When I first received my bachelor’s degree for computer science in 2018, it was a milestone. Door’s opened up for me, I finally had the credentials to apply to work where I wanted. Engineering positions for me were finally in reach. I had spent the first 20+ years of my life going to school and having homework and it was finally paying off. A well paying job, a place I could afford to live, and finally the freedom to do whatever I wanted on weekends. For the subsequent 5 years, in terms of financial stability, things were rosy. I continued to work hard, pursue individual passions, and advance further in my career. At some points, I decided I didn’t want to continue the work I did, so I pivoted. I applied to companies across the country, and when I got accepted, I threw everything I had into a U-Haul and went after them. I was alive and it felt great.

Eventually though, it started to become apparent that I was reaching a wall. A barrier I couldn’t cross. I found interesting companies with awesome opportunities but the Required Qualifications list had a master’s degree/PhD. Just like my bachelor’s degree this was a required step I needed to take to reach the places I wanted to reach. So in 2022 I decided to go back to grad school. It was something I had convinced myself I needed to do. I wanted to learn, I wanted prestige, but most of all I wanted to grow in my career. Unfortunately, it turns out computer science academia at the graduate level is complete bullshit.

Everything Is Free, And You’re a Sucker for Paying for It

A modern computer science lab in 2025

What are you paying for in computer science? Really, at the end of the day you’re paying for a grade and not much else, and that’s frankly idiotic. It’s not a secret that the majority of students go to class, write down what they need to learn, and then go home and find a YouTube video that does a better job explaining the concept, because the lecture they’re paying for is lack-luster. In fact, our information based society has evolved to such a sophisticated level that you can learn literally any theoretical concept in a more digestible and approachable manner online than you can sitting in a classroom. I knew this was the case when I was an undergrad, and very naively assumed that because I’m in “higher education” that wouldn’t be the case anymore. But it’s not, it’s the same song and dance. You go to class, you take notes, ask questions, and then go home and watch Khan Academy to actually learn anything. And all of these components are entirely free if you want them to be. The internet is rich with chatrooms built on discord, forums, matrix, and zulip. They’re full of people who are also eager to learn, and want to learn with you. The textbook will be online as a PDF. You can find a syllabus for any subject from a high ranking institution online. Any subject can be rebuilt for free.

I want to emphasize that this rant is focused on computer science, and not the hard sciences that are also present at universities. One of the big reasons is the real sciences have labs. they have equipment and technology. They have tools that cost tens of thousands if not millions of dollars to own, maintain, and operate. These people have a reason outside of networking to actually be on campus. For example, we have an entire photolithography laboratory where you can machine nano-structures, build experimental microfluidic devices, and perform industry grade Atomic Layer Deposition.

This level of access for a complete novice to a field is insane, and paying $10,000 a semester for the opportunity to gain hands-on experience is an absolute steal. But that simply isn’t what happens in my field. This used to be the case for computer science, but the days of punch cards and massive vacuum tube computers are behind us.

Cutting Every Possible Corner

I’m regularly astounded how American Universities can charge such an insane amount of money, and then provide the most lack-luster experience. Everyone I know in academia, particularly higher education, has a story about how their school is completely shafting them while they fork over more than half a down-payment for a house. To add to that catalogue, I will include my story.

A couple semesters ago, I took a graduate-level algorithms course. Not because I particularly wanted to, but it was a required class for the program. This was the first class in my life I have ever dropped as a result of the sheer amount of bullshit that occurred. It was an 8 AM morning course, and I remember sitting down bleary-eyed with a coffee as the first lecture began. The professor began reading through the syllabus, and when he reached the homework grading section he announced a change in grading strategy.

Because of the amount of students this semester, we will be randomly sampling the homework questions and then only grading a subset of them

More than half the class stirred at the statement. Of all the classes, algorithms is the most useless to pay for. It already stung enough paying tuition for a glorified leetcode premium account, and we were now being told that the only thing the school was good for, validating that we could do the fucking work, was no longer feasible and they were going to half-ass it. What then followed was a few weeks of TA’s hastily grading random homework problems. If you didn’t solve a problem to the letter of how the professor’s solution was provided, you lost points. You also were required to submit your assignments using LaTeX. One such assignment was the classic dynamic programming problem of optimal matrix multiplications. The professor provided some large matrices, and the assignment was to type out each step of the problem. If you mistyped any piece of the step, or if the professor thought you machine generated the LaTeX code, you lost points. The class average plummetted, every week you saw less students sitting in the room, and I decided this entire course could go fuck itself as well and dropped it.

Group Projects: Grades Based On the Incompetency of Others

I love collaboration, I love working with others, and I will strangle the next professor that assigns a group project to me.

