Is an Education Not Worth Something?
Somewhere along the way our perception of the value of an "online" education became vastly skewed. I want to explain this in a little detail and put things into a bit of perspective here.
If anyone has read any of my self-proclaimed frustration regards the education system, you will understand how unimpressed I am with the dated system that people are being thrown into and the end result of our traditional "institutionalized" school systems.
Being educated and investing in your education has always proven to be the best personal investment you can make. Better than the stock market. Better than real estate. And definitely better than buying a lottery ticket.
Things are changing however and they are doing so quickly. Since 1980 education prices have increased over 600% while median household incomes have barely gone up (see chart below).
How is this possible? And why isn't education paying off like it used to?
Because people are learning skills that are IRRELEVANT and education is vastly overpriced. To be completely honest with you, The Open Education Project is the start of initiative by Carson and I to lower the cost of education. Information has never been cheaper to create and cheaper to deliver, yet worldwide education is leaving people with no job and an average of $40,000 in debt.
I know I felt Irrelevant.
I remember when I graduated from my college degree in Computer Science (was a fast track 2.5 year program) I felt as though I had accomplished something, I did learn a lot of things, but I came out feeling unprepared.
The reason was simple. The focus was tests and assignments. I would spend my week nights cramming for exams, getting great marks...only to forget half of the material the next day. By the time I graduated, half of the material I had learned had become outdated due to the speed of the technology. The other half I simply forgot because it had washed off my hand (shhh...don't tell anyone).
I can remember the feeling on graduation day. "Man, I don't really know anything". I had already lined up a job, but guess what I was doing the whole time while I was at school.
Learning how the Internet works. Learning about marketing. Trying things out on line. Building stuff, building web pages, and ultimately building a business. Although I felt my education was irrelevant when I left school, in the 2.5 years I was there I managed to create an Internet business.
Did attending college lead to this success? No. Learning the right skills did. And that leads me to...
Why I Think YOU Are Ahead of the Game!
It is true. By getting an education of how the Internet works and working to create an Internet business you are WAY ahead of the game.
Let me explain what I am talking about.
The Internet is relevant. The Internet is highly sought after by companies worldwide. Learning how the Internet operates and how to leverage it to create business is probably the most powerful tool you can have these days.
You can use the skills you learn here to:
(1) Create a business for yourself (many ways to do this)
(2) Help existing business create more business
(3) Offer more value to an existing company you work for
(4) Get Internet related jobs
(5) Freelance with the skills you learn
This is real. These are valuable skills. And you are an "educated" person because of them.
The stigma of having to attend a college or university to be an educated person is soon going to dissipate. Education is great, don't get me wrong but there are many ways to educate yourself and just because your education does not cost a lot of money (like WA) shouldn't make you feel as though carries less value. Your education platform and community should cost less than $1 per day and we are going to continue making this a reality. Technology says so!
People pay for skills, not a piece of paper.
Love to hear your thoughts on this!
Recent Comments
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I agree with you 100% Kyle. College Education is not conforming with present needs and also not practical oriented. So, one come out from college after completion of his education and entered the job market, and feel that there is a huge gap between his learning in college and requirement in job market.
Open Education Project has taken the initiative to bridge the gap and help all level people to come up with their head high.
Sachindra
A structured environment like College and University simply cannot keep up to the speed of the Internet and how fast the external world is changing. This represents a huge problem and is creating graduates that do not have the necessary skills to compete or to offer additional value to many of the companies out there.
And with the "global" nature of business these days, there are people all of the world now competing for the exact same jobs. Your knowledge and applied skill is your competitive advantage as people in the many developed countries cannot compete in terms of salary.
I agree with you Kyle almost 100%. University/college is definitely overpriced and it doesn't make sense to me that people invest so much time and money into it, and end up with mounting debt and no job. Now of course it depends partly on what your degree is in and what you do to supplement your studies with while in university.
I graduated with a BA from UBC last year, and have since struggled to find a reasonable job. In honesty, I haven't been looking that hard (and I'm also picky), plus I find IM much more fun and interesting - and relevant! And now that I'm making a full-time income with it, the job-search is pretty much over.
However, I will say that I enjoyed my time in University. Although UBC didn't give me a practical skill-set for the job market, it vastly improved my writing skills and imbued me with a more analytical mindset. It also improved my research abilities and turned me into a life-long learner. I have found that all these things have definitely helped with my IM campaigns.
In the end, I loved university and have no regrets going. But I have definitely gained more practical skills here at WA for a career than I ever did at school.
Most people that go do not have any regrets (I know I don't either). There are many beneficial aspects of going to school outside of the just the education (relationships, social aspects, clubs, etc).
If I were given an OPTION these days though I would choose to either self educate or join a community that is more relevant and as you say practical. I am glad you have had a positive experience thus far at WA and it is our hope to keep this up!
Learning how to learn is the most important thing to learn in my opinion. Then you're set for anything you want to accomplish! Mark.
I agree. These hard skills should be developed early on in life (elementary/secondary) as Wayne said, giving you the freedom to learn whatever you like. When you are interested in a subject, you can learn and comprehend things very quickly...and this is something that the Internet has allowed.
IMO - The most valuable thing a formal education offers is the skill to learn. If you know how you learn best and can take the study & research skills learned in school (elementary & secondary) than you can apply them to whereever your passion leads.
And it won't cost tens of thousands or take 4 or more years either!
Exactly Wayne...if you understand how to learn, you can learn whatever you want. Learning is far more than absorbing information, it is understanding what you are learning through application. This is something that we are going to encourage here within OEP and something that I aim to do on a daily basis.
