College, or Self-Education?

Off-Topic
#1

I don’t mean for this to be a discussion about what’s objectively better, but I’m curious to know what factors helped you with deciding what’s personally better for you.

The career I want to pursue is Japanese to English localization. I’m currently struggling to make this decision. I learn more efficiently, and stay motivated easier under formal education. And a lot of people say you’ll do better in the long run with a degree. However, I feel like being forced to take a lot of classes unrelated to my field of study would slow down the process. I’m also not happy with having to put effort in classes I don’t care about just to graduate. With self-education: it’s easy for me to access, less pressure, less expensive, I can go at my own pace, and I can only focus on the subjects I want to learn. However, I personally have a hard time motivating myself to keep going and learn efficiently on my own.

There are also factors like how much work I’ll be able to do: going to school while working part time, vs learning on my own and working full time. Being able to make more money without mentally straining myself sounds nice, but I don’t even know which option would be better for me.

I’d really appreciate to read everyone’s thoughts and experiences.

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#2

I’m on my senior year of High School, actually, so I still need to decide that by the beginning of 2018. But I think I’ll go with higher education for a simple reason: my dream has always been, since I was, like, 5 or something, moving to a developed country. I’m not going to go into detail here, but life in the third world sucks. Which means I only have two options: either go to college and then apply to a Masters or graduate course abroad or get an underemployment.

However, I will probably have to work, meanwhile, in order to save money, and I’m learning foreign languages to inscrease my chances of migrating. That’s why I have to pick something that is not very time-consuming. If I choose, say, Medicine, I won’t be able to study other languages, which means I would only be able to move to the US (not mentioning the highly difficult process of doing residency there).

If you live in the 1st world, you will be able to live well whichever path you choose. Here, on the other hand, very few people without a degree manage to have a decent-ish life.

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#3

I would suggest you learn on your own. Unless you absolutely require a degree to get into localization, it’s less stressful and much cheaper to self-educate. Also, if this career truly the path you wish to pursue, you will find that motivation, and you will have more time for yourself. The benefits of you self-educating far outweigh the cost, given what you’ve said. I hope this helps.

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#4

I have mixed feelings about the bachelor’s degree I got. On the one hand the school I went to helped a ton when I went to get a job after graduating. On the other hand I’m not entirely convinced it was an efficient use of my time/money, especially with how much I’ve forgotten since I left college. If I had the right motivation and the mindset just out of highschool I think I could have learned everything I knew then by reading at the library and online and working on personal projects. But on the other other hand I also felt the best way I learned was in a formal lecture setting, so maybe I wouldn’t have learned as much the self-taught way. I waffle on this a lot. One thing I know for sure is if I were to do it over again, I wouldn’t go into debt for it.

Regardless of whether you go formal or self education I suggest you start writing translations as soon as you can read anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s Japanese “See Spot Run” and there’s a million existing translations or whatever. Start early, get lots of feedback, and don’t be afraid to be wrong! Over time you can build a portfolio and that will show your skills and passion as well as act as a replacement for or supplement to a diploma.

Also if you go the self-taught route and really want some credentials to show your skillz, you could take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

I’ve been trying to learn Japanese as well with the vague notion that it would be cool to do translations as well, but I’ve been having trouble finding the motivation to really get started. If you want a study buddy feel free to ping me on Discord. I know I could use the help getting my butt in gear. :ahaha:

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#5

Schools are always limited in the way they can teach. They are very limited in time, have to act as a blanket teaching scheme for every participant, and for language classes they tend to focus more on equivalency over just learning the language. As such my answer would be self education.

There are however benefits to learning at a college. Being put into a learning environment can help certain people focus, and it gives a consistent time slot in which you’ll be working. It isn’t as reliant on self-motivation (though it is heavily so regardless) and it gives you a nice shiny sign of recognition at the end. A degree is great for those more introverted people who have little practical showing of their skills.

In contrast, self learning has the benefit of choosing environments, which can also help certain people focus. You can tailor the lessons to your own struggles, you can take your time with it, and you can pick it up whenever you have free time. That nice degree you get from a college doesn’t matter so long as you are communicative in relevant society and actively doing things with your newly attained skill, but I can understand if some people would eschew such an approach.

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#6

It really depends on how you want to learn and what kind of things you need to learn. It’s pretty normal in college to have classes seemingly unrelated to your field because fields don’t really exist in a vacuum (that or schools like maximizing profits, which is pretty true). Being a Journalism student (like me), learning theories from social science electives allow me to better understand how the society we write about works. In @Apasher’s case, the study of language, the embodiment of culture, is in one sense the study of culture, so I guess it makes sense that you’ll also study several aspects of culture. (I’m not sure about the other classes you’re taking though, so if you’re okay with it, I’d like to know.)

