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

[rogercbryan]

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

I thought I would take a different approach to an old conversation. There are a ton of posts on here about whether or not you need a formal eduction. There are a great many points of view that can be taken in this conversation. What I'd like to do is to come up with a list of the top 10 reasons you do not need a formal education. I am talking about attending university or college.

When you apply practical statistics:

Sources:
WikiAnswers - Average salary of a college graduate versus a high school
College Vs. No College - Forbes.com

You will see that the average salary for someone with a degree is $52,000 while the average salary for someone with out a degree is $30,400

This is a basic argument that people use to say that you SHOULD go to college.

When you apply generalization:
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard
Richard Branson never wet to University
*There are a whole slew of successful people who did not get a formal education.

What % of Fortune 500 CEO's have a degree? While I can't seem to find an exact answer I was able to find that 67% have a Masters or better.

Source: So you want to be a CEO? at Taibros.net

I pose a few questions...
- Is having a college degree an advantage in the business world?
- Are you more likely to be considered for a job if you have a degree?
- If you are seeking venture capital or loans for a start-up (with out previous experience or sales history) are you more likely to get a loan with a college degree?
- Are there lessons learned in college that can be advantageous towards your development as an entrepreneur or even just as a person?
- Does future income potential outweigh the costs associated with getting a degree?

Let's use the 80/20 rule. If you are truly an entrepreneur you will understand the concept of the 80/20 rule. If the answer is true or yes 80% or more of the time then the answer is yes.

Let me play the other side of this so I can see if I have a firm understanding of the opposite point of view. When ever I have discussions with people who say they do not need college I hear the same things. If I'm missing any let me know.

- I don't want to waste the money on college.
- I can make more money faster by not giving up four years of my life by going to college.
- I can learn the same life lessons by living on my own with out going to college.
- I can develop the same life long relationships with like minded educated people with out going to college.
- There have been a handful of people who have made billions with out going to college.
- A formal education is not as important as 'street' education.
- I can't afford college.
- I was never able to go to college.
- My parents did not have the money to go to college.

Are there any other common reasons why people do not go to college?

I want to see if I can understand the other side of this argument. I always fail to see how people think they do not need a formal education. My favorite excuse is that Richard Branson (and others) never went to college... he didn't even graduate high school!

Lets say there are 300,000,000 people in the US. Lets say that 5% are millionaires and that 10% of them did not go to college. When we do the match we will find that 0.005% of people are millionaires and did not get a formal education. I like those odds!

Let me hear from both sides. What are the top 10 reasons to not go to college...

[Desert_Star_Systems]

Another reason, my reason, is that I do not want to take a bunch of 'general' classes (ie: eng 101) when that has nothing to do with my goals.

I've never been to college and I own a part of a pretty decent sized company. Our gross sales are upwards of $800k-1mil. annually.

[StealYourDreams]

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

Nobody says this, they say you dont need a "formal"' education.

I thought I would take a different approach to an old conversation. There are a ton of posts on here about whether or not you need a formal eduction. There are a great many points of view that can be taken in this conversation. What I'd like to do is to come up with a list of the top 10 reasons you do not need a formal education. I am talking about attending university or college.

When you apply practical statistics:

Sources:
WikiAnswers - Average salary of a college graduate versus a high school
College Vs. No College - Forbes.com

You will see that the average salary for someone with a degree is $52,000 while the average salary for someone with out a degree is $30,400

This plays right into what people say about college creating employees when a entrepreneur never intends on becomming an employee.

What % of Fortune 500 CEO's have a degree? While I can't seem to find an exact answer I was able to find that 67% have a Masters or better.

I get the point you are trying to make, but the number of large publicly traded companies is small compared to the number of privately owned businesses who dont provide any data as to whether or not the founder went to college

I pose a few questions...
- Is having a college degree an advantage in the business world?

Only if an individual finds it advantageous by applying yourself while in school, making connections, etc. Otherwise it's a waste of time. What you dont seem to realize, and perhaps you may be the exception to the rule which is why you're so adament about the subject, is that most college kids are having mommy and daddy pay for school, dont apply themselves, and are simply procrastinating life. For the vast majority of these people a degree is a worthless piece of paper.

Are you more likely to be considered for a job if you have a degree?

Only in specialized areas, i.e. finance, accounting, engineering, etc.

