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Just Say No To College
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Alex Williams writes in the NY Times that the idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Inspired by role models like the billionaire drop-outs who founded Microsoft, Facebook, Dell, Twitter, Tumblr, and Apple, and empowered by online college courses, a groundswell of university-age heretics consider themselves a DIY vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick. 'Here in Silicon Valley, it's almost a badge of honor,' says Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. 'College puts a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations around what you can and can't do. Some people, they want to stretch their arms, get out and create more, do more.' Perhaps most famously, Peter A. Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, in 2010 started his Thiel Fellowship program, which pays students under 20 years old $100,000 apiece to bag college and pursue their own ventures. 'People are being conned into thinking that this credential is the one thing you need to do better in life. They typically are worse off, because they have amassed all this debt.' UnCollege advocates a DIY approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational 'hackademic camps.' 'Hacking,' in the group's parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000. 'I think kids with a five-year head start on equally ambitious peers will be ahead in both education and income,' says James Altucher, a prominent investor, entrepreneur and pundit who self-published a book called '40 Alternatives to College.' 'They could go to a library, read a book a day, take courses online. There are thousands of ways.'"
This comes from the same mentality as people who skip vaccinating their children: we have a generation who grew up taking things for granted, so they feel free to reject the very things that gave them that privilege. Grow up without being surrounded by disease, and it feels safe to throw away vaccines. Grow up taking an educated populace for granted, and it feels safe to throw away college.
It's also the same mentality that leads people to stop taking medications. I've seen so many people with seizure disorders stop taking their pills after a time because they don't have seizures anymore..... then immediately have seizures again. I know one person that died as a result of this.
As a person who has gone to college, dropped out, and is now going back, I understand the value of the education and experience. It's not for everyone, but it really does have immense value. Very few people have the disposition and dedication to focus themselves and spend their time doing something better than college - most who drop out or don't go will spend their time doing something far less valuable.
Up here in Canuckistan, 'college' means Community College. Community Colleges are mandated (in Ontario at least) to serve the local job market. That means that if there aren't jobs in a particular field, there should not be a college program.
In other words, if you attend a community college, you have a very good chance of getting a job. Some programs have 100% job placement year after year. The statistics are available, you can check the graduate placement and starting salaries before you enrol.
In my particular program, we often get university graduates who can't get jobs. Community Colleges don't get nearly enough respect.
Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt
Yeah, I don't know how this happens. I mean, I know how it happens ... you go to a school on the East Coast so you have the name on your resume. I went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities for four years and came out with $20,000 in loans (worked three jobs in college). A coworker's cousin just graduated from George Washington in DC and came out with $250,000 in loans. Tuition rates at the University of Minnesota versus tuition rates at GWU (note that those are per credit hour! and they don't give you every credit over 13 free like they do at the U of MN).
Frankly, I think this article should be titled, "skip the overly expensive college because you'll get a more than adequate education somewhere else." Okay so I have to prove myself in an interview over someone from GWU. Challenge accepted.
And if everyone drops out of college to start their own thing, who are you going to be hiring when your startup needs to transition to a medium to large company? Other dropouts whose ideas were crap. Are you sure you want to advocate this to be a more widespread phenomenon?
My work here is dung.
It's amusing that people would advocate this when statistics show that college graduates not only face a lower unemployment rate, but they average higher incomes as well.
As others have pointed out, you'll notice that the successful entrepreneurs who dropped out either went to ivy league schools or had wealthy parents. Even if they had to scrape for their own money, their backgrounds conferred instant confidence in their abilities amongst anyone they approached. One of the most important aspects of a successful business, contacts, where there from the start.
A second important factor here is that these guys were already actively engaged in whatever lead to their success. They would have been successful just the same had they completed college because the drive was already there. These aren't random students more interested in partying than schoolwork. But sure, let's perpetuate the idea that we don't need college so that we end up with an even bigger group of resentful individuals resentful for not having been multimillionaires.
Of course, we should be talking about the cost of an education. College tuition is seriously overpriced but instead everyone harps on student loans. And the government backing those loans simply adds fuel to the fire, creating a massive bubble. Certainly, we should be looking at trade schools, but I think the real problem in the US is perception. Most people think trade schools are beneath them. But when you've got MBA's sucking everyone else dry in a race to bottom, who can blame them?
Saddling people with soul-crushing debt to pay for an education is a great way to make them desperate. Myself, I went into IT, where my skills and abilities, earned me my current job (and the last 4). They then paid to get me a couple certs. They also pay me well above the median household income, and allow me to work from home, all because I was able to demonstrate my ability. The key is to find a field you don't mind working in that needs workers. Electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics... the world needs more of these. They make more than most college graduates, after 4 years of getting paid instead of paying to learn a craft. The ideal that you're espousing, that anyone that doesn't pay for a degree or have rich parents is doomed to fail is complete bollocks. It just takes effort, drive, and a willingness to work for what you want.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
You don't need a college degree if you have these two things:
1) Technical Skills - The skills actually needed to do your job. Essential.
2) People Skills - The skills to actually talk to people and convince them that you're not an idiot. Convincing people that you're worth the time and the money is the 2nd most important skill you can have.
I'm making more money than all of my 4-year degree friends because I decided long ago to educate myself in a field that's likely to GROW (and not things like art history, where you go to school just to teach other kids, so they can teach other kids, and so on) and because I can talk to people and have them see me as an asset and not a potential liability.
So really you need at least three things - the two you numbered above, plus
3) A desire to work in a field where money is thrown at anyone, not just college graduates.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
^^THIS!!!
What I get so frustrated by is that there is this mentality that people can somehow "fall back" on a degree. That's bullshit. There are tons of people with degrees and even advanced degrees selling refrigerators at Sears. A degree doesn't magically bestow ANYTHING. People that think they have a degree and somehow get to start a rung higher than someone without one are sadly mistaken as well. One of my best friends used to bitch nonstop about how he had his masters degree, and his boss only had a high school degree. One day after a few beers I had enough of it and said "Look, you went to school for 7 years, he started two businesses after high school, both failed, but he learned a lot from his failures, then went to work making nothing as a call center manager, worked his way up the management chain reading books on it, and going to conferences to get better at it. His trade is management, yours is Java development, and just because he is your boss doesn't mean he automatically makes more money than you. Great developers are harder to hire and fire than great managers." He never said crap about it again.
College now is the high school diploma of years past. It's good, but it's a fairly cheap commodity now. If someone doesn't have one, then they are just missing a cheap commodity.
Yes I have a bachelors degree, and no I don't think it's really helped me at all.
I have the perfect example of that. I applied for a job that required a B.A. in a particular area even though I did not have it because I have a doctorate degree in that field. Well, turns out a friend of my father worked for that company and was the person who made the hiring decision. A few months later, my dad introduced us at a meet and greet and he asked my why I didn't apply. I told him I did and his reply is that he definitely would have remembered seeing a doctorate but all he got to choose from was 5 B.A.s. He found out, after a little digging that tons of people with a B.S. in that area as well as myself and a few other master and doctorate degrees did not even make it onto his desk because the resume scanner threw us all out because we didn't have a B.A. in that field.