via the FT, yet again:
College a waste of time and money for kids
By James Altucher
Published: February 12 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 12 2008 02:00
Last week I made an off-the-cuff comment in my column that stirred up several e-mails asking if I was serious. What I said was that I had no intention of sending my kids to college. I was dead serious. I find the thought of college abhorrent, particularly for 18- to 20-year-olds. Kids have a lot of energy at that point, and to deaden it with a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that energy.
I can’t remember anything good coming from my freshman year – other than starting a business with a few of my classmates, which inspired me for subsequent businesses.
We set up a company called “CollegeCard”, which offered debit cards to college students. This was 1987, before credit cards were common for college kids. Parents would send us money, which we’d deposit in the student’s account with us, and the students could then use their cards up to that amount. My role was to convince every business in town not only to accept our card but also to offer discounts to its users. At night I ran the delivery business, which delivered from every restaurant that accepted our card. I was notoriously incapable of generating any tips, though one of my partners, Wende Biggs (daughter of Barton) always got great tips. (I had an unrequited crush on her.) Thankfully, she’ll never read this because she now lives on a farm in France.
Here is what’s wrong with college.
First, and foremost, it’s too expensive. To send a kid to college you need from $200,000 to $400,000. That’s insane. There’s no way the incremental advantage they get from having a diploma will ever pay back that amount. Perhaps for the first time the opportunity cost (a phrase I remember from Economics 101) of college does not equal the extra profits generated by the degree.
Second, I don’t believe in a balanced education. Most colleges require students to take a smattering of art, maths, sciences and so forth. Taking 10 courses a year on wildly different topics, with enormous homework responsibilities, not to mention droning, boring professors for at least eight of the 10, is the surest formula for creating complete non-interest and inability to remember anything in any of the topics covered. What a waste of $400,000.
And third, there are far better uses of time. One reader asked what her kid should be doing instead of college. Here are some of my responses:
1. Working – not just a labour or service job, but there are internet-content jobs out there. I have high school and college kids working for me who are making over $50,000 a year from writing gigs on the internet. Scour Craigslist for opportunities, your favourite blogs, or websites related to your favourite interests. Companies are dying for good content. Create your own blog, get yourself noticed, build relationships with other content companies and communities.
2. Take half the fee for one semester, give it to your kid, and tell him or her to start a business. Not every youngster has entrepreneurial sensibilities, but it’s always worth trying once. The cost for starting a business is next to zero, so it’s a viable alternative. What business should they start? For one thing, now that Facebook and MySpace have open development platforms, try out a few applications for these platforms; for a few hundred dollars you can outsource development of these applications to India, and get your friends to start trying them. Make sure they are viral (that is, a message should appear “click here to get all your friends to try XYZ”) and see which ones are a success. I mention Facebook and MySpace because every kid is familiar with these sites and comfortable with the subtleties, and it’s this comfort that can create the best businesses.
3. Spend a year trying to become good at one thing. Whatever your child’s greatest interest is, whether cooking, chess, writing, maths, there are so many resources on the internet available for learning that college is almost the last place a kid should go to pursue a passion. Intense immersion in a favourite topic is the surest way to become an expert in that field.
And what about travel? Well, I’m not a big believer in that unless it’s completely supervised. There’s plenty of time to travel later in life. But right at home there’s a plethora of opportunities that can far exceed the value of a college education at a 10th of the cost, and lead to greater experience and opportunities in career, wisdom, and life development.
I don’t think I’ll send my kids to college, either. I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet, but one year of real work at a real information job is exponentially more valuable than the visa to upper-crustdom society calls “a diploma.”
Colleges are the most overvalued asset class in the United States. While there are certainly some great profs out there, I would say that over 90% of academic disquisitions on policy or strategy in any area I’m familiar with (politics, geopolitics, and economics/finance … global macro, basically) is utterly wrong. Output from generalist academia and nonprofits, in fact, constitutes one of the greatest long-run contrary indicators around.
I agree with the general premise, that college isn’t worth it in the long run, especially at a traditional state school. Going to Iowa State, getting a communications degree, is not worth the 40-80 k you’ll be spending on the degree, merely to make 35k at a dead end job. The break even point is ten years down the road, at which point you’ll be significantly below where you’d be if you worked, and with only marginally superior earning power.
However, where I disagree is your premise is that all high school graduates are capable of immediate success. The way society is set up today, society coddles children until their 18th birthday, then throws them out on their butt into the real world. Unless there is a significant paradigm shift in the way parents raise their children, I find it a reach.
I learned very little from the provided academics in college. The biggest things I learned were from being in a fraternity (if you can believe that). How to organize and produce events, how to budget and how to “advertise.” Sure, we drank, but we also were very involved in community service.
My degree has nothing to do with my current position. The electives I was forced to take were, as I expected at the time, useless. The administration in my college was atrocious. I once had to drive ten hours because they were too incompetent to send a transcript to my prospective graduate school.
I remember two professors that were thought provoking. Most of the others were lazy, contradictory, or bi-polar. I even had one computer science professor that did not speak English. Since most of the class was Chinese students, it worked out fine, except for me.