If you are seeking venture capital or loans for a start-up (with out previous experience or sales history) are you more likely to get a loan with a college degree?

No, banks are asset based lenders and the VC arena is who you know and whether or not you've had successful ventures in the past.

Are there lessons learned in college that can be advantageous towards your development as an entrepreneur or even just as a person?

To the person applying themselves, yes. To the average student, probably not.

I know you want a list and I'm not going to make one up. What I do want to know is why this is such a sensitive issue for you?

Disclamer: MBA, BA Markekting / Applied Finance and Economics.

[Gaulkin]

People are so anti this and anti that, pretty obvious that most people on here are arrogant know it all's with little clue of what goes on outside of there mothers house.

[myfayt]

Amen to this topic. Hundreds and thousands of successful millionaires and billionaires are high school drop outs or grads with no college.

Some of the most successful and richest people in the world are. They found a niche and went with it.

Now people want to get their masters degrees to make $90,000 a year. Well thats great, but do you know the average an entrepreneur makes? Lets break it down.

Lets say you own a large grocery store. A cashier is make $8.00 an hour, gets paid every week, before taxes around $320 for 40 hours.
The owner of the grocery store generally pulls in 4X more money than a standard employee. Thus meaning the owner (entrepreneur) is making $1,280 a week.

Now people with these 4 year and 6 year degrees are only employees, nothing more. So they are making much less than the entrepreneur is. It's a FACT.

[pboychuk]

Fun! My favorite topic, instead of just bashing college I think I have come up with a more reasonable approach to the argument.
Yes, a college degree will get you a higher salary and a higher percentage of millionaires have college degrees.

But, what percentage of college graduates become millionaires? (I bet this percentage is a lot lower than the percentage of ambitious dropouts).
It is not fair to throw the cliche dropout into the mix with those who are dropping out, or never attending to instead pursue alternate careers (aka not flipping burgers).

Example:
1000 college students, 900 graduate, of the 100 that drop out only 10 of those dropped out because they felt college would not better their success.

Of the 900 students that graduated 45 become millionaires, If only 1 of the 10 ambitious drop-outs becomes a millionaire than this would prove that there is a greater likelihood of becoming a millionaire by creating your own destiny versus getting a degree and seeing how things turn out. I like the odds.

Sure this is all made up, but is it so far fetched?
Are the odds really in your favor if you get a college degree? Or will you have to take the first job offer you get to support yourself, fall slave to the system, and possibly branch out and start your own thing 20 years later.. Maybe become a millionaire by means of salary, but that's not very likely.

Basically, I believe the argument should focus more on sizing up the wanna be successful dropout to the wannabe successful college graduate.
The problem with the graduate is that they believe certain steps must be followed in order to launch their business, get financing and quit your day job. At the entrepreneurship club at my college it astounds me how textbook taught all the MBAs are.. Their though process for starting a business is, #1) Write an elaborate business plan, #2) Find a core group of partners, #3) seek funding, #4) realize that you are splitting profits between 5 people and have your business leveraged by banks and owned by investors. #5) make a five figures a year.

They lack common sense, they are programmed robots, they can do financial calculations and prepare a presentation. But, what is to gain when a business can effectively be run with adequate reasoning and outsourcing.

[GlobalWealth]

Just like in grade school, universty classes must be taught to the lowest level student in the class. This is more true in state schools than in higher end private schools, but still exists to some extent in all schools. The lowest common denominator effect can be really frustrating to the smarter students who can move at a much faster learning pace. This is frequently the reason for the brightest dropping out of school and starting businesses. They are not being intellectually stimulated and need to be productive.

Another reason college can be a waste of time is that formal education trains you to be a worker, not a creator. Entrepreneurial training seems to be on the rise and hopefully it makes great improvements, but mostly, schools don't teach you to create. They teach you how to get a job. They also don't really teach money management. It is rare that you ever get a truely great financial education which is significantly lacking from kindergarten through a master's degree. Universities just don't teach financial intelligence. Of course you can get an education in corporate finance, but I am talking about entrepreneurial and personal finance. Every entrepreneur regardless of field, needs to understand how to manage his and his company's finances.

And probably my biggest pet peeve with a university education is in most cases, the teachers are teachers for a reason. Because they aren't producers. How can you expect someone who makes $80k/yr with a mortgage, car payment and credit card debt to teach you how to be a successful entrepreneur. Sure there are exceptions to this rule, but exceptions nonetheless. Would you hire a financial planner who was broke? Would you hire a tennis coach who has never won a match? Would you hire a fat personal trainer? Of course not. So why would you "hire" a teacher to teach something in which he/she has no record of personal success?

