where did this concept of college as a 4 year vacation come from?
You have to show up to class, study, be diligent, and apply effective time management skills. Otherwise, you'll be put on academic probation and then kicked out.
Even for those people who seem to have a knack for finding lax professors and classes, coasting is not necessarily a college student thing.
>where did this concept of college as a 4 year vacation come from?
It seems to be something in the echo chamber of HN / startup world that has become common over the past 5-6 years. They seem to not understand that having a college degree is pretty much a requirement for any decent-paying job these days or hopes to have one that will in the future. From an economic standpoint, people with degrees have higher wages.
The real issue is the cost of colleges and the loans that people take out to attend. Rather than addressing that (though some commenters have made the attempt) they'd rather say for kids to not go at all and thus limit their future opportunities for work as well as intellectual growth.
I coasted through five years of college, graduating with a CS and Math joint-major, three internships, and 20 more credit-hours then I needed. I did the bare minimum of studying, and applied little to no time management skills (Unless you count the occasional half-assed assignment finished on Sunday night.) I spent more time worrying about World of Warcraft, then I did about the possibility of ending up on academic probation.
Compared to a 9-5 job, yeah, college was a five year vacation. There's no boss that will have nasty conversations with you, if your work isn't done, if you fall behind on assignments too much, you can just choose to not do them, and spend an extra hour or two cramming for the midterm + final. Nobody cares if you sleep through a class, or two, or seven.
... Obviously if you went to a difficult school, or don't have the social safety net of living with your parents, or you had to work full-time to pay for school, your experiences might be different.
I coasted through five years of college ... Compared to a 9-5 job, yeah, college was a five year vacation.
If you went to college voluntarily and did not care about neither the monetary constraints nor the opportunity costs, then sure that's a vacation. I suspect pretty much anything can be framed as such under those circumstances. For most people, this is not actually a realistic option.
No monetary constraints, because I borrowed from the bank of middle-class parents.
No opportunity costs because my earning potential after college was much higher then before. Not everyone can become a college dropout who founds a unicorn.
"the bank of middle-class parents" is not a real bank. It's your parents. You can pay them whenever (and you most likely never fully/really will, and that's ok). Your opportunity cost might be true and might be "I can't help support my family on a part time job".
Your situation might not be extremely rarefied, but I don't think you grasp the immensely insurmountable advantage you have in this scenario.
