Entrepreneur promotes “40 alternatives to College”
Investor and entrepreneur James Altucher just wrote a very cheap eBook arguing why children should not go to college if they can avoid it, and providing 40 alternatives and a whole lot more:
Students think they will have fun, think they will be independent, think they will get a job that will make their lives better. So they go to college.
They do this because they think their lives will miss something if they don’t. They will miss all sorts of valuable discourse, intellectual elevation, socializing unheard of before in their high school years, and ultimately the American dream of job, spouse, house, white picket fence, grow old, get a gold watch, die.
They have been brainwashed into thinking they will be worthless without college. How sad for them. How sad for their parents. . . .
I am shamed by the indentured servitude that our 22 years olds find themselves in when they graduate. Student loan debt just topped a trillion dollars for the first time. I am ashamed by an America that let this happen. I describe in the book the groups who benefit from that trillion dollars. They don’t care about 18 year olds. They care about their own egos. They care about money.
Can you get a job at Goldman Sachs if you don’t go to college? Or even Google? Probably not. But there’s at least 40 alternatives and probably thousands more. And, after trying these alternatives you now have the grace and intelligence (and knowledge that you are comfortable with the massive debt load you will be taking on) then please go.
Actually, he’s very right about Google. I was told by an insider the other day that the company actually prefers to hire young employees who don’t already have formal training or degrees. It then molds them in its own way.