College is a waste of time and money for kids
ft.com
ft.com
The traveled ones are always much more rational in thought, and open in mind, and aware of the possibilities. Non traveled folk tend to be more rigid, narrow in though and unable to grasp concepts that may be foriegn to their history.
As to the rest, my biggest beef is that he assumes all people are born entrepreneurs - even if he says otherwise. One must remember that although college can be a bore for a bright individual, it can be a saving grace for a person that is, well average.
I've been to a lot of places, and I still value things like the books that I've read, personal relationships, real experience etc etc a lot more.
Sometimes all travel contributes to is pretentiousness.
yes, just the fact of knowing a foreign language, (well), tells a lot about a person.
I don't even think spending time overseas in the industrialized west is much of an eye-opener. Appalachia would probably be just as much of an experience for a lot of people.
The horrible problem here is that unless one has lived abroad for a while in a country with a different language and culture than one's own, there's no way a person can see value in it. But if you don't have that experience, you will always drag behind those who do.
So, I think living in different parts of the world is only indirectly useful. The important thing is to live in a new environment among people with a different culture.
Sure they got better grades than you, but instead of an A on your test you got a B- and worked 10x less to get it.
College is also great for the socially motivated who love to party, 'hook up' and generally spend the entire day trying to sleep the previous night's craziness off and plan for the upcoming night debauchery.
Those people that skip this, are soreley missing a great experience of their life.
Remember, work will be there for the rest of your life. Don't just rush into it. From 24 to 64, that's 40 years or working for most people. you can start your startup just as well as 25, as you could at 20, but probably you would be much smarter at that age.
if you can pay for college, you could pay less to not work or go to college. and still party and have sex, if that's what you care about.
Nobody is measuring the importance of school, on how much fun you have with it, but what I am saying is that you can learn a lot, and yet have a great time, and yes even fun. Unless you are sociophobe, scrooge, or something, most humans want some fun on the side.
I thought CS was not that difficult, so I decided to minor in math, which I found it not that difficult so I challenged myself even more, and I decided to minor in Physics, and here I met my match. A hard ass professor, that would teach a lot, but it was almost impossible to get an A. My first ever class, where I felt no matter how much effort I put into it, I couldn't get an A. It taught me about humility, and learning my limitations.
And, yes, I did all that, plus lot's of volunteering, helping with alumni affairs, while having a part time job (washing dishes, and then just a lab proctor) at the same time.
There is nothing more awesome when you learn a lot, and yet can have fun and get laid at the same time.
To all you say that college is waste of time:
1. Maybe you should study something that you are going to get a great return out of it, or it will be challenging enough.
2. You might want to check if you have problems getting socially adjusted.
So, unless you quit school and become a millionare by now, you have no cred on saying college is a waste of time. College is a waste of time for many, b/c they don't use it. To those that are smart enough, it is a great learning experience. To those that think are too smart for college, maybe they are not taking the right/classes or programs. If you are a genius, what prevents you from finishing it in two years, get a masters, get a phd. and become the next albert einstein, invent cold fusion, a cure for H1V or something great? You can do that in college. It allows very smart people, to have access to great equipment, grant money and other resarch, things that you probably wont have in your own basement.
College gives kids a chance to create their own social identity, as seen through the eyes of their peers, rather than their parents.
If you are a social recluse, and spend most of your college years hiding behind your computer screen, then yeah, you might as well not go.
If you recognize that human beings are herd animals, and that in order to learn how to be a leader in the herd, you need to have a herd to practice on ...
I learnt some really important life lessons in college, most of them outside of class. I heartily recommend it. Challenge your expectations of what you can and can't do. You may be surprised by how much more you can grow.
What makes you think you would not have learned the same things (or equally valuable things) if you did not go to college, but did stop living with your parents?
There is something about being surrounded by other people just as clueless, inexperienced, and eager to experiment as you, that stimulates the creation of convention-defying ideas.
That said I would like to think I did not need college to become an intelligent, aware, adult. But it sure did help and it sure was fun.