The need to have holistic education is also especially important if you’re studying to serve the nation and the people (wow that sounds so commie). You need to learn the society you’re about to serve, after all.

For me, the one biggest benefit in studying in colleges/universities is the easy opportunity to participate in discussions. This is especially important in studying arts and humanities or social sciences, where exchange of opinions and ideas coming from varying viewpoints and perspectives is necessary for fruitful learning. It also helps to be able to view things in ways that one person alone wouldn’t even consider.

If you want to have a focused education, there are extramural or vocational courses being offered. However, self study is the best choice if you want to learn by your own pace. The caveat though is that you need to have access to really good learning materials, and in the case of studying communication like language, peers who can help you out. Online resources can sometimes be unreliable, and having knowledgeable peers can help you know if you’re on the right track.

In the end, it’s up to the individual. For me, I like being in college because it helps me learn about important things that I wouldn’t even consider learning about otherwise.

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#7

My experience in public education has not been a good one. College is expensive, narrow in its approach, and does little to actually provide necessary workplace skills. I’ve always believed that nearly any job can be learned in less than a year so long as the student is willing to learn and the instructor/trainer is decent.

On the other hand, having a college degree makes it easier to get a job in your field and provides opportunities, especially to those living in poverty or in 3rd-world countries.

In terms of learning and skill-development, self-education is better. In terms of increasing opportunity, college education is (unfortunately) better. Unless you have good connections, of course.

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#8

This entirely depends on the field. For anything creative related like art, writing, or music, I agree that a degree is a waste of resources (although going for a year or two to get a better understanding of theory and composition might not be a terrible idea). For fields like Engineering, Nursing, or Science, not only do you need a degree to get a job, its easy to tell someone who learned that field formally and someone who only has a self-taught or undergraduate level understanding of it. When it comes to STEM there is simply nothing quite like a Master’s level education. And Like @BlackHayate02 mentioned I think its important to have a good breadth education. I never would have taken classes like “Intro to Art History,” “General Chemistry,” or “Viking Myths and Music” if they weren’t fufilling some requirement but I learned a ton in all of those classes and I feel like I’m a wiser more rounded individual for it. @Apasher also said that self learning is less pressure, but I’d argue that’s a bad thing. Pressure is an excellent motivational resource. Its easy to give up self-study because there’s less at stake and less tieing you to the curriculum.

Also idk why yall are acting like you can’t self study while you’re at a University that’s working out pretty well for me.

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#9

My opinion of college is that it is completely worth it provided you don’t have to take out a student loan. Nowadays not many people are fortunate enough to do this though, so I can see why it might not be worth it to go to college. I’m going to college in a few weeks and I think that there are tons of advantages there for me, especially because I am a business major. College provides an environment where you can meet new people, learn independence, and generally have access to insights that you wouldn’t be able to come up with yourself. But hey, I’m not there yet so what do I know…

#10

When I was in college everyone was expected to spend approximately 2 hours outside of class studying and doing homework for every 1 hour of lecture. At what point does that time spent outside of class go from being considered University studying to self studying? Is going beyond what was directly assigned self studying or is that a natural extension of your University studies? I think that line can be pretty blurry.

Conversely the line for going from self study to University studying is very clear because of the scheduling and financial obligations.

Also, in my case, I took a heavy course load every semester so once my course work was finished I usually spent my time relaxing so I wouldn’t go crazy.

#11

Choose college. The classes that you think are worthless or unrelated could come in handy later, or they could ultimately be completely meaningless. Given the gamble of a 100% certainty that something will be useless, and some x% certainty that it will be useless, wouldn’t you prefer to have a chance at gaining something else in the process? Those “extra classes” aren’t going to be completely meaningless, especially if you end up choosing a different path from the one you originally studied specifically for. Likewise, there’s not always going to be an opening for the job you specifically want. That degree will help you out a lot more than it won’t.

Self education? Sure, you can learn to do something on your own. I’ve done that. Experience matters a lot, and getting started right away in something will help you gain that experience. Having a degree will help a lot too, and will reassure your potential employers that you’ve likely got a reasonable grasp on the subject at hand and haven’t just pressed along and happened to look reasonably useful to their untrained eyes. In other words, you’ve been recognized by capable people, not just peers.

Go for the degree. Do self study when you can. You don’t have to restrict yourself just to what you’re being taught; you can skip ahead. For degrees in languages, there are placement programs that will put you at your right level too.

That’s the advice I would liked to have given myself a decade ago, anyway. Regardless of what you choose to do, good luck.

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#12

I have graduated from University and have a degree and now I’m in college (where I’m actually learning stuff) . I should have done everything I will list below.

Depends on what you want to do and the school. Some schools offer state of the art programs, staff and other opportunities. While some might not know what they are doing. Researching this is key. Do you know of people who graduated there? Do they make a living wage? Many questions to ask yourself.