There are benefits to a formal education however. But you must understand the university perspective here. If you can make practical use of the knowledge you gain or improve your critical thinking skills along with leveraging connections then it can be a benefit. But an average college degree now costs at least $20k/year from a state school. If you have the money to spend, you could invest it and be well ahead of your college buddies at their graduation. If you are taking loans to pay for it, you will at least be at 0 and they will be at -$80k at graduation. But in order for this to have any benefit, you will need to educate yourself. But it needn't be in the university.

[myfayt]

Here is the funny part. The people on this forum in college or have degrees will be against this topic.

Those who didn't go to college will be in agreement.

Hence this will start a big fight.

[corporate111]

A friend of mine is a great artist. He freelanced his talents through high school and worked for several years for several companies doing logo designs. He did eventually go to an art school to specialize, but not until he was in his late 20's.

[Amero]

Forget Collage .. I hardly got past Elementary School Just barely passed Grade 8 :P . With today's Social problems whats the point ? Besides whats the point of extra 4 years of school Maybe to make a Lousy 100+K per year :P

[rogercbryan]

Amen to this topic. Hundreds and thousands of successful millionaires and billionaires are high school drop outs or grads with no college.

Some of the most successful and richest people in the world are. They found a niche and went with it.

Now people want to get their masters degrees to make $90,000 a year. Well thats great, but do you know the average an entrepreneur makes? Lets break it down.

Lets say you own a large grocery store. A cashier is make $8.00 an hour, gets paid every week, before taxes around $320 for 40 hours.
The owner of the grocery store generally pulls in 4X more money than a standard employee. Thus meaning the owner (entrepreneur) is making $1,280 a week.

Now people with these 4 year and 6 year degrees are only employees, nothing more. So they are making much less than the entrepreneur is. It's a FACT.

This is complete garbage! I was trying to start an intelligent conversation based on fact and you list this BS... Use sources when you are going to say there are thousands of something... You are doing the reverse and generalizing entrepreneurs as not having degrees. I guess using statistical data with sources is something you learn in school... obviously someplace you have not been.

[rogercbryan]

Example:
1000 college students, 900 graduate, of the 100 that drop out only 10 of those dropped out because they felt college would not better their success.

Of the 900 students that graduated 45 become millionaires, If only 1 of the 10 ambitious drop-outs becomes a millionaire than this would prove that there is a greater likelihood of becoming a millionaire by creating your own destiny versus getting a degree and seeing how things turn out. I like the odds.

Your formula does not work like this. You started with a group of 1000 people so you have to use that as your base. So there is a 4.5% chance of becoming a millionaire if you stay in school while there is a 0.1% if you drop out. You can not only measure those who drop out against each other if they were all part of the same base model. Statistics 301 (3rd year of college)

[rogercbryan]

Check out the information in this....

Average Joe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Great info on income potential...

I guess what I would have to assume is that 95% of people who call themselves "entrepreneurs" will never start a company. They will end up in the workforce and because they did not educate themselves properly they will be at a significant disadvantage. There will also be those in the 5% who will start a successful company yet a few years in the company will fail. They could then find themselves broke and with limited skills in a niche market that does not play well to changes in the business market.

What do you all think the percentage would be for this scenario?

My ultimate goal here is to develop the Top 10 Reasons for Not Attending College. I want to make sure I'm staying on topic while still discussing what everyone is saying.

[rogercbryan]

Forget Collage .. I hardly got past Elementary School Just barely passed Grade 8 :P . With today's Social problems whats the point ? Besides whats the point of extra 4 years of school Maybe to make a Lousy 100+K per year :P

That depends... How old are you? Do you have a successful business? Can you provide proof of your success? You say you 'forgot college'... what proof do you have that this was a good idea in your life?

[rogercbryan]

Here is the funny part. The people on this forum in college or have degrees will be against this topic.

Those who didn't go to college will be in agreement.

Hence this will start a big fight.

Not if we stay on topic (which has not happened thus far). I want to develop the Top 10 List of Reasons not to go to College. I will try to rebut those reasons of course. I'm hoping someone will come up with a list that surprises me and gets me to think a little more about my point of view.