People need to stop focusing on the black and white and become aware of the greyscale.
I got a job at 16 by sending out letters, and after I'd learnt the editors style he was saying I was the best writer there and amazed at my age. Right now, if reviewing hadn't destroyed my love for video games and movies, I have little doubt I could have been at a news paper for two years, and I'm only twenty. Essentially I could have been working as a writer for the entire time I "should" have been in university learning "journalism".
That's assuming you really take advantage of the teaching assistants, professor, and books out there. If you just party and take sociology classes, sure, college is going to mostly be a waste.
I've been leeching off my friends' college educations for years, and although I'd agree that it would be impossible to learn some things (like advanced programming topics) strictly from books, someone who knows the material and exactly how to explain things to me is just as good as a traditional instructor.
It's also better training for the real world, where I don't have time to take a course on everything I need to know.
Is college right for everyone? No, and on both sides of the equation. A very small group of people are too smart for it, get too constrained by it, etc. There is a much larger group of people who are not smart enough for it, or don't work hard enough to get there. For everyone else, it makes sense. To say that you won't make up the money (and he says 200,000 - 400,000, that is a 50,000 to 100,000 a year college! There are only about dozen that expensive! I'm in one of the top 20 in the country and it would cost me 120,000 for 4 years coming from out of state, if not for a scholarship), is ludicrous. I'm going to work from the age of 25 to the age of 65 unless I do something spectacular and can retire early, which MOST PEOPLE DON'T. So for most people it is 120,000 divided by 40 years, or $3,000 a year more they would have to make in order for it to be worth it, obviously most college grads are better off money wise if they go. And staying in state is even cheaper. His point is kind of ridiculous, just because he didn't like college, doesn't mean that he should recommend against it. I sure feel bad for his kids who will be trying to make it big on their new version of MySpace when all their friends graduate and start making real money.
If you subtract a base tuition of $35,000 from that, you're left with $15,000 per year as total living expenses. That's barely over $1200, and has to cover not only rent and food, but textbooks, computers, and other costs of campus life. Even assuming your kid doesn't do much partying, or need access to a car, $15k is hardly a lavish annual budget.
I'm not saying that private schools make sense a strict cost/benefit level; if you read my other posts in this thread, you'll see that I'm nearly as dubious as the author of the original article about the real economic benefits of a four-year degree. I just don't think that $200k is an unusually high total cost for four years of college.
What people don't understand is that there is SO, SO MUCH MONEY out there!!! You just have to find it!!! There are scholarship, grants, loans, work study, tuition waivers, in all shapes, sizes or flavors. If you really, truly want to go to college, then money should NOT be your impediment.
He said 200 - 400k which IMO is not unreasonable at the high end. Tuition @ $44 per student + living expenses @ 15k/year + lost wages @ 21k / year = 80k / year * 5 years = 400k.
IMO the problem is at the low end if you take 3 years to get out of a state school with a free ride you are only talking about (10k living expenses – free room and board + 21k lost wages) * 3 = ~93k.
I guarantee you, if I were only forgoing a wage of 21k/year, I'd finish school in a heartbeat!
The problem for a lot of people on this forum might be that they can no longer justify college economically: it won't improve your earnings if you're already making a good living, so it becomes more of a wouldn't-it-be-nice sort of thing, an expensive recreational activity to maybe finish someday after retirement.
The suggestions to encourage your kid to practice one skill, or start a business, are spot-on, at least from an economic POV. Learning a trade and having some business experience are much more effective at increasing your future potential earnings than a liberal arts education.
Personally, I dropped out after my freshman year to go work for a startup I've had a great time working in IT since then, and consistently out-earned my friends who stayed in school, even now that they've had 4-6 years in the workforce to catch up on experience.
That being said, I think that there is still a strong argument to be made for people eventually attending college. I still look forward to college as something I'll do in the future as a sort of "working vacation." I.e., just like faculty take a sabbatical to focus on their research, or spend time with their family, I hope to take a couple of years off to devote myself to intense, full-time study of some subject other than computers.
