So you say you don't need to get an education?

[rogercbryan]

What you may have hated, others may enjoy!

If you had actually done it you would know... wasting your money doing things you are not trained to do is not fun at all...

[Desert_Star_Systems]

If you had actually done it you would know... wasting your money doing things you are not trained to do is not fun at all...

So you are assuming that I have not self-taught myself any of the skills I have now? That's a pretty bold assumption...

And "wasting your money doing things you are not trained to do is not fun at all to you".



Well I enjoyed learning how to operate a DSLR on my own, no training.
I certainly enjoyed the last 6 years of motorcycling without any prior training.
I actually enjoyed learning how to drive a 5-spd on my own, too.
I do enjoy learning how to operate a business with no prior training every day.


The difference between you and me is that I enjoy learning things on my own; whereas, you must enjoy to be taught (based on your arguments).

[Desert_Star_Systems]

I do agree that a college education is useful, and sometimes a MUST, depending on which field you are going into. Certainly if you want to be a doctor, you will need college education. If you want to be the branch manager for a bank you are going to need a college education.

However, if you want to be a successful small business owner, you do not need a college education.

We all have different opinions on what a "successful small business owner" is. My opinion and your opinion obviously differ and that's the thing...it's an opinion.

[MarvinEason]

Where are you going to school? What part of Ohio are you from?

University of Wisconsin online, and I am from Dayton. I live in Madison now though. I used to live in Alexandria, VA, and worked in DC.

[LSnyder]

I agree that a college degree is beneficial and aides you in making more money throughout your lifetime.
I also believe that there is no right or wrong answer to this question. This question can only be answered by the individual in the midst of making this decision.
With a little bit of age and experience to offer, I will say that I regret not continuing my education. There are not many of us when we are young that are considering entrepreneurialship. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I remember growing up and just wanting to get out there in the world and experience life.
Today, I work hard and help someone else live their dreams of making money as do most people. Right now and considering the path I chose in my life, this is the direction I need to maintain to guarantee income and continue to raise my children.
I am however, enrolling in an online college to better my education even if it takes several years. I would like to earn my degree as a paralegal, maintain my current job yet be able to be out there on my own and contract myself out to attorneys that are not looking for full time staff.
I am encouraging my children to continue their education when they are older even if it's just community college.
In our current economy, I do believe regardless of a degree or no degree you are earning the same out in the workforce because companies are just not offering higher paying salaries.

[GlobalWealth]

Terrible example... Do it for 5 more years... Or for 20 more years... Such short term thinking is why people drop out of college... Do you need your education today.. maybe not... can anyone look past today to 1..2..5..10 years down the road... 95% of you that decide not to go to college will regret it in the next five years...

By the way...

5 years later You'll have $99,000 more
20 years later you'll have $396,000 more (That would buy a pretty nice house!)
*This is also considering that you do not get any raises in the next 20 years..

Short term thinking is one of the main reasons people pass up college.

I did a spreadsheet in excel. It is a bit tough to follow, but basically assuming a $30,000/year tuition if the 18 year kid invests his saved $120,000 tuition (obviously from his parents) instead of going to school, gets a job earning just $25,000/year with a 2%/year raise and saves 10% of his admittedly low income and puts all the money in mutual funds earning a 10% return per year, he has almost $14m at retirement age.

If the same 18 year old kid goes to school for 4 years, gets a starting job at $50,000/year (twice what his ignorant counterpart makes) at age 22, gets a 7% raise per year (because with all that education he deserves 3.5X the raise every year), saves 10% of his income, and invests it in mutual funds earning him 10% per year, he has about $4.6m at retirement age.

Both scenarios assume no debt and no real financial knowledge beyond what you can read in one issue of Money magazine (money just tells you to invest in mutual funds). They also assume both people work at the regular job and not start a business and make wildly absurd amounts of money. Both people have the opportunity to do that however.

Of course this is a very hypothetical situation, but it illustrates the point that financially, it is possible to save the tuition, get a job, and be better off financially than someone with a college degree.

