I believe it’s the desire of many people who have schizophrenia. They want to go to college. They want to a have a normal life. But is normal life an exceptional life? I read the book The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg. It’s an awesome book that explains how important is to have the mindset of an entrepreneur (instead of having an employee mindset). He explains that many, but many people who had success in life don’t even have a college degree. Besides that, college can be expensive.
It’s a thing that we need to think about. Is college really the right path for me? What do I want to do with my life? Do I want to be an employee or an entrepreneur?
Even while having this disease you can open your own business and study a lot to become what you want. When I say study a lot, I don’t mean going to college, but learn with real life situations. Of course if you want to become a physician, you need to go to college. But maybe college is not the right path for you and will be just a waste of time and money.
Collage is easy and consistent, a low risk strategy.
Being entrepreneur takes more effort and luck. without having success in such career path you “lose” the money you could have gained in a relatively safe way. More than that, sometimes in a high risk career paths, people lose a lot of money and left with debt for a long time.
I think that going to college is a good idea.
I value education a lot.
A lot of professions require college education, like being a professor, a teacher, a doctor a lawyer,
even a social worker.
In some other areas, college education is not a must but an advantage.
Even if you want to start a business you still need to educate yourself,
albeit not necessarily with college education.
It can be just a course or books for self study.
One thing I can think of that doesn’t require education is the police forces.
yeah I’m looking for trade schools instead of colleges. I think some education is important, in my opinion the straight out of high school to the workforce gets you nowhere without some more in depth skills.
I think the early years of college are a scam, its kinda a trigger for me. how much time is wasted on general education requirements when you already know what you want to study. college isn’t for everybody and many of us find alternative routes to educate ourselves.
if I had it all to do over again, I think after high school I would have worked and saved 2 or 3 years. then done my gen ed requirements at a community college then transferred into my major
Trade schools provide certificates, apprenticeships & journeyman education in positions such as plumbers, mechanics, welders, technicians, construction and machinists etc… These are skilled labor jobs that pay higher than minimum wage.
College offers courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, marketing, statistics, organizational behavior, financial accounting, managerial accounting etc… that are all foundational building blocks if you want to be a business owner or work in the field of business.
Universities I find are for those elites students that can study well and earn either their undergraduate or graduate degrees.
If I was 18 years-old again, I wouldn’t follow the college path as well. I started studying Physical Education at university and then stopped it to study Graphic Design (just to realize that college isn’t the right path for me at all). I agree that we need to study with mentors and self-educate ourselves. But there is a myth around society that college is the right path for everyone. It’s a myth and it should be destroyed. An artist can become an excellent and exceptional artist with no college degree.
A college degree is a dime a dozen nowadays. It’s a great path to get out of the lower echelons of society and move up the ladder. I was so close to graduating but I dropped out due to the difficulty of the subject matter and my psychosis. Looking back, I would have went to an easier school and picked an easier major. With an above average IQ, I think anyone can graduate with the easier degrees and the lower ranked schools. I should have chosen this path and I would have had a decent chance of getting a high paying job or a career going. Instead, I looked at ranking and prestige. I went to a very liberal school far away from home. I was naive and very stupid. I didn’t fit in. My mom said I was a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. I think she was right!
I did my Bachelors in Business Administration (BBA) and now I am setting up my own scrap metal trading business. I think if you want to set-up your own business then you don’t really have to study in a college but college provides you with lot of contacts and those contacts can be used in your business.
Other than that if someone wants to become a programmer or a doctor then college is a must. But in today’s society and so was the case earlier too… the thing is that people skills are needed to excel at your own business. I see a lot of college graduates with no people skills at all… they fail at making it good at a job or a business.
Are you sure that college is a low risk strategy? I have many colleagues that are unemployed while hanging their ■■■■■■■ college degrees with their hands. At least here in Brazil they didn’t have to pay for college because it’s free at public universities. But imagine if they had to pay for their college degree? I know that in US you generally need to pay for a college degree. Imagine how bad it is paying for it and have no guarantees of a job. You don’t need to put your ass on fire and lose a lot of money in order to open your business. You can for example work as a translator and earns a lot of money with it and spend no money. Here in Brazil, English schools hire English teachers with no college degrees. They just need to know the English language.
Your mom is mean. But I didn’t understand what you wanted for your life. Things are not generally a matter of IQ (IQ is ■■■■■■■■, read some stuff by Ellen J. Langer and Howard Gardner and you will understand it). If you love music, maybe learning mathematics will be a stupid thing to do.
I think everyone made really good points. I just think you open more doors for yourself with a degree. Without a degree you have less doors, but you can make it. I’m not the brightest person in the world I need as many doors open as possible. After being in the military and seeing the different job responsibilities of someone with a degree and someone without a degree I’m pretty dead set on accomplishing a degree. There isn’t one way to do anything.
I have a friend who owns a painting company and he’s a college dropout. He makes good money and drives a Lexus. He is a bright guy though. I think if I tried to do something like that I would get pummeled in anything that he does on a daily basis.
It depends on the degree, for the sake of clarity, the comparison was made between degrees that lead you to profitable careers. Additionally it depends on your performance and the collage you are studying in, some are more prestigious than others. In other words your friends might be incompetent and it’s probably their fault that they are in such situations, especially when you describe that people with no education get jobs that in western countries require a degree.
Again. “even” paying for a degree is a low risk strategy.
From a entrepreneur perspective, “Imagine” you open business, you invest in a place, you work alone endless hours just to get it going, you pay professionals like accountants to do some work you aren’t qualified to do, you get the products you will sell … if you function like a normal person and quick enough you might open it for business after a month when you work your ass off and not get paid a dime, instead your living costs money, you are renting a place and you have made a considerable investment to get it going. Not everyone can pull it off, and most smart “entrepreneurs” will cut their costs at this point and get away with just a small debt, thanking god they realized how silly was their idea.
Now at the next part the true gamble begins, just like in a casino game. your newly open business might miss it completely, few customers, blame it on a bad marketing or on some american franchise shop that perhaps seen the same potential of income in the place you have found- and now taking your customers away. you gain nothing and you spend money, considerable amounts of money. Two months in that pace and you have to take a loan big enough to buy a new car or maybe to pay for an entire collage degree.
Most people lose their money and get into a life long debt after such adventures and I’ve seen a lot of them around here. but few succeed, despite that, believing that you have something special that will make you succeed is like believing that you’ll win the lottery on your next ticket. Most people that open businesses think they are cleaver, and most of them truly are. you are not alone in this competition.
I believe that I made my point clear.
Definetely, in the worst case you’ll have an asset that still might worth something
I have a Master’s degree that cost $70,000 in student loans and was able to work for 5 months in 2009…I can do the book work but I’m disastrous with other people. I got my loans erased due to disability but it was still a waste of time and money. I wouldn’t have gone to college at all except it was what was expected of me while I could function. I would not go if I could go back in time.