College was a waste for me, but at least I went to a State University of NY to save money and I do have a great job making six figures. Of course, my degree probably helped me get it, but I am not using anything I learned in college.
But, Mr. Altucher, my question is what about doctors and other professional designations? They must go to college to be eligible for medical school I believe.
Maybe there exists an opportunity for someone to find a way to help these candidates avoid the useless part of college and still prepare for the next level of study for their profession.
Thanks for the post.
One other note…
After reading Scott’s comment, it occurs to me to point out that high schools could do a much better job training people for what is important in the real world like managing one’s financing and understanding investments and the time value of money. It is terrible that we are not taught this beginning at a young age in school. I guess it is better for American society if kids just learn how to spend. At least that is what the TV seems to be telling us.
I, like most, had to teach myself finance out of necessity.
Brian,
I am in agreement on most points. Engineering, physics, etc obviously require substantial educational investment, but even there, the amount of schooling required by an American med student is a jaw-droppingly high barrier to entry, erected by the American Medical Association, which is effectively the doctors’ union.
I always learned 10-100x as much on my own than in class. You learn a lot more about things you’re interested in. Even in many finance-related classes, I could have learned them much faster through work than in a plodding classroom setting.
College is fundamentally a credential. Then you get another credential, like a Goldman Sachs analyst position, which supercedes whatever college you went to.
If you can get your kids a gateway to a job credential, that’s an incomparably superior way to move them forward than sending them to some campus to waste at least two of the four years. The vast majority of college graduates could learn what they learn in class much more efficiently through real-world work …
College can be a waste of time or a wonderful experience. The student must pick courses carefully and work to get the most out of them that he can. For the motivated student, college represents a time when he can totally focus on learning, and acquire a toolbox of knowledge that will be invaluable during life. I majored in Accounting and Economics, and took a lot of Philosophy, some science, and some engineering. I don’t regret any of it.
I don’t think the med school requirements are ridiculous. An undergraduate major in a science, plus some humanities, and then three years of med school is not that ridiculous. There’s a lot to learn out there.
Good. Keep your kids out of college. Lessens competition and makes it cheaper for my kids.
I guess I’m the only one here who’ll give a contrary opinion but before I begin, I have a confession to make, I’m still in college. I’m currently a fifth year senior studying English at UCLA. I was originally a Biology major my second year but switched to English to pursue creative writing.
Damn and I pressed the enter button to fast. Anyway, you bring up several good points for your argument. The cost of education is staggering. I’m probably going to be in debt for at least ten more years after I graduate seeing that I’m relying on a whole batch of loans to pay for school. And you’re right, a degree does not guarantee anything for the future, it merely lends more doors for young people to put their foot in.
But there are several generalizations in your post. Not all professors are boring, droll, and only concerned with their own personal academic pursuits although a lot of them fit this bill, especially in the lower gen ed courses. But there are a few diamonds that make the experience worth it and helps kids find their direction. I would have to say a lot of the valuable knowledge I gained from college is not just restricted within the academic field, but also in life. I have to learn to make rent, keep my apartment in order, learn to cook, how to socialize within so many different circles, keep up with school, and develop my personal relations. I’ve made friends I know I can count on, how to deal with situations, and have gone through a lot of dumb mistakes to get where I am. That’s not to say I’m not going to keep on doing them, I probably will get drunk after midterms with my friends and maybe do something stupid like attempt to skateboard down campus in my undies. I don’t know. I know people who didn’t do the college route and there are several who’ve made successes out of themselves. It’s a completely admirable way of getting up and out on your own. But don’t disregard college, it’s just like not going to college, its an alternative. It isn’t for everybody but everyone should at least consider what benefits they could reap from it.
College isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure.
Another good way to gain the experience and training needed is to convince your child to enter the Armed Services. Not only do they learn a trade skill, but they also learn essential things like how to manage time (that’s the biggest skill wanted nowadays), balance workloads, deal with stress, learn how to work their way up the leadership ladder, and how to commit themselves to projects to achieve success.
I was in the Air Force for 5 years as a Warrant Officer (that was from having a cheap tech degree when I went in). My management skills taken from that job and applied to the real world then got me a job that preferred a college degree. Experience is more important, IMHO. Now, I have 10 years in an IT company that I can add to my growing skills as a technical lead and a network engineer.
If anything, the military also teaches you how to actually enjoy life in the civilian world.
I believe that kids between the ages of 18 and 24 should not go to school. Instead, they should work and work hard until they are 25 years old, and then go to school. They will have worked out most of the partying by then, and realize that you actually have to pursue skills and the proper education to get the job you really want (which they’ll probably have figured out by then). Most kids going to school right out of high school are not disciplined or motivated to get any training for a job better than grocery shelf stockperson.
Firstly I think allot of students and parents of students focus too hard on getting into ivy league school. Of course try to get in (not because it is better than a state school but because having the ivy league name on your resume makes you more hirable) but it is not the biggest loss in the world if you don’t get in. Try affordability, location, certification, type of professors and class size as reasons to go.
