Self education vs University Education

Listen up and pay attention. I am about to say something controversial that is going to piss people off. There are a lot of people out there who are going to completely disagree with me and think I am an idiot for even suggesting it.

I believe that most college educations are overpriced worthless pieces of shit. This is coming from a college educated man. I did what every good American kid is supposed to do. Once I graduate high school, I enrolled in college to further my education.

Having said that, I do believe that there are many instances and examples where they are very valuable and very much a bargain for the education. My premise is based on the understanding that when I first started going to college, most of the students (myself included) simply weren’t interested in getting a good education. We were far more interested in meeting girls, getting drunk and partying.

It wasn’t until about year three into my college life that I decided that I really did like learning and I should be applying myself instead of Effing off. Well I did eventually finish and earn my degree. That education did open one door for me getting my first out of college career related job. So, I don’t think it was a total waste. It was expensive nonetheless, and I even attended a rather inexpensive school.

The point I want to make here is that if a person really wants to learn how to do something, in most cases, he can learn that skill much faster outside of traditional academia. You see, my whole basis for making these points is based on my own life experiences.

When I first decided to go into business, I thought it best to take some college courses about entrepreneurship, business management, business law, accounting, etc…. So that is exactly what I did. When I was going to school full time, I was studying business management as a minor. Going back after I had been out of college for a few years was a little weird, but I was convinced that it was the right path to follow to learn how to become a successful businessman.

Universities cannot teach you how not to fail

Well, along with many other hard lessons learned in life, I was wrong. After all the studying I had done in college, I was still completely ill equipped to launch a successful startup. I was undercapitalized and under educated about what you really need to know. This is my main beef with traditional academia. Unless your professor has actually done your job before, how the hell is he going to adequately prepare you for it?

My business partner and I made every mistake in the book. We even made a bonehead mistake when selecting the name for our new operation. We ended up changing that name three more times I think. I’ll get into the mistakes we made in another post. I think you’re starting to see my point.

Reason number two I have a beef with traditional academia education is based on my own experience with investing. Once again, while in college I learned about investing, accounting and finances. So, for many years out of college, I was your traditional work and saver who saved 10-15% of his gross wages and put them in a retirement account invested in mutual funds. For a number of years, the returns were okay. Some years were very good and some were lousy. I think they averaged somewhere in the high single digits annually when all was said and done.

In my academic studies, along with the advice from Money magazine and Kiplinger’s magazine, I thought I was doing exactly what I was supposed to in order to be comfortable at retirement. I had my money diversified. I always made sure I had some bonds to offset the volatility in growth stocks. I really thought I was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. Actually, I was probably a little farther ahead than most of my close friends.

Had I never strayed and instead stuck to this path of investing, I am quite sure my retirement accounts would have all lost approximately half of their value when the real estate bubble popped and caused the massive stock market selloff in 2008. Fortunately for me, I was able to actually profit from it a little bit here and there. Some accounts lost a little money, but it was far less than the pounding the S&P took.

I felt my investment plan was failing me back around 2000

Although my accounts were growing slowly over the years, I really felt like I was missing something. I hadn’t lost a bunch during the internet bubble pop in 2000. However, I hadn’t really gained much leading up to that point when the Nasdaq was going freaking gang busters. Shouldn’t I have profited more from that internet bubble? Was this plan really serving me well?

Why didn’t I follow that investment path? I felt that my existing investment plan, the so called professional investment advisors’ plan was failing me. I could not see myself reaching the level of financial abundance I wanted in the time frame I wanted. So, some six or seven years before the 2008 market collapse, I cultivated a growing thirst for a new investment plan. I needed new ideas. In order to quench that thirst, I began reading and studying voraciously. I would read book after book after book about investing. I learned how to read stock charts. I learned the tools of the trade like how to interpret MACD signals, stochastics and moving averages. I learned more and more about the fundamentals of a large corporation. I learned about things like Beta and Price to book value. You know the terms.

I was so consumed by it that I spent all of my free time studying it for months on end. I studied this material so intensely that I really feel I gained a more thorough understanding of it than a bachelor’s degree on the subject of investing. Best of all, I did it in about one year’s time studying it on my own. I then applied everything I was learning to my daily observations about the markets. I learned how the market reacts to news. I learned why sometimes stocks sell off even when good news is announced. All of this information has served me extremely well ever since. I have managed to amass an impressive little nest egg thanks to the tax deferred benefits of retirement savings accounts like the traditional IRA and 401K. Did you know you can swing trade or even day trade a retirement account tax free just by opening an account at a discount brokerage like Ameritrade, Scottrade or Etrade?

I am quite sure that I could not have learned this valuable volume of investing knowledge anywhere other than through self studies. Why? For a student to really reap the benefits of an instructor based education, he must be obsessed with learning the material presented to him. Otherwise, he will not gain the full benefit of the education. This is my whole basis for the argument against formalized education.

Students need to be thirsty

What students really need to learn is to develop a thirst for the knowledge so strong that they must quench the thirst at all costs. I don’t feel like Universities are providing this kind of thirst. It is only through self discovery that a person truly finds the motivation necessary to drive him to achieve mastery. Some people are either very lucky or more astute than I was when in college. For, I do know of people who used their college years for that very purpose. I just find it exceptionally rare. Most people come out of college with a degree in something they really aren’t that interested in. They try to work in that field because that is what they studied, not necessarily what they truly desired. Even if they land a decent paying position in that field, they are ultimately left unfulfilled and unhappy with their careers.

Is there some field of study that really interests you even though you have no formal education in it whatsoever? What is keeping you from studying it like I studied investing? What are you waiting for? You already have the thirst for it. Get your ass in gear and get busy learning everything you can about it. If it is something you truly love, I bet you will magically find a way to incorporate it into your life. At some point you may discover an opportunity to do it full time as a new career path. You need to prepare yourself right now for that future opportunity. When people are energized with a burning desire about their work, it is amazing how often opportunities present themselves. Fill your life with excitement and passion by working on the very thing you truly desire.

God I miss college sometimes.