The Case Against College (Part 2)
In part two, I continue to argue against going to college. These are three more reasons not to attend college.
I continue making the case against college in part two of this series. You'll be able to read part one below.
Party Culture
The first reason is that partying is common at college. If you think sending your kids off to college and they won’t party or potentially take part in the hookup or drinking culture, then you may be naive. Partying is common in college. Once the quizzes and tests are done, it’s party time!
Most twenty-somethings are likely following sports, watching popular television, going out with friends, hooking up, and drinking. In other words, partying is what mostly happens at colleges. Partying is the main attraction of college, rather than studying. Studying is for nerds.
While there is a time and place to enjoy yourself, this has become one of the primary focuses of going to college. It is not about getting an education. It is about going out with your friends to a bar or club on the weekend. It is about hooking up with your class's hot man or woman. It is about fitting in—one of the main ways students try to fit in at college is by attending parties. Drinking often happens at these parties. The parties are where the cool kids are. Peer pressure is a problem at college. Everyone, for some reason, wants to be part of the cool kids club.
The latest drinking trend at college is the Borg, which stands for Blackout Rage Gallon. The Borg recipe calls for half a jug of water, electrolytes, vodka, and some flavoring. This drink has always been variations at college, from shared punch bowls to drinking out of bottles or keg parties. Drinking is part of modern college life.
At the Borg or frat party, the college students want to try to hook up with someone.
There could be frat parties. It could be hosting a small party in your dorm or apartment. It could be sneaking out with friends after hours to meet the popular students or even hook up with someone. College students care more about partying than doing well in school.
College is about partying. It’s not about education.
Told It’s The Only Way To Become Successful
The second problem is that young people are brainwashed to believe they won't succeed if they don’t attend college. Society sells young people the myth that you must go to college to be successful. The reality is that there are many ways that you can become successful. There is no one route to success.
On the contrary, the most successful people are entrepreneurs who dropped out of college or never attended college. Or, it was people who discovered what their talents were at a young age. They learned their strengths in their teenage years or their twenties. They then found ways to monetize them.
Young people have a range of options to choose from. You don't need to go to college. One of the best things a young person could do is to find a mentor or someone they can look up to learn about something that interests them. Their interests may eventually change, but the skills they learned from someone may help them later.
Another option would be to learn a skill and see if they can be hired to perform it by an employer. You could negotiate with a potential employer who may need skills that you have to start you off as a paid intern. Once you complete your internship, your employer will meet with you to tell you whether you can stay on. Today, that could be getting employed by a business where someone may live to become a freelancer online at a site like Upwork or Fiverr. You could try freelancing to see if you enjoy it or not. You could also
Yet another option is to become an entrepreneur. This option will take on the most risk but has the biggest reward. You can become an Internet entrepreneur and create multiple income streams by producing content on various platforms, from YouTube to your website. You can then find ways to repackage that content in a range of ways for customers.
The bottom line is that you have many options. This is especially true today with the range of possibilities that result from the Internet, such as working remotely, freelancing, or starting an online business.
Miss Out On Learning Hard Skills
The third problem is that young people are missing out on learning hard skills by going to college. College does not teach you hard skills. At least, you won’t get enough experience from a college program to compete against people who have learned technical skills while on the job.
Even if you take STEM classes as I did in graduate school for cybersecurity, I only took about ten labs on various topics over three years. Those are too few numbers to proficiently learn about a skill for any employer to take you seriously. Most of the students I was with in graduate school already came from an IT background. It was mostly going back to school to advance in their careers or because the military was paying for their education. They were in graduate school to appease their employer to move further up the employee hierarchy. I did not fit in, yet I thought I was “smart” because I was in graduate school. In reality, I was stupid to think I could get a career in IT without the right experience, but I thought a university degree would help me enter the field. I believed in society’s myth that a degree helped to get you places.
Your twenties are a vital decade where you should learn hard practical skills to improve your life. Hard skills are what employers care about. With a few exceptions, like STEM, you don’t learn those skills in most college classes. Even then, you may learn an outdated program that companies no longer use or not take enough labs to sufficiently be competitive against other applicants with years of practical experience using current technology.
Hard skills include trades, science, technology, health, medicine, and business. There are then subcategories within these broad categories.
In your twenties, you want to develop skills you enjoy and excel at. You want to continue to hone those skills. The sooner you can figure out your strengths, the faster you can make money. When you begin to make money, you can start to save. When you begin to save, you can build a rainy day fund. Once you have a rainy day fund, you can begin to invest.
You can’t do that when you must read from a book to pass a test. College teaches you passive knowledge, not active knowledge. Practical knowledge that you can apply in the real world is what matters. Ideals. Ideologies. Knowledge that does not improve your life in some way is what you want to focus on. That is applied knowledge. You learn that by doing things on the job or troubleshooting something independently, not by reading an outdated book that your college professor requires you to read.
Summary
Young people should use their twenties to discover what they enjoy doing and their skills. College does not help to provide clarity to that vital question. College only provides distractions from the party culture to students hearing stories about successful college alumni that colleges present to students as an ideal of what they will be by attending that college. All the while, young people miss out on learning hard skills critical to getting hired and moving their way up in a career.
I don't wanna go to school, I don't need no education
I don't wanna be like you, I don't wanna save the nation
I just wanna live my life, everyday a celebration
One day I'ma leave this world, I'm waitin' for the revelation
Become a secure single.
Thank you for sharing.