Why College Students Should Drop Out

College is overrated.

In some cases, it’s even a bad thing to do. Let me also add to that by emphasizing that education and knowledge is invaluable in one’s life. Knowledge is power, and those who know the most and have the best work ethic will always beat out the rest of the pack.

College, however, is overrated. Many people in college today need to drop out. The exceptions might be in highly regulated careers like medicine or law, but the once true statement that a college degree will separate you from your peers and take you further in life has gone from fact to fiction. It’s common now that a graduate’s BS degree is now just that — BS — and that’s not an abbreviation for Bachelor of Science.

Photo by kevin dooley on flickr.com

Many high school students are more qualified to go directly into the career world than today’s college student. Recent generations have allowed college to go from a once prestigious institution of higher learning and respect to four or five years of mediocrity and laziness. After four years of classes and papers, you may have accumulated more information, but chances are you haven’t developed any viable skills or discipline needed for a successful career.

Does this daily high school schedule sound familiar? Wake up each day at 6am, ready for school by 7, classes until 3, work-outs and practice or club meetings till 4 or 5, home to do something with the family or even a second extracurricular activity (community events, church events, etc) until 7 or 8, homework and studying until 10 or 11, repeat the next day. That’s a very disciplined schedule of hard work for a teenager just to be followed up by four years of leisure before their career search begins. The classroom topics and studying in college is hopefully more advanced, but the lifestyle is incredibly regressive for someone trying to mature into an adult. College now slows too many people down instead of accelerating them.

Most of today’s college students would be much better served by dropping out of their pursuit of a business degree, and actually starting their own business with the guidance of a mentor. You can study for years on how to play golf, but until you’ve swung the clubs for a while you’re never going to gain any real skills. College classes may teach you about definitions and theories; it cannot teach you skills that will help you succeed as a professional: networking, communicating effectively, working through your failures, resiliency, self-discipline, or motivating yourself and others just to name a few. Those qualities are essential to doing well at any job, however those skills can only be gained by practicing them, not by reading your textbook or sitting through a lecture.

Look at some of the most successful people of our recent times. To them, starting a business and learning skills by practicing them was more important than traditional learning on a campus.

• Steve Jobs – co-founder of Apple
• Bill Gates & Paul Allen – co-founders of Microsoft
• Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone – founders of Twitter
• Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz – co-founders of Facebook (aided by Napster co-founder and dropout Sean Parker)

Now will everyone who drops out be as successful as them? No. The point is, now more than ever, we live in an increasingly entrepreneurial economy where it used to be true that college was something that separated people from the pack and that is no longer the case. It holds many of them back. Kathy Kristof of Forbes magazine makes a valid point in The Great College Hoax:

“Offsetting that million-dollar income discrepancy is the $46,700 four-year cost of tuition, fees, books, room and board at a public school and $99,900 at a private one–even after financial aid, scholarships and grants. Add all this to the equation and college grads don’t pull even with high school grads in lifetime income until age 33 on average, the College Board says. Even that doesn’t include the $125,000 in pay students forgo over four years.”

All this being said, what will likely happen is that our country will continue lowering the barriers to entry for college causing a surplus of people with degrees, thereby continually lowering the value of a college diploma. What you’ll see is some employers’ will then start seeking candidates with graduate or doctorate degrees, while the better employers will be seeking out people who spent their time gaining entrepreneurial skills through building a business instead of gaining the skill of building student loan debt.

Thoughts?