Secondly the current educational system is flawed. It is still focused on sending its graduates into a factory line as opposed to service jobs where team work, innovation and people skills are more important than memorization. It has been a know fact for educators that the system is flawed but they have yet to figure out how to get the system to change. One example: The Bell Curve… basically most people in America, according to the bell curve in the grading system, are poor thinkers.
Finally LOL an education that costs 200-4000K is NOT worth it unless you are in an ivy league school and you BETTER hope that you are on the “A” part of the Bell Curve while your there. Otherwise you will be wondering like many other graduate (and MBA students) why they invested so much just to end up at a job 5 years later still earning less than 40,000 a year. Maybe in 10 years it will pay off, but mostly because you have EXPERIENCE not education… and you will still wonder where the 80-100 dollar pay day will happen cause after 10 years from when you graduated your earning 60.
Or maybe I’m a little jaded…
Harvard/Yale educations cost WAY more than the listed 200 or so k’s. Unless your kid is one of the real genius-virtuosos who will be in the top 10 percent of the Ivies, who got in solely on academic merit, you are expected to donate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to the university endowment before actually applying. It is a passport to the pinnacle of global society much more than anything else.
College is a necessity, for now, because of the exaggerated premium that society places on it, not because of what students actually learn. I call it the “passport premium.” Other, more productive mechanisms are already evolving, which serve as useful passports and which are also much more educational.
I agree with PhilWil’s comment. My opinion on MBAs is that it’s pretty much a union. You learn the organizational dialect. Everyone within the union considers you a brother. Not many people outside the union care, largely because MBAs have a pretty bad reputation as “big picture” types who cannot suffer the “tedious detail” of actually running a firm, and who have conditioned themselves to obsequious management-speak to the point of eliminating their creativity.
Ummm….. not to spoil the tone here, but I think we need a reality check, Eric. I personally know many people whose children got into Ivies on merit who did not donate hundreds of thousands, much less millions of dollars, to the colleges’ endowments before they applied. These are just very bright, accomplished kids who make the final cut. I think the whole Ivy-obsession is silly, but let’s not overstate things.
And don’t get too carried away about MBA’s, either. Maybe somebody majors in English, then decides he wants to be a businessman. OK, he knows no accounting, finance or business law. An MBA can make sense to get up to speed. He might look back and say he shouldn’t have been and English major (but many would not), but given where he is, the MBA makes total sense.
This is what happens when you blog too much… I was referring to, and should have said, Harvard and Yale. Columbia, Penn, and to some extent Princeton are still a lot more meritocratic.
Fair enough.
…….. and I should have said that my statement SPECIFICALLY refers to Harvard and Yale as well. Prospective applicants are simply not donating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of applying.
lamicus, nothing personal, but you provide an example, if you can write creatively, why do you need college? If you cannot write creatively, how will college really help? Five years of expenses for an English major and how will you pay back the loan? I mean no offense and I hope I am wrong, but chances are you will not meet that obligation through creative writing.
True, college isn’t necessary for my creative pursuits, there are plenty of writers who’ve had no higher education that have made their marks in the literary world. But being in this environment allows me to circulate my work, get insightful constructive feedback, and make future connections within this field. Someone told me once that college is all about networking, I think that’s half true. As for my loans, I never thought for a second that creative writing will help me take care of them. I’m interested in pursuing teaching, there are many programs out there for newly graduates such as Teach For America that’ll not only help jumpstart my resume, give me a reasonable stipend, and add bonus cash to help pay off my loans, it’ll also give me the opportunity to travel to a different part in America and gain that teaching experience where it’s most needed.
Like I said, it’s not for everyone. It works for me and I respect those that can do without.
Sure, college is a waste of money.
So are sex, travel, entertainment, sports, art, booze, good food, etc. etc.
MF
Mike, how dare you demean sex, travel, entertainment, sports, art, booze and good food by comparing them to college! At best, college is “all the above” rolled into one very overpriced package!
Seriously, technical studies and foreign languages require detailed instruction. Liberal arts and finance do not.
re lamicus, majoring in creative writing seems to me a lot like majoring in guitar, as opposed to starting a garage band.
The perks that you mention amount to subsidies for your particular major at the expense of other majors. (Not that any TFA alums/ dropouts I’ve talked to would *ever* consider it a “perk” of any sort, college-debt forgiveness or not … but that’s a different story)
Geez, naw man. I’m not majoring in creative writing, I’m not going for the concentration. You can certainly do one without the other, write without going to school that is but before I went to college, I used to read Stephen King and wrote about flesh eating zombies. Now I read Steinbeck, Woolf, Chaucer, and Pynchon. I’ve been exposed to a lot of classical and modern literature in my 3 year tenure at UCLA, it’s bound to leave an influence on my style. I’ve taken screenwriting classes, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Art Theory, Philosophy, this list goes on. I’m proud of the knowledge I’ve gained, it’s given me a larger understanding of the world and that’s the “perk”.
And Teach for America is a program open to ALL majors. My friend is an Organic Chem major and he’s applying for it as well. Look it up.
All that stuff has to do with my career, and school isn’t necessary for that. It simply offers some opportunities.