Self education, depending on the area, can work amazingly well. It could be because of connections or you are just really good. Though in some instances it can’t always be the end all. Saying this, I do agree that knowing software and teaching yourself is really beneficial never stop doing this, but it might not be the complete way to get a job (though it might depends on the person). But In some respects you don’t learn how to do something properly, to standards or rather industry standards. Not to mention people hiring you may want examples of your work and they can see the inexperience. You can also gain connections in the field you want to work in because teachers and classmates can refer you. There is also the fact that it looks better on a resume if you come from a good school vs someone else. My school offers you professional coaching to prepare you for interviews and also allow you to take extra courses until you get hired.

University is hit or miss, depending on what you want to do. Research before you go into the faculty and know what you want to do before you waste money on classes that mean nothing. Then they have profs that have 10 year and you can’t get them fired no matter how horrible they are. But certain educations like medicine require this.

In summary it is up to what field. I encourage you to get familiar with software and basics of anything before going into it. I wished I did this for some programs I’m taking so it would be easier to transition into them and have less struggle. But it worked amazing for Japanese knowing the basic alphabets ahead of time.

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#13

It heavily depends on the field you’re interested in, but in general, having a college degree will help a lot, even if you didn’t learn anything from attending to classes. Nowadays, staying in a job and progressing will take a fair amount of dedication and real skills, but to just get the job position you’re going to need some evidence to back up your claims. You’re gonna need a degree, job experience, projects… and even if you are a genius, you won’t get through the first cut during a job selection process if you don’t have at least some of those.

The bottom line is, get a title or something that will open doors for you and meanwhile learn other things on your own. For instance, in my case, studying aerospace engineering, we are taught little to no programming skills, so I need to do self-education on those, yet, it would be a suicide to quit the degree just to learn programming languages all by myself. Either way, you’ll see many things going to college that you wouldn’t have otherwise known that existed if you just self-educated yourself.

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#14

There’ve been a lot of very good points re: the whole “to college or not to college” in this topic, and I commend everyone for the great discussion! I especially love the point made regarding degrees in creative work vs degrees in STEM. A very level-headed look, if I must say.

However, if I may, I shall give a practical perspective, especially one for you @Apasher. Get a practical degree. One that is in demand, can get you a job, but is also something that you can manage learning. The truth about the J->E localization industry is that majority of those who work on it don’t hold japanese-specialized degrees. They learned the language as part of their passion, tried translating in the fan scene, and rode the waves into professionalism. I even know someone who did all that while taking up higher education, and after finishing their degree, went to work in the VN translation scene.

The same could be said for other fields, like software development. You could be studying law, but learn to code in your free time, build up a reputable github repository, and end up in the software engineering field. It is all very case-to-case, and if what you want to do is something that doesn’t rely too much on formal learning and research (the research part is important as it will be a big part of a uni degree), then it might be more practical to take a separate degree and honing your passion on the side. That way, should your road in the future seem hazy, at least you’ll have multiple options to take in life.

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#15

I sometimes wonder if would have been better if I had not gone to college, and instead had tried to pursue professional training or something. My major was Japanese, and I loved college while I was there, and I was “good” at it, but the degree certainly didn’t get me anywhere job wise, though part of it is my fault for not being diligent about putting myself out there enough.

If you do go to college I agree that going with practical degree is probably the best choice, though I will suggest you still make use of your schools Japanese department to take some classes and to study abroad. You will make good connections in the program both with teachers and students, and as someone else who thrives much more with some guided learning the classes taken will lay the foundation for what you do with with self study.

It is worth mentioning that an undergrad degree in Japanese wont open many doors to you without a lot of self study anyway. People hire for Japanese more based on the JLPT than on any kind of degree. I am sure results vary from school to school but without study abroad I would say the undergrad degree would only prepare you for the two lower levels of the test, and most job postings want the top two.

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#16

and get paid half as much as your colleagues because your employer says “well you don’t have a degree that we need so we don’t need to pay you as much.” What Pepe is recomending isn’t a bad option–if you have more qualifications that’s only more doors you leave open for yourself–but if you’re looking for an optimal strategy there are better but sometimes more risky paths.

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#17

You know this a tough question and there are 2 points to take in consideration. First; a school, institute or university will never teach you everything you need to know so it’s up to you what you want to do and learn. Second, companies or any kind of employer will always value that you have a way to back up your knowledge, by this I mean certificates or different kind of documents. So yeah you need to take these in consideration.

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#18

This.

It is best that you could do both: Higher education (bachelor, masters, doctorade, MBA, etcetera) for professional or academic purpose. Self-education for actual use or interest of knowledge.

