or no experience or training that you can't get on your own by reading the same textbooks and initiating your own writing and literary analysis projects. You don't need to pay $30k or more per year to form an opinion about Proust, or write a series of short stories, or learn to write news articles. The exceptions are: If you want to stay in academia (become an English teacher), or if you want to become a management-level editor or publishing executive.
Philosophy is perhaps the most egregious waste of money. Philosophy students and degree-holders passionately argue against my opinion on this; I think that's because the only thing they learned to do in their college classes was defend theories and attack opinions. They insist that a philosophy education is extremely important, yet I have never met one that is admirably employed. I've also never seen a job listing for a philosopher, though I do recall reading that some rich northern European government has a full-time philosopher to help guide policy.
Humanities, women's studies, liberal arts -- all worthless in terms of finding a worthwhile career. You can study these subjects on your own for little or no cost and get an education comparable to what you'd learn in a classroom. So why do people go to college and enter worthless degree programs? Why do they put themselves deeply into debt without having a clearly defined plan for a career afterward?
Do you even need to pay to sit in a classroom? I've discovered that the answer to this question is frequently "no." Many universities allow anyone to audit a class without any hassle; you just sit in the lecture hall and don't cause trouble and you're left alone. MIT has even gone so far as to offer most of its course material for free on the Web. It couldn't be more clear that what you pay for at MIT is the degree, not the education. It's the credential that matters, not the knowledge.
Even some of the sciences are a fantastic waste of resources. Anthropology, history, archaeology are all interesting subjects, but the jobs they lead to are either trapped forever in the bubble of academia, or are very few and require excellent connections and timing to achieve. Your most valuable job skills in these fields will most likely be related to grant writing. You'll be a scientific whore, begging grants off of governments, universities, foundations, and rich benefactors.
Of course there's always the argument that the experience of college is part of its value. Making connections, working with some of the top thinkers in the field, living a life of debauchery in fraternities and sororities, playing sports, joining campus clubs, participating in ineffectual but self-satisfying activism, binge drinking at parties, having mediocre regrettable sex with people you don't care about. Lots of people meet their future spouse in college. Business relationships are formed there. If you so choose, you'll move to a new place and experience a different way of life. And, just like with the degree program content, you can get most of this all on your own without paying huge sums of non-refundable money.
But maybe you don't have to pay for college. Someone said to me recently, "If you're paying for grad school, you're doing it wrong." There are, of course, many scholarships and stipends for people who meet certain requirements. College advisers at decent high schools are often very good at finding hidden scholarships and grants.
There are a lot of low-paying jobs at big corporations that entitle you to a free post-secondary and post-graduate education in a variety of useful fields. A friend of mine recently discovered this, and is finally getting a useful 4-year degree (after two useless associate's degrees in fields he doesn't currently work in) for free from a good engineering school. This degree will enable him to work in a challenging technical field that has a steadily growing demand and a high salary. While this is in progress, he has a decent job with the usual corporate benefits.
The military will also often pay for college if you sign up for the right programs and serve enough time. A military background is highly valued at a lot of companies, as well -- especially government contractors. On the other hand, you have to be a "do as you're told" sort of person, or you'll be completely miserable.
At any given time, there may be certain graduate degree programs at universities that are either free or low-cost due to some sort of government or industry demand. These may not be terribly compelling fields, but if you've got nothing better to do with your time or if you're very much a "work to live" sort of person, then why not take the free degree and see what becomes of it?
Even after all these years, I still haven't changed my mind about college. I have no regrets. Mark Twain's advice on becoming a professional writer was to write for free for a period of two years; if someone offers to pay you for your work within that timeframe, then you've got what it takes, and if nobody offers to pay you within those two years, then you should give up and do something else with your life. I did exactly this -- I wrote for my own sites until a newspaper offered to buy my articles. Then I wrote book reviews until a publisher offered to pay me to review books before they went to print. If you're motivated and you like to do good work, there's always money for you somewhere. It actually kind of offends me that some shithead thinks he can sit in a classroom for four years and be entitled to the same career that I've achieved through hard work. But that guy at the party that I met still isn't published and doesn't work in writing or publishing, last I checked.
