Lately it has become very trendy for individuals in the upper echelons of business and industry to denounce a college education. Most recently, Bill Gross of PIMCO said, “All of us who have been there know an undergraduate education is primarily a four year vacation interrupted by periodic bouts of cramming or Google plagiarizing…” Gross also has a grant program where he’ll give $100K to promising kids who drop out of college or don’t ever go, to be used to start an entrepreneurial career.
I don’t think that college is for everyone, but I do believe that it is a worthwhile and advantageous path for those who choose to pursue it. Furthermore, I think it’s just plain dumb for someone who is extremely rich to stand there and say,” hey, you, teenager! Skip college and you can be a bazillionaire like me!” Your odds of becoming a million- or billionaire with no college degree are incredibly miniscule. Your odds of leading a comfortable life with a college degree are much better. But to a teenager who just slogged through twelve years of school, the ideas put forth by Gross and others like him are very tempting.
The college-is-useless argument also fails to take into consideration another factor in how people gain wealth: luck and being in the right place at the right time. Plenty of rich folks would like you to think that they got rich through hard work and by being smart and determined. They are rich because they earned it, and you are poor because you are lazy and stupid, or you just didn’t want it as bad as they did. And for some wealthy folks, that may be true. But for most others, they were exposed to advantages that are not available to everyone, not because they did anything special, but because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about this in his book, Outliers. For example, I’ve heard people remark that Bill Gates doesn’t have a college education, yet he’s very wealthy and successful. But Bill Gates happened to go to a high school that, at the time, was one of the only high schools in the country with a computer. Gates had access to a computer when nearly every other kid his age did not, simply by virtue of living where he did. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t work hard, but he had a tremendous advantage over others in his generation.
Gross’ argument is also problematic in that it ignores reality. Sure, you can SAY that a college degree is useless, but try to find a well-paying job with benefits with only your high school diploma. It doesn’t exist. It’s even hard to get a crappy job with only a high school diploma, because right now the job market is saturated with jobless college-educated folks. Even in the best of economic times, though, people with no post-secondary education are limited to low-paying, no-benefits jobs. A few people may be able to strike out on their own and create their own successful business—but those instances are rare. It’s just not realistic to tell teens that they should skip college.
Gross does seem to make the distinction between a vocational or trade school and a four-year degree, and he seems to support going to a trade/vocational school. On this point, I do agree with him. There are certainly some people who look down on trade/vocational schools and the people who attend them, and that’s not fair. My dad doesn’t have a bachelor’s, but he built our house. That takes an incredible amount of knowledge and skill. He supported our family working construction, and while we weren’t rich, we had everything we needed, including benefits. Kids who have an interest in trade schools shouldn’t be dissuaded from pursuing this route in favour of a four-year degree.
I am, of course, ignoring the most prominent fallacy of his argument, which is that “all of us” had the same college experience. I don’t think I need to go into why that is untrue.
The bottom line here is that it’s unwise and irresponsible to tell teens and young adults that they should avoid getting a college degree or that such a degree is useless. While everyone will certainly have some classes they feel were worthless, on the whole college is a wonderful and useful thing for many people. And furthermore, a college degree is a requirement in many fields, and post-secondary education of some kind is required for nearly all types of work that yield higher paying jobs with benefits. Lastly, I’m sure it’s quite easy to dispense this kind of advice when you have millions of dollars (and a college education!) to fall back on—perhaps if we stripped Mr. Gross of his degree and his dollars and turned him loose in the job market, he’d have something different to say.
What a wonderful post! I have to tell you, I'm all for vocational schools.
ReplyDeleteI didn't go to a big college, or even complete community college. At that point in my life, I was dealing with major depression and waking up, every day, wondering if I should kill myself. No lie. I had better things to do than worry about college. But I did take the CNA (certified nursing assistant) class at community college, and I'm glad that I did. I think a skill or trade goes a long way, and people who weld are going to fair better than people with Masters Degrees.
Of course, that may not be true in every situation, but what I'm saying is a skill seems to be more useful, from my point of view, in a bad economy than a degree.