Dale Stephens thinks he knows enough to know that college is a waste of time. It’s expensive and a lot of people apparently don’t learn a lot.
I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.
Failure is punished instead of seen as a learning opportunity. We think of college as a stepping-stone to success rather than a means to gain knowledge. College fails to empower us with the skills necessary to become productive members of today’s global entrepreneurial economy.
Thanks to a Thiel Fellowship, he doesn’t have to waste his time conforming, competing, regurgitating, and theorizing; he can get right on to the important matter of “build[ing] a better world.”
I’m of two minds. There is ample evidence that in some respects he’s probably right. A lot of students apparently don’t learn much in college, especially if they don’t work very hard. And it’s probably the case that the students who instrumentalize higher education often wind up in unchallenging majors that don’t make enough use of what Poirot called the little gray cells.
But this young man doesn’t seem unwilling to work hard, and a good teacher or two might be able to provoke him into thinking. In other words, if he didn’t seem to think that he knew everything already, and if he didn’t seem to disdain theory, he might be a quite exciting student to have in a classroom, he might learn quite a bit, and then he might be ready to think about making the world a better place.
So some of it is the fault of folks in higher education, who all too often, for a variety of mostly bad reasons, don’t do much to challenge their customers, er, I mean, students. They entertain, train, and/or indoctrinate, but don’t educate.
But he seems to have lost sight of, or never heard of, another purpose of higher education, which is the tradition of a civilization, an introduction to and induction into a great conversation. He doesn’t seem to have much patience for that. (Of course, he’s far from alone in displaying that attitude.)
Perhaps he’s right. A genuinely higher education may not be for him, not for the reasons he offers, but because he’s not ready for it.
June 6th, 2011 | 9:13 am
“an introduction to and induction into a great conversation”
Unless your great conversation is of Marxism, Feminism and other anti-western politically correct tropes he will struggle to find it at most modern universities.
June 6th, 2011 | 9:30 am
I was with him up to “theory rather than application.” Even if you view college as pure vocational training, then unless you’re going to remain at the “technician” level rather than being more of an “engineer” type, you need to learn theory. And theory doesn’t only mean math, it’s possible to gain insight into a technical problem from the study of the structure of music and art.
June 6th, 2011 | 9:55 am
Speaking as an insider, we do struggle with “assessment” — that is proving what we teach, the students learn, the value thereof. And there is much greater push from higher ups for this.
That said, there is strong correlation between having a bachelors and economic outcomes. It could be this is correlation, not causation, that really what is being tested for is higher IQs plus someone good at dotting i’s and crossing t’s required to get a degree and the value that kind of responsible follow through might have in the real world.
Whether it’s correlation or causation, a: human resource depts. DO value the bachelors and b: there are certain positions where it’s not only valued but required.
The bottom line, is people DO need college education, you just don’t have to spend over 100K for it.
I recommend that just about everyone who doesn’t get into an Ivy League or have their parents pay for it, go to community college for two years and finish the other two years at a good state school where you get the much cheaper in state tuition.
Avoid student loans like the plague.
June 6th, 2011 | 9:58 am
I agree that education – learning is important.
I also agree that college is a waste of time.
Both sides are right.
The conclusion? We need to re-examine the way we learn.
Perhaps it is time to separate vocational training from education (which should, btw, be life-long, not just something you do in four years “and then you’re done”).
Vocational training needs to be made available to all citizens. It needs to be more accessible. This means something has to change.
Education is a separate issue. We have reason to value having an educated populace, but our current approach is not working. We need to start brainstorming, generating ideas, formulating different theories – let them compete, and may the best ideas win.
June 6th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
The Thiel fellowship is for entrepreneurs, tech ones specifically. He’s saying. “If you are an entrepreneur and have the stuff, it’s better to take that money and pour it into a startup than do the four year thing. I’ll back you in the hopes of getting lucky and a huge ROI.”
It’s smart for him, and it may be smart for the students. Even if they fail, which would look better to hire? a 24 year old comp sci or mba with no experience, or a 24 year old who coded a working start-up and ran a company?
College these days is about credentialling people for a variety of white collar work. Makes sense for entrepreneurs they would avoid it.
June 6th, 2011 | 4:10 pm
Do remember that anyone with a Kindle can learn more on his own then most colleges teach. For less money.
A Kindle is $100-$400
A recently published book is $6.00 to $15.00
A public domain book(which means almost all the Great Books of history) is $0.00-$5.00
By contrast college can cost three times as much for tuition per season. While the textbooks can cost as much as the newer and cheaper kindle’s.
There is far more learning available online for someone with scholarly inclinations then there is at college. Colleges today are basically resume factories, not learning centers and e-media has made them in many respects obsolete. Some things cannot be learned outside a classroom setting, but a lot of things can that in the past were taught at colleges.
June 6th, 2011 | 5:49 pm
In my field (law) secondary education serves primarily as an entry barrier to the profession. One does not learn to practice law in law school, much less as an undergrad.
Until very recently (around 1890) anyone could “read” for the law. No formal course of education was required.
This is what Abe Lincoln said to a young man about reading for the law: “If you are absolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself the thing is more than half done already. It is a small matter whether you read with any one or not. I did not read with any one. Get the books and read and study them in their every feature, and that is the main thing. It is no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people in it. The books and your capacity for understanding them are just the same in all places. [...] Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
Most people don’t know that it was not until 1942 that all of the members of the Supreme Court had gone to law school. Well this was just too easy, and one of the very first things the ABA did after it was formed was to start agitating for entry barriers to the profession, and it was amazingly successful. An institution no one thought was necessary for the first 1,000 years of the Anglo-American journey in jurisprudence, literally all of a sudden became mandatory in almost every state.
For my part, most of what I know I learned after law school. Does this mean I’m against the current system? ‘Course not. I’ve got bills to pay.
June 7th, 2011 | 1:39 pm
Speaking as an insider, we do struggle with “assessment” — that is proving what we teach, the students learn, the value thereof. And there is much greater push from higher ups for this.
That said, there is strong correlation between having a bachelors and economic outcomes.
I have known so many guys who were in the military, and learned valuable skills – and because those skills are so useful and so well-taught in the military, that sometimes employers will make an exception to the otherwise-staunch rule that candidates without degrees are of course not considered for this position.
You don’t want to give a position of responsibility to someone who hasn’t even finished college.
It’s probably very closely correlated with data I saw some time back affirming that America does in fact lag behind other nations – even the class-conscious UK – in terms of social mobility: if you are born lower middle class, you’re going to die lower middle class, because even if you do get to college, you’re going to run out of money somewhere between the 3/4 point of the 2nd year and the first quarter of the third year.
Wealth begets wealth. Scholarships are for the “needy” (read: affirmative action) or “merit based” (read: parents affluent enough to get their child that educational advantage).
But he seems to have lost sight of, or never heard of, another purpose of higher education, which is the tradition of a civilization, an introduction to and induction into a great conversation.
Yes, for those of you who are rich.
But of course that tradition was never a democratic tradition. It is in fact how democracy is prevented.
June 14th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
[...] Knippenberg, a frequent contributor to Georgia Family Council’s blog, labels Stephens “an impertinent young whippersnapper” who underestimates the value of the collegiate [...]
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