Of course the point of the topic was is it necessary for entrepreneurship.

And if I could figure out how to paste in an excel spreadsheet, I would be happy to show it. I will save it if someone wants to enlightened me.

[rogercbryan]

So you are assuming that I have not self-taught myself any of the skills I have now? That's a pretty bold assumption...

And "wasting your money doing things you are not trained to do is not fun at all to you".



Well I enjoyed learning how to operate a DSLR on my own, no training.
I certainly enjoyed the last 6 years of motorcycling without any prior training.
I actually enjoyed learning how to drive a 5-spd on my own, too.
I do enjoy learning how to operate a business with no prior training every day.


The difference between you and me is that I enjoy learning things on my own; whereas, you must enjoy to be taught (based on your arguments).

What?!?

A motorcycle and a 5sp? What in the hell are you talking about...

[rogercbryan]

University of Wisconsin online, and I am from Dayton. I live in Madison now though. I used to live in Alexandria, VA, and worked in DC.

My gf went to Madison... sounds like a fun school... I lived in Alexandria for a year before I bought my place in Cathedral Heights...

[Nigami Enterprise]

[QUOTE=rogercbryan;281202]
I agree that 75% of it will be forgotten but the 25% will give you an advantage over the next person who doesn't have those skills. QUOTE]

This is the bit I don't understand though, you just did a course that probable 10,000 other people just did and probable over a million have done. Who do you have an advantage over?? You have thousands of people who have just been taught to think the same way.

I went to college after leaving school for one semester and realised it just wasn’t for me. I figured I could learn more through other means and I believe I did.
I was very shy and lacked confidence when I left school and believe that if I continued with a degree I would of been stuck up the back of the room and forgotten about.
My first job not only brought me in more money then what the average college degree person would get. It made me have to stand up and brought out the confidence I needed.
I had earned $250,000 more than anyone I knew studying and this gave me the capital to start up my first successful business. Without this I would still be chasing my dreams.

I think at the end of the day we have to all understand everyone is different. Everyone is going to be bias towards their own ways and of course four years of college won’t hurt you and either will going straight out into the real world.

[Desert_Star_Systems]

Roger,

What successful business do you own and operate?

[StealYourDreams]

I did a spreadsheet in excel. It is a bit tough to follow, but basically assuming a $30,000/year tuition if the 18 year kid invests his saved $120,000 tuition (obviously from his parents) instead of going to school, gets a job earning just $25,000/year with a 2%/year raise and saves 10% of his admittedly low income and puts all the money in mutual funds earning a 10% return per year, he has almost $14m at retirement age.

Bolded is a major flaw in your argument. If a kid doesnt go to school the parents spend his/her college savings. The real difference would be the four years of savings at $2500 per year (in your example) while the person in college was saving zero. In other words, 10k to start.

[CalebHQ]

I would like to join in lol!!! Now before I get started I just want to say that Im thankfull I went to college because it set me on a journey that I am enjoying a lot, BUT I dont credit college for teaching me any thing. As a matter of fact I'm against college. I'm thankfull because I left to go to college and because of that I met many great business owners that I learned from and gained great knowledge from. With that here we go.

1. Mentorship

In my opinion its the most powerfull tool some one can acquire. You can give your self a big learning curve, above most others with the help of some one who has walked the walk and can talk the talk. You can acquire a good mentor for free because they understand sewing and reaping. Just seek them out. My first mentor was the owner of a Long John Silvers, now I have many more including a Pastor of a church, a Marriage Chaplin and a contruction door salesman.

2. School is expensive

Now I'm not putting a price on success or education by any means but with the cost of school, I believe the average cost is up to $60,000 now, you can put that torwords something you can own. When I ran my music venue I put $500 into it my first month and ran 10 live events out of it that same month. I payed my self back plus made enough money to pour back into fixing the place up and payed the rent/utilities. $500 not bad...

