Gotta ask: why can't you get your bachelors degree at college? If I've understood correctly: college: bachelor's degree and uni: bachelor's and master's both.
Computer science sounds like a nice change then. There is an intermediate field of computer engineering but even that has a large focus on hardware and embedded systems. I'm not sure how your course is structured but mine was divided between embedded systems, signals and communications, power systems, control theory, power electronics, and plain ol' analogue/digital electronics. That's a lot of electrical theory and very little software. There were a handful of people from my year group who made the jump to computer science and software engineering instead.
If you study biology then you're most likely studying Charles Darwins work. If you study any social science, chances are you use a software called SPSS on an Apple computer. Btw that's exactly how it was for me in the last example. How ironic is it that university is using a guy's product who was a drop out. There are so many more examples but these are the ones on top of my head. Bottom line is that if you go to school, you're trained to be an employee. You'll just be another poor soul stuck in the middle class who's living relies on the whims of the marketplace, the economy, your boss etc. Of course almost everyone gets affected by a recession but the degree to which it has an impact on your life makes all the difference.
Just because you can find a few examples of a college dropouts who achieved great things in life it doesn't mean it's a norm. Most college dropouts still won't have succes in life. The probabilities are actually really really small for a college dropout to achieve something great in the scale that you are talkng about.
You're right. You can just do it all at a university, but it was just easier for me to ease into college by going to community first. You can do some time there and transfer over. A lot of people where I'm from do it like that. Just an easier transition from like high school to college, I think.
Charles Darwin was a mediocre student, his true passion and expertise lied in collecting biological specimen. He didn't create his theory of evolution and leave a legacy by doing what everyone else was doing. His father wanted him to study medicine but was disappointed and instead found a career for him at a church. It's around that time that he would board the HMS beagle and the rest is history. There are only few that succeed but only few ever try to succeed in the first place. I'm not saying universities are useless, I mean we need workers in society. Darwin's former professor was even the one who told him the ship needed a biologist to collect specimen, the perfect position for him. Anyway, there is good and bad in everything, there might be a bit of risk involved in choosing a different path from what society laid out but I'd actually argue it's the safe option in the long run.
You simply could not be more wrong. This isn't the Enlightenment; science today is extremely intricate and complex. Experiments are much more controlled and calculated. Sure, you hear about people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but these guys were students for many years before they dropped out. Ahead of the curve? Probably, but not depite their education, rather because of it.
I doubt it'd help them anymore than it has already. That's why they dropped out. Anyway, you're right the vast majority just don't have what it takes to be successful, they're not incapable, it's all in their head. That is why they work jobs and stress their whole life. They don't have the courage to take the leap.
