There are many reasons kids go to college. All of them, in my opinion, are only partially good reasons to go to college and maybe even wrong reasons to justify going to college.
In most cases, the answers I give below can be gotten better, faster, and cheaper through alternative routes.
And in some cases the answers I give below are just incorrect myths people still hold about college.
But here are the myths that keep people going to college:
Myth #1) You can't get a job without going to college.
Some people will say to me, "it's not all about the money". That's fine. But college costs money so you want some sort of return on it, either intellectual or social or financial. So I'm addressing financial first because this is the first reason always given me.
The reality is: college is less and less important for getting a job. In fact, the % of unemployed with at least some college or an associates degree is now greater than 50% for the first time ever.
Additionally, there is much anecdotal evidence that college is not as necessary as it used to be. Google, in fact (despite what Eric Schmidt has said) has recently said it will not longer look as strongly at college degrees when considering applicants.
They know that a piece of paper does not equal value.
Additionally, there are now many ways you can make money without going to college. This is perhaps fodder for another post but I encourage any 18 year old to look into this. Particularly since you get a four year head start and avoid $100,000+ in college costs.
Myth #2) You can't be a lawyer, a banker at Goldman Sachs, or a brain surgeon without a college degree.
The reason I put this under the category of myth is for two reasons.
1) You actually need more than a college degree for all of the above.
2) Many people at the age of 18 don't know what they want to do. They may think, "I want to be a lawyer" but why do they think that?
Its not so bad to be a doctor but maybe first spend a gap year cleaning bedpans in a hospital and see if it's really in you to care for people in that way before you go to college, then medical school, then residency, then you are locked in for life to career you don't want.
As for being a banker at Goldman Sachs: trust me when I say you can be a banker without any degree at all and you will make a lot more money if you do it on your own rather than work at a big bank like Goldman Sachs unless you are the top banker there after 20 years of 100 hour a week work.
Myth #3) Kids get socialized at college.
In other words, they learn how to be adults and get out of the parent's house, etc.
A couple of answers to this myth:
1) They are still spending time largely with other kids of the same age and demographic. This is not the real world so it's not like they are really being socialized into adulthood.
2) It shouldn't cost $100,000 for my kids to learn how to have friends.
Myth #4) This their last chance to learn culture, the arts, literature, and many things they will never learn once they have a job.
This is simply not true for several reasons:
1) it's been shown that anyone forgets a fact 45 minutes after hearing it if they are not interested. Most of the time, kids are not interested in the courses they are REQUIRED to take. So they end up learning nothing.
2) There are 100s of ways now to learn things online. Coursera, for instance, or many other sites like codeacademy, or whatever.
3) There's such a thing as a library. People can get books out of a library for free. And for each worthwhile book there are volumes of criticism and discussion groups, etc online. And again, if they aren't interested in the topic, they won't learn - with or without college.
Myth #5) You Learn Skills for the Real World.
My story. I went to a top college. I majored in Computer Science. I was great at it. Went to one of the best grad schools in the country for CS.
Then worked a job on campus for years doing programming. Never had any problems with the programming part.
Then when I got a job in the "real world" (HBO, a TV network in NYC), I was simply incompetent at programming.
I had to be sent to two months of remedial school to learn the basic programming that would be needed for me to accomplish my job. I was 27 years old. I could've done that in two months at the age of 18 and skipped all that time.
Because of those courses and the job experience I got, I was able to start a successful software company several years later.
Another example: I'm obsessed with writing. But I didn't even take an English class in college. Instead, since I left graduate school I've read non-stop and written almost every day. 100% of the reading I've done in life (1000s of books) has happened after I left school.
Because of my writing I've created many opportunities for myself. None of which was enabled by going to college.
Myth #6) You Create a Network you can use later in life.
This hasn't been my experience at all. In fact, I'm one of those people who have almost 5000 friends on Facebook. None of those people are from college years (some are from grad school but none of them are professionally connected to me).
So maybe this is true for some people but I think if are honest and work hard then networking is one of those things that compounds in life and you will build your network.
Myth #7) The economics of college.
Many studies (mostly done by colleges of course) state that people who go to college, 20 years later, make more money than people who do not go to college.
One of the studies (done by Georgetown) even called me out as someone people shouldn't listen to.
In any case, this statistic may or may not be true. We have no idea and it probably doesn't matter.
First, we have no idea: all of these studies fail Statistics 101. There is no control group.
What you have to do is take 1000 people accepted to college and tell 500 of them they can NEVER go to college and then see who makes more money.
This is the only way to do this study and it's never been done. The problem is selection bias. People who have gone to college over the past 50 years have tended to come from wealthier families.
Now, there is a direct correlation between future salary and the salaries of your parents. But that's all we know.
Second, because of the blossoming of opportunities to make money via the Internet there are more ways than ever for a young 18 year old who refuses to take on any debt, to easily surpass the income potential of someone who doesn't start until 22 and has an extra $100,000 in debt to get rid of.
The sad thing is this: because of these myths, kids still go to college. And now, as a country, we've just passed $1.1 trillion in student loan debt. Crushing the dreams and inspirations of potential artists, inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs.
It's not all about the money. But it shouldn't be all about the debt either.
Post Credit:
James Altucher, Author, entrepreneur, podcaster, wall street investor
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