I'm in my fifth semester of a computer science degree. Should I drop out to focus on my business?

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I'm in my fifth semester of a computer science degree. Should I drop out to focus on my business?

I would not leave college. If you’ve already made progress, don’t drop out. College offers valuable social experiences, relationships, and learning opportunities that you can’t fully replace online. While you can learn the technical material through courses at home, the networking and personal growth aspects are important. My recommendation is to use college mainly for the social side, and once you’ve built a solid foundation, you can start skipping non‑essential classes. Focus on the parts that add value and treat the rest as optional. This way you get the best of both worlds without sacrificing your education entirely.

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As an A‑level student studying physics, math, and computer science aiming for a compsai path, is pursuing a university degree the right way to optimize for money, or should I focus on entrepreneurship to avoid financial struggle?

College was a great experience for me and it helped, but you don’t need a degree to succeed. What matters is being clear about what you want to do before you enroll. You’re already doing the right thing by thinking about life after college instead of just picking a random degree. Remember, college isn’t a life‑or‑death choice—many successful people treat business as enjoyable play. The key is to push through until you get a positive result, which will erase the self‑doubt.

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Sunset Cliff asks: Should I drop out of college to focus on AI automation and entrepreneurship? I’m a business student with no interest in finance/banking, have grandparents covering tuition, make ~$10k from AI automation, and want to know how to decide if leaving school makes sense for my insurance‑niche venture.

I finished my degree and looking back I don’t think I really needed it—I did it mostly to satisfy my family and friends. I was basically just treading water, lacking the conviction to make a real bet in life. As you get older and more successful, you realize you need to take bets and be ready if they don’t work out; it’s better to have tried and failed than never tried at all. In my case, a bet would have been dropping out to run a business full‑time; for you, it might look the same—leaving school to focus on your AI automation and entrepreneurship venture. Beyond personal experience, remember that colleges were originally designed to train you for a specific job, but today they’ve become mostly marketing machines that promise a future without delivering the skills or ROI. Most of the value you get is the social experience—being forced to interact with peers and learn soft skills. You can get that social side elsewhere, and there are many other ways to meet people without spending years and tuition money. So, weigh the social benefit against the cost and your own goals; if the credential isn’t essential for what you want to do, dropping out to pursue your business may be the smarter bet.

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What is your educational background and do you recommend studying computer science?

I studied behavioral neuroscience, not computer science. After my door‑to‑door marketing business shut down during COVID, I taught myself computer science using free resources like teachyourselfcs.com, books, and lectures, completing a typical CS curriculum in about six months. I found that self‑teaching gave me practical, applicable knowledge faster than a traditional degree, which often includes many irrelevant courses. While a CS degree can be helpful, understanding behavior and psychology has been more valuable for my work, and today you can learn everything you need with AI assistance.

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What are your thoughts on going to university and getting a job? Is it harder than what you're doing right now? Why is higher education losing its perceived value?

I think it's actually much easier than university. The main difference is that university requires a lot of courage to follow a well‑worn path, whereas building an automation info product takes courage to do something no one else is doing. Higher education is losing perceived value because the actual value has been eroding for the last 20 years. The internet now provides free resources that let anyone learn what a degree used to guarantee, so a degree is no longer the primary signal of knowledge or skill. What matters now is what you do with your time outside of school.

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