About time

Just Say No To College Hugh Pickens writes writes"Alex Williams writes in the NY Times that the idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Inspired by role models like thebillionaire drop-outs who founded Microsoft, Facebook, Dell, Twitter, Tumblr, and Apple, and empowered by online college courses, a groundswell of university-age heretics consider themselves a DIY vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick. 'Here in Silicon Valley, it's almost a badge of honor,' says Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. 'College puts a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations around what you can and can't do. Some people, they want to stretch their arms, get out and create more, do more.' Perhaps most famously, Peter A. Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, in 2010 started his Thiel Fellowship program, which pays students under 20 years old $100,000 apiece to bag college and pursue their own ventures. 'People are being conned into thinking that this credential is the one thing you need to do better in life. They typically are worse off, because they have amassed all this debt.' UnCollege advocates a DIY approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational 'hackademic camps.' 'Hacking,' in the group's parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000. 'I think kids with a five-year head start on equally ambitious peers will be ahead in both education and income,' says James Altucher, a prominent investor, entrepreneur and pundit who self-published a book called '40 Alternatives to College.' 'They could go to a library, read a book a day, take courses online. There are thousands of ways.'" Slashdot

I’ve wondered for years why it is assumed that a degree or multiple degrees is some kind of ticket to success. I’ve met a couple PHDs who work in bookstores. I remember talking to one person working at a bookstore who told me everyone who worked there had some kind of degree. I resisted saying “Fat lot of good it did them.” then asking how many of them graduated with zero debt.

I do not have a degree. I still wish I could have stayed in and finished the experience. I wish I could have done the work and learned something. The biggest thing I learned at college was that I am no fun at college.

If you run through the famous people who quit university and went on to be famous, they all seemed to have connections. That is, they got the networking done at school, left and went into business. It seems to me that the connections you get at University are more important than the education. You find people who are good at the same sort of thing you are good at. You can then give each other a hand up throughout your careers.

And, yes I’m glad to hear about this sort of hing because  ido not have a degree. Perhaps it will not lome over my head like it used to.