… as I’ve come to learn, is you’re not learning and mastering any concrete, valuable skills along the way that attracts opportunity to you and makes people want to keep you around. After all, what is the world going to do with a flimsy piece of paper with some calligraphy on it?
Don’t get me wrong: I am not totally condoning the schools. But remember it’s still a big business and you’re just another source of income. Make sure you’re getting what you pay for – and I DON’T mean a 4.0 GPA. By itself, GPAs prove nothing.
If you have a well-thought out mission and a concrete, actionable goal that absolutely requires a degree. Great, the education system will take you in … and it’s a fair trade. Tit for tat.
If you don’t, the education system will take you in anyway… and attempt to steal not only your money and your freedom to think, but the most valuable commodity you have: your time.
This is a $35,000 lesson brought to you for free by yours truly. And that doesn’t even include all the indirect and the opportunity costs. So I urge you to think about that before you mindlessly “invest” time OR money in getting yet another degree from yet another educational institution — because even free tuition isn’t quite free. I’m also taking time off for myself to do the same.
You may even find that there are other cheaper and more stimulating avenues to obtain the education you need. Education is NOT a monopoly. No matter what anyone would have you believe.
As my good friend Clément Yeung often quips, more or less: “The 1′s and the 0′s are becoming more visible everyday.”
Another note. No matter which avenue you take, you should always be self-educating yourself. Always. If you want to get into the habit of self-educating yourself, pick up this book. I’ve been implementing these a lot of the strategies mentioned in this book all my life and to see it in print felt liberating. I highly recommend it.
If, for some reason, you don’t have a spare $14 lying around (I don’t see why not if you have thousands of dollars to sink into a piece of paper with your name on it), check out this blog as a starting point. You can also watch some TED talks to get the wheels in your brain spinning with ideas. People with ideas (or the ability to build upon existing ideas) and the will to act on them are the real movers and shakers. Ideas and action are the only recession-proof “degrees” you can ever obtain.
And if you’re interested in hearing a new point of view to challenge your beliefs about the education system, check out these FREE books available online:
The Underground History of American Education
*Getting off soapbox.*
Related posts:
- Dear college students: Wake up and smell the coffee. Then drink it.
- Get rid of dead weight: Channel frustration into creative ideas into action
- Pancakes and applesauce: why I’ve been drained of energy (and why you should care)
- Racism & discrimination: Seeing beyond the past and aiming for respect instead
- I think my overprotective parents made a huge mistake
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem with collecting degrees is your are from the start conditioned to have desires which you did not ever have. No one seems to enjoy school or work, but they do it because they are conditioned, they do not see that they have better dreams and desires that can make them feel good and make life enjoyable instead they subject themselves to the different ways of manipulative mind control in the form of t.v. shows, movies, news etc because they think it might make them happy since everyone else seems to do it.
Totally random of me to say this but I’ve come to a new understanding after listening to “Your Wish is Your Command” Kevin Trudeau’s cd set.
Putting that aside, people who say that education will provide a secure future, I will laugh in their face. It is not secure, and it is not guaranteed, you will be guaranteed to learn and get the training but not so much the job thats dependent on many factors which now seem to be changing.
Mac
A degree only proves that you have the ability to persevere. It make syou not smarter than the lifelong learner who has only a diploma. The paper says, “this person can set a goal, accomplish, and retain a standard amount of knowledge in the area of their study.”
The richness and joy of life is not bound in $150 textbooks. It is in the world around us and open to our exploration.
That said, school and formal education absolutely has value. But it is a SUPPLEMENTAL value, not an absolute one.
ForNot´s last blog ..Terminal Holla
I go in parallel with you here. Degrees serve no purpose if you don;t have the right character to go with it. Obtaining a degree is not in itself a prove of one’s ability, it is how one goes in life that proves the extent of one’s knowing.
I loved being in school, but that was because I’m curious and college allowed me to be surrounded by other curious people. Unfortunately, my undergrad and advanced degrees amounted to little more than expensive membership cards. I think they’re both at the bottom of a box somewhere:)
Great post.
Josh Hanagarne´s last blog ..The Entrepreneur’s Magic Bullet