Monday, March 5, 2012

What College Will Not Teach You

James Altucher writes:
The idea is that a college education will fill your memory. Teach you a lot of facts. Maybe teach you basic analysis that conforms with your teacher’s opinions. But will NOT teach you how to really think. Will not teach you how to come up with ideas. How to sell ideas. How to be creative. How to navigate through interesting experiences so you won’t get hurt.
There are a lot of recent college grads sitting around not do anything because they have never learned about the things Altucher is writing about here. A successful life really is about:

Coming up with ideas.

Selling ideas.

Being creative.

Navigating through experiences.

Life is not about listening to a teacher and regurgitating via test a teacher's lecture.

You are failing, if you think a test is going to be passed out any time soon that will advance your life.

Start experiencing life, read the important books on the side and screw government corrupted education.

Remember, the greats like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard couldn't even get anything close to top positions in universities. Even Hayek, who tended not to ruffle feathers, couldn't get a position in the economics department of the University of Chicago.

College at this point is just another government controlled scam.


Altucher's full column is here.

8 comments:

  1. Well...you could to to St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland- that last real college in the world.

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  2. College is a great place to meet contacts. Especially elite universities. And you are constantly stimulating your mind with thought and social stimulation.

    I took a year off from school and studied what I wanted before I started uni. I was a bit more prepared than other students. But I did learn a lot. Not to say that I didn't have to relearn things, but as a member of the speech and debate team, taking the contrary POV and arguing for anarcho-capitalist ideals really helped me to solidify my beliefs and how to articulate them persuasively.

    Plus there are lots of sexy women.

    College is great, but I may also be biased b/c I had a full scholarship. My school charged my scholarship provider around 300 grand over 5 years. I may be tooting a different horn if my underemployed ass was deeper in debt.

    It's also kind of hypocritical for someone like Altucher (Duke I believe?) who was given a full ride to get a Master's and pissed it away to rail about how bad university is. Tell that to your dentist the next time you get a filling. Tell that to a civil engineer the next time you cross a city bridge. Tell that to your heart surgeon when you go for bypass surgery.

    His is a simplistic argument that appeals today b/c of the proliferation of BAD education at higher prices and a shitty economy where everyone is in debt. But it's deeper than "don't go to college, it doesn't teach you anything." That's just a cop-out.

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  3. I learned long ago that 'we get paid for bringing value to the marketplace.'

    What I would tell college kids (and my own kids) is to 'be valuable'. You don't need a piece of paper to dictate anything about you.

    A college education (while it can be good) does not cover the things that Bob listed. That comes from you alone.

    Find a need...and fill it.

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  4. "There are a lot of recent college grads sitting around not do anything because they have never learned about the things Altucher is writing about here."

    Believe it or not the author of this sentence graduated from one of the most goodest schools in the country.

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  5. I had a class with Dr. Roger Garrison in college, so it'll always be invaluable to me. I got really lucky.

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  6. The LA Times is out with this story about rising student loan default rates.

    The article is here

    I mention it because buried at the bottom is this rather telling anecdote about Bernanke's son (emphasis mine):

    Bernanke, in his exchange with lawmakers, added a personal dimension to the student loan issue, saying that his son in medical school was expecting to owe $400,000 when he graduates.

    Yowza! This can only add to Bernanke's desire to print.

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  7. What people don't seem to get is that the modern college is all part of a government scheme. Many professions are licensed by the regime, and in order to enter those professions people must have degrees or be in other programs which are from government-accredited colleges. By licensing professions, the regime is mostly able to control these field, assuring, for example, that health professionals are big fans of the regime-guaranteed pharmaceutical industry which has long bought off the politicians.

    In order for a college to get regime-accredited, it must do certain things. It must have an athletic program, it must select "professors" based on approved research (not coincidentally, the regime and the power elite-controlled foundations supply much of the funding for this slanted "research") and not on teaching ability, and it must have "student goverment" so that the political types among the student body are quickly bought off by the interests of the regime. Ad nauseum. (Of course these regime universities have ruined health research, literary criticism, the so-called social sciences and history, and the arts -- which is why nowadays we have rotten architecture, painting, sculture, and musical composition.)

    In a free society, the regime would have absolutely nothing to do with education. People would tend to love the arts because regime control would not have ruined the arts and people's enjoyment of them. There would be training programs by certain organizations enabling people to enter field of those organizations' own accreditation.

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