For example, I have a masters which granted me opportunities in my job and university. It gave me a great base of knowledge and personal contacts that let me improve in both academic and professional fields. However, I educated myself to learn the technologies needed to perform my job correctly and to learn more about my hobbies (like playing musical instruments, understanding new languages and cultures).

#19

Much of what has already been said I agree with strongly; Things like performing research on an institution ahead of time, listening to word of mouth/anecdotes from attendees of an institution or a specific program, considering the field of study, etc. Given my experiences as a graduate and going into my first software job soon, I will try to give a bit of general advice from my college experiences.

Not to add to the College echo chamber in here, but I would agree that getting a formal education along with some sort of credential as proof is usually the best way to go about educating yourself. Below I will list some points in its favour based on some of my own experiences. Take into consideration that some of these may or may not apply, as every area and college/University is different in what they offer.

Resources and Learning Atmosphere

One particular advantage that having a formal degree or education can help provide is school services, particularly Career Resources and such. Despite some services being annoyingly compulsory, there are usually services that will assist with job searches, resume/cover/job interview advice, Co-op positions for work experience and such. These can be a great asset for students who are inexperienced with finding work and can be a good way to obtain some practical experience in the workplace. It and classes at large usually provide a good atmosphere to converse with others in the field or classmates to help practice and provide feedback that you might not get studying alone. Other bonuses to it are learning how to work with others in group projects in your field of study and possibilities to have friends you made in classes help you with networking.

Status/Associations

This may seem a bit peculiar, but this also matters. I am not talking about having the title of “Degree” on a Resume nor having one, as that’s already been discussed. There are certainly cases, particularly in local committees, where a college or institution is well recognized by employers. I have experienced some cases in which I said: “I am a Computer Science student attending XYZ College” and employers at career fairs mentioned that many of their workers were graduates from those programs and love hiring them. Additionally, graduates from your college working on a small start-up company in your field of study might be interested in you, since they already know you and what you’ve learned.

Learning How to Learn

I found this to be one of the best skills I ever gained out of College. Whenever you are learning more advanced concepts or even other languages/dialects, being able to apply the same principles you learned in classes is incredibly useful. While most classes usually teach the basics of a subject, on a larger level that class and program is really teaching you how to learn and adapt in that field. I think this is more prevalent in College than self-teaching, as having a bunch of classes teaching similar material helped me switch and acclimatize myself efficiently.

Motivation and Self-Discipline

I know this one was brought up already, but this one was huge for me in making my decision. By nature, self-learning is hard for me since my attention tends to waver, even in subjects I am passionate about. Now if someone put an official deadline to me with real consequences for not meeting that deadline (like an assigned sketch piece), my attitude changes drastically and I am able to not only focus but I am also able to help give my life a sense of structure. I also now have an end-goal to strive for in meeting the deadline, giving myself even more motivation to complete the task. I realize that this might not be a big problem for some, but I don’t think I would have learned nearly as much had I decided to try to self-teach myself.

Now, this post has gone on long enough, but a blend of self-teaching yourself material and attending a program or College, in general, is what I think is optimal for learning. Lectures and assignments given by professors will give you something to work on and a place to start. This way you can learn the material on your own or even learn concepts and materials with others. My last pieces of advice I can give are to keep copies of any work you do/assignments to show employers what you can do/have learned and having a side project to also show employers and help solidify your own knowledge. I didn’t necessarily do either that much and I wish I did in College.

TL;DR: Like others here, I generally would recommend having a College education, though it can vary case by case on fields of study (which I know basically nothing about Japanese to English Localization Jobs, so keep that in mind) The main advantages I think College has over Self-Education is access to College Resources to give you services for helping with getting a job after College like Resume help, a potential benefit of having your school or program be well known to employers (meaning you may have an in through the company that way), gaining the ability to learn how to learn, and can help with motivation. Make sure to keep copies of your work and I’d also recommend having side projects while learning to help show employers what you have been/had worked on as evidence to back up your resume.

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#20

I currently have two Bachelor degrees (Multimedia and Computer Science). I don’t regret going to University though I will probably be in debt the rest of my life (rip mortgage). The resources and networking opportunities are invaluable though a lot of the time you have to seek it out from lecturers and tutors because they can only do so much in the classroom. Even then I think I collectively learnt more actually working as a programmer than I did in the classroom. But then I wouldn’t have gotten the job without the degree. It’s a weird situation.

It’s cool that there are lots of free resources on the internet if you do want to learn something, I don’t even think they were around (or at least not as extensive) by the time I read leaving school and going into higher education. That was less than 10 years ago.

I’d say they both have positives and drawbacks. University gets you the status (which can help with getting a job) and the networks. Self-study is free (though some places have free University - it should be everywhere but you know, capitalism) and you can research what you care about. Pick your poison. :b