Maybe it's a good idea for a kid to work on his "startup" when he's barely old enough to shave, but probably not. The chances of success aren't higher when you're young and under-educated (likely the opposite), and you'll be squandering the one time in your life when you're allowed to get away with things and make mistakes.
Don't want to go to college? Fine. Travel the world. Have adventures. Play in a band. Make friends. Meet women. You're not likely to get the chance later, and you'll be a more compelling, charismatic person for the experience. Then go to college.
Once you've graduated, you'll have the rest of your life to start companies (and the charisma and friends you've picked up will help you on your way).
-edit-
Ok, I just closely read the piece instead of just skimming it. I do think college can be a waste of time for many people. However, the suggestion to instead outsource Facebook/MySpace application development to India is ridiculous. Also, what college costs $400,000? Ivy League tops out at about $40K/yr. UC Berkeley is about $9K per year.
I'd agree wholeheartedly with anyone who said that college should not be a default choice. There are all kinds of amazing opportunities for learning now that don't require a degree. He had me while he was arguing that college can be a big waste of time for a lot of people - but he starts to lose me when he starts to argue against college.
Personally, I have my doubts about anyone learning advanced math or physics without an intellectual environment similar to the one you'll get at college. I learned from my peers in a study group at least as much as from my professors. I suppose you don't strictly have to be enrolled - and maybe you could view webcasts and form a general study group outside the university - but that would be an argument against a formal degree, not an argument against a college education.
A high school grad with no skills isn't going to earn 50K a year as a dishwasher. But someone smart enough to get through Computer Science at MIT might easily blow through the 50K/year estimate. So the opportunity cost could actually be much higher than 400K.
Even if you do, 50K/year as a high school graduate (at least in the US) is being pretty optimistic. I don't think most of my friends in non-technical programs didn't even make that out of college. The average starting salary for a BS CS grad even is probably still only around 50K.
I have a feeling a really good hacker who can do consulting work, or join a startup, could easily earn more than 50K, and might be ahead of college grads by the time they do enter the workforce. Think of it this way - you might make more with PhD than a BS, but you won't necessarily earn more than you would with a BS+6years experience, and even if you do, you have to account for lost earnings.
Of course, High School only vs. BS is a very very different equation from BS only vs Ph.D. Personally, I do think that smart people who want a career in a technology related field would be well advised to attend college.
And if his kids are really entrepreneurial, as he claims, then they'll have the motivation to apply for scholarships like I did. I have received absolutely no financial help from my parents, and yet have accumulated very little debt.
I have learned most of my knowledge by teaching myself, and generally goof off during class if I even go (and no, that doesn't put me into the B group). But I've also been exposed to an incredible variety of people and built a huge network of friends and acquaintances in almost every industry.
Another point he seems to be missing is that to make a Facebook or Myspace app go viral, you need an initial network of users, typically your own friends. I hope his kids have fun trying to promote their app to all their high school friends who have gone off to college and lost contact.
I think what makes me most upset about this article, though, is that he's not using his views to make his own decisions, he's using them to make his kids' decisions. I feel really bad for his kids.
Finally, you could get significant returns if you invested your first years tuition by the end of 5 years.
I have seen statistics before about how having a degree positively influences your earnings potential, but I have yet to see anything but "feelings" from those claiming going to college has a negative effect.
If we're going on anecdotes, I seriously doubt I could have made that much going into work straight out of high school, and I seriously doubt there are many people that could.
I would bet there's a more people that could qualify for significant scholarships than could make significant money going straight into work.
For most people staying in school is probably a good idea. But, when your options are to stay in school or drop out and make 70+k / year staying in school seems less useful. Would these people make more money in 5 years with a collage degree well possibly, but they are making good money now and investments compound with time so it would have to be a huge increase to be worth it.
PS: Doctors get paid a lot latter in life but on average they don’t retire younger than most people.
See also http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10/the-greatest...
So, he found his calling in College? A waste of time? Could he have started this first business without attending college?
I agree with the premise of the article, though. Except for the $400,000 price tag. Where does that come from?