Should I go to university?

Published: 26 Dec 2018

One of the questions I often get asked is whether or not I recommend going to university/engineering school/… or to get an entry level job and start hacking.

A lot of people think that formal education isn’t necessary anymore as you can learn everything online or when you need it. And in a lot of countries (USA, Australia,…), higher education comes at a very high cost.

TLDR: my advice is to do it if you need it and can afford it.

I think it mainly comes down to two questions:

Do you need it?
Can you afford it?

Disclaimer

When reading this article, keep in mind two things: I studied in France (very cheap and high-quality education around 15 years ago) so your experience may differ…

Do you need it?

Not everyone learns in the same way. Some people are really good at learning on their own and don’t need a lot of hand-holding. Others may have more difficulty or just need the “soft-pressure” of being accountable. If you find that you can learn on your own, or even that you have difficulty fitting within the traditional education system, self-learning, and an entry job may be a better option for you.

However, don’t underestimate what you get from going to university. You will learn things that you may not have or not want to learn that could be very beneficial in the future (soft skills, other disciplines…). You will also meet a lot of like-minded people (I know of someone who used to say that formal education was a waste of time but created his first startup with people he met at university ironically). If you’re the kind of person that makes a lot of friends at hacker conventions/meetup, you may not care as much but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

You may get lucky and meet people at school who will change how you learn or even what you want to do in life. It can be a very inspirational teacher that get you passionate about a subject or just few people who study with you. When I applied to the engineering school I went to, I wanted to work on Open Source Embedded Systems. One year in, I knew security was my thing!

Long story short, there is more to school than the hours you spend in class!

You also need to keep in mind that for some jobs (big companies, government…) having a degree makes things easier. Furthermore, it may help you with immigration if you want to move to another country in the future.

Can you afford it?

In some countries, studying will get you into a huge amount of debts. You should hopefully land a sweet-paying InfoSec job but it may take a while and debt is never something to take lightly (you should look at hacking your personal finance as well as computers). If you are lucky to live in a country with an affordable education system (or if you have a way to pay for your education without getting into huge debt), you should probably take that chance. Otherwise, make sure you understand how much it’s going to cost you (financially and time-wise) and see how this cost will impact you in the long run.

Final notes

Unless the university you want to study at has an awesome (as in taught or recommended by industry professionals) curriculum, you may want to avoid a degree in information security. Look at degrees in computer sciences, statistics, advanced mathematics, cryptography… something actually hard to learn on your own. You can learn about information security in your spare time (if you are very passionate). And having a broader knowledge will help you become a better security professional. While you are at university, spend time doing bug bounty, follow the work of known security researchers and write some code.

Finally, this is your decision. Don’t let people pressure you into one way or another. Make sure you don’t pick the easiest solution just because you are lazy, you may get disappointed in the future. Finally, if you cannot afford to go to university, there are plenty of ways to get in the industry too, we will cover this in another blog posts.