3. Books

There are lot of books out there that will teach you little nuggets of wisdom that can boost your confidence and raise your self esteem. They don't even have to be text books or big books. Books like The One Minute Entrepreneur (120 pages I think), Life is Tremendous (again 100+ pages) there are so many to choose from and plus some of these books will actually tell you what to read next (Life is Tremendous). Most books like these are written by people who have had some sort of success either in business, leadership, management or what ever you need.

4. Power of Association

It speaks for its self...trust me you wouldn't have wanted your only son to have hung out with me in college...I wasn't a bad kid I just made dumb descisions and unfortunately I associated with people that did the same (I believe we were all great kids just no real direction). I feel college is littered with people like this (again my opinion).

5. Free education

I have mentioned books, mentorship, who to listen too and those are all great ways of getting good "education". College could still work for you and here is how. See when I was in college I had class rooms filled with 100+ students and the teacher didn't give a crap if you were there or not. I've never done this but I'm willing to say you could sneak into any class you wanted to as long as it was big enough for you to blend in with. You could give your self a college education on your terms and take any class you want for free. Just network with a lot of people and get to know the schedules.

See making money to me is not the meaning of making it . There is more too it than that. To me making $20,000 a year off work I did one time (meaning I don't do it any more) is a lot better than the college educated guy working 40+ hours a week trying to make the same $55,000 a year. See I just have to figure out how to duplicate the $20,000 2,3 or however more times I want/need to.

[GlobalWealth]

Bolded is a major flaw in your argument. If a kid doesnt go to school the parents spend his/her college savings. The real difference would be the four years of savings at $2500 per year (in your example) while the person in college was saving zero. In other words, 10k to start.

Of course this was a hypothetical situation, not meant to show a real situation. My point was that "IF" you took the tuition that your parents saved for you and invested it in mutual funds, you would be better off in the long run.

[pboychuk]

I changed my major to business, and thats what made me want to drop out of college, because all they care about here is how to work in a corporation, No entrepreneurship program, nothing.. its weak. I decided to take a real estate and risk management elective this semester before i drop out because I thought they would be fun, I cant really complain, but I am not going to say they will be very beneficial in the future. Maybe its just because I go to a huge public college, or have not gotten deep enough into my major, but honestly, if I was to waste another 1.5 years here and graduate, it would not be worth the opportunity cost.

Most things that would require that I actually attain the knowledge can be learned from experience or google.

You make a good point.. you chose the wrong major is what I get from what you say. You sound like an educated and determined person. What if you had gone to school for business or more specifically entrepreneurship.. You probably would have loved it!

I agree that 75% of it will be forgotten but the 25% will give you an advantage over the next person who doesn't have those skills. I don't think it was until I reached 10 employees that I started to think about my old management classes. It wasn't until my annual budget for advertising went over $500,000 that I pulled out my old marketing text book, it wasn't until I started doing business in Europe that I started using lessons learned from International Business and Marketing Classes...

I would have hated trying to learn all these skills on my own... These skills that had been put on a shelf in my mind from years ago that I never thought I'd need.

Still thinking short term... still thinking how an education will effect me today... not thinking 5-10-20 years down the road....

[pboychuk]

Of course this was a hypothetical situation, not meant to show a real situation. My point was that "IF" you took the tuition that your parents saved for you and invested it in mutual funds, you would be better off in the long run.

I think this is besides the point. And i hate those examples that automatically assume that you will constantly earn 5% per year on all your money sitting in investment accounts. Maybe I am wrong about this, but I am still young and starting out in a sucky economy.

Anyways, managing money is something that cannot be taught, I think it is just part of ones personality. I can guarantee you 50% of kids in my situation would be driving a $30k car. but I drive a piece of shit, which saves tons of money on gas, insurance, repairs and time value of money.. This mindset is reflected in all my finance decisions. Next year when I buy my first house, I could most likely pay for it in cash, but don't want all my money tied up. But, I sure as hell will put all the money that I could have been wasting while i'm paying $375/mo rent toward principal and pay off the mortgage in 2-4 years. I would love to know the average percentage of lifetime income Americans spend on interest, rent and other money pits.
I truly believe wealth is attained by being financially smart, regardless of your income.. Because even millionaires are in debt.