I don’t know how I convinced myself of the narrative that grad-school would be any different than undergrad. Being a smaller cohort, I naively assumed that meant we’d be treated better. This turned out to be completely false, and the prevelance of group projects is yet another example of this.

Once again it’s cost cutting. Projects must be done in groups because the class is too large for the professors to grade it, and I am at the mercy of having a random teammate who doesn’t give a shit because their parents are paying the tuition. There’s a common mantra of “you can review your team mates so if they dropped the ball you won’t fail as well” but I find it personally infuriating that the school has acknowledged there’s a problem with this structure and then hold you responsible for dealing with it. When are you going to actually do something we pay you to do?

But this is building “real world experience” and helping you to-

No it isn’t, please shut up. The dynamic of “We’re all paying for this and there’s an incompentent dead weight hurting us” is nothing compared to “I am being financially compensated to work with this team”. Furthermore, the god awful system known as “academic integrity” completely sabotages any “real world experience” you may be considering earning. Group projects throw students into a zugzwang where they are forced to constantly evaluate the performance of their peers while not being allowed to help them like a normal person would be able to do. I want to work with my peers, I want to overcome problems and learn with them, and I am utterly fed up with the notion that effective collaboration is cheating while simultaneously being forced to work with them. I don’t know how else to explain this other than that when you enter the real world, your entire work ethic and how you are supposed to interact with others changes dramatically because you are no longer constrained by the fear of “cheating”.

I know it doesn’t have to be this way, because my favorite class I had so far had a project, and completely avoided all of these issues. You could do a project by yourself or a team. If you did it as a team the only requirement was that it had to be technically more impressive than the average solo project. Many people worked solo, some formed teams. At the end of the semester, the professor announced that our presentations needed to be concise and short because so many opted to do solo presentations. Like everyone else I trimmed my 10 minute presentation down to 4, and submitted my paper for grading. This class consisted of at least 30 students, larger than other classes I’m in that claim it’s not feasible. Yet my professor graded everyone’s papers on time, and we all managed to give our presentations. Not only that, but my peers in that class and I got detailed feedback on the 10+ page papers we submitted.

Unfortunately, everything good in academia is an exception, not a rule.

“School Is An Incredible Networking Opportunity”

I guess, but a ticket and hotel to a conference is too, and significantly more fun and cost effective. I’m going to once again state that I am harping specifically on computer science and similar disciplines. By our nature we are terminally online creatures. The connections and networking opportunities are all online, all the time, if you’re willing to look for it. There are so many incredible online communities that will put you in face-to-face discussions with some of the brightest minds that it’s honestly a silly argument to make that going to school is any different.

Unless you want to walk over to Y-Combinator with a new startup idea from Stanford, you may be surprised just how many genuine and incredible people you can meet by sharing your passions online and finding like-minded individuals.

Ending The Sunk Cost

At the time of writing, I have paid more than $18,000 in tuition fees. And I am ready to say that I have put enough into this terrible institution. I have floated this idea to a few people close to me, and the response is usually something along the lines of

But you’ve already spent so much, you may as well finish!

No, I really shouldn’t. American academia is a sunk cost fallacy. Pour buckets of money in, only to have the company you’re applying to ignore that line on your resume because you failed to put the proper keywords of the technology they're actually looking for. Every job I have earned after my first in college was a direct result of work experience, and not education. Do I really need that higher level education to get a better career? Do I even need a better career? After putting myself through the torture of school for 2 years I am realizing that I in fact do not.

The remaining portion of this post is entirely personal, and not applicable or critical to others. I am fortunate enough to have a high paying tech salary, own a house, and share it with my wife, dog, and rabbit. I get to work with an incredible cohort of individuals who are intellectually curious. I am regularly challenged at work and given opportunities for growth. And I am also getting completely screwed by this university whose quality and content are overpriced, lackluster, and a waste of time.

More than anything else, I enjoy learning. I don’t need a silly piece of paper from an institution to say I know something. I want to demonstrate to the world what I know, and do so in a way that is meaningful and helpful to others. I spent a lot of this post raving about the quality of free material on the internet, and I intend to spend my freetime contributing to that ecosystem instead of doing homework that is only partially graded.

I am going to begin a wager. I believe that if I abandon school and instead dedicate myself first to the pursuit of knowledge and then communicating that knowledge back as free educational material, I will be equally if not more successful in life than if I had earned my master’s degree. Regardless of material success, I know already that by taking this wager I will immediately benefit from this decision in both my personal and mental health. This wager won’t be easy to prove or accomplish, but I am immeasurably more excited to do this, and look forward to sinking endless hours into making educational content for others.

• Scronkfinkle