I agree 1000% with what Kyle says.
Although we have the same education in computer science, what we learned in school only marginally prepared us for owning a technology company. In our line of work education happens daily and it's not just from our own efforts looking for information out there. We use WA and also learn from the community the same as anyone.
Part of my own continuous education from OEP includes:
- Marketing and how people perceive a product
- The mentality of someone looking to get educated
- What people like and don't like
- What people think they want vs what they really want
- Many awesome strategies from the New Training at WA
- What is important to someone before they buy
- What is working TODAY, not yesterday
- Strategies that will work TOMORROW, not just today.
I could go on...and on...and on...and all of this applies to any online marketing business.
Education from an institution can provide you with hard skills, but what they really miss out on is offering a CURRENT education that matters TODAY. I know what it takes to get something introduced into a curriculum as I come from an education background. It's not easy, and it takes months or years to have it approved at Schools, Colleges, and Universities. The people making decisions about what to include, and what not to include in curriculum's have no grasp on what is important because they are not educated themselves in what's current. It's a broken system in my opinion. On the Internet and in the world of online business there is NO way that an offline institution can keep up. ZERO.
The answer is right in front of us.
Computer science taught me how to write code, but learning how to run a business has been learned over the years and much of that education comes from WA its self.
Carson
Interesting article, as it makes a lot of sense to my current position.
Growing up in the UK education isn't the be all and end all of finding work. My last job there I started out at the bottom, and yeah it took me a few years but I clawed my way up to a reasonable position, all without the appropriate qualifications.
Here in Finland, a piece of paper is EVERYTHING. You will always be second place to someone with a degree. Mainly this is because education here is free,but because of that the mindset is if you dont have a degree why would I hire you when Joe Smith (or perhaps Mikä Hakkinen) has the same experience AND a degree?
Ah, Computer Science... I totally understand where you were coming from with the feeling of being unprepared upon graduation. For me it was a standard 4 year degree, and when I graduated in 2001, I felt pretty much like I hadn't learned anything at all. Microprocesors, digital logic and other classes seemed out of date at the time and I found myself wondering how/when I would ever use that information.
And unlike you, It then took me approximately 6 mos after graduation to land a job as a Computer Operator, the bane of a degree yet no real world experience. But in the interum, I had been "talked" into pursuing a Masters In Comp Sci, since I wasn't doing anything during the time between when I graduated, and finally landed my first job. It was thought that a second degree would make me more marketable. The degree never happened, but I am still paying on student loans with nothing to show for it. I also partially pursued an MBA, but it was my decision to quit as I had finally come to the realization that burning the candle at both ends, as well as incurring debt would not further my career that much.
Fast forward a few years and the accident of finding WA has changed my life forever. While my parents may not be thrilled with the idea of my throwing away an expensive degree, I have realized that I need to take control of my future. The OEP project is proof that education should not have to cost a fortune, yet colleges across the country keep raising their tuition because they claim the cost of operation keeps going up and up, but it will do them no good if the struggling students can't afford to pay it.
Not all of your education has gone to waste, you have definitely obtained knowledge (although most of it may not be although that applicable, rather historic knowledge)....but everything that you learn can be used in some respect to your day to day activities here at WA.
I find that when I diversify my knowledge set on several topics, it enables me to pull from a variety of knowledge sources when coming up with ideas and evokes far more creativity. Education in the form of university and college is vastly overpriced no matter at which way you look at it.
We will continue to push the NEW world of education with OEP. :)
A College/University Education opens so many new doors which otherwise would not be open to you without it. I didn't go to University because I didn't feel I wanted to at that time because I wasn't a 100% sure of what direction to go in. I joined the RAF instead. Experience counts for a lot but getting that experience is by far the hardest thing to get. I do agree that Education is so out of date that it's no wonder that young people who go to University end up with nothing except a huge debt around their neck. IM on the other hand evolves and adapts to the current trends and changes brought on by our reliance of (a) giving readers what they want. (b) changes by search engines, in particular, the Google Algorithm (c) training that should always change according to what is available (d) taking those steps to actually adjust the training for others to follow. Then I believe a new type of College/University will have evolved which is what I now think of WA.
True Neil, the existing education platforms simple cannot keep up at the speed in which technology and science are changing. On top of that, people are changing and doing so very quickly, people are far more immersed in technology and have multi-tasking embedded in their daily activities more than they ever have.
Conventional education models do not support this style of learning. Education has to change and has to become an ongoing and evolving discussion, there is nothing static about it.
Kyle, I'm glad you feel like this. I feel like the same. I'm nearly complete with my degree in Information Technology but really I haven't learned anything. The things they teach you are way outdated and I've learned 1000% more just by researching myself and gaining experience through tackling tough projects. I love the idea of OEP. It's the right idea and so far it looks and works good. There are kinks but I have faith that you guys will mold it into something of a model for education of the future.
You definitely do learn the fundamentals and gain an understand of new concepts and meet a bunch of new people, but are these not things that could have been done without having to attend school?
Some people need the regimine of actually "being somewhere" to be productive, but as we push The OEP to it's limits here, it is going to definitely feel more and more like being somewhere.
Thanks for your feedback!
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Yeah, my college education was in the fine arts. I had a great education from a fine school, but at the time,
had absolutely no clue how I was going to get a footing in the real world. There was no practical business preparation from my college, though such schools have gotten a little more savvy since then. In the arts, you need experience and talent. Gotta have both. Experience takes time. So, my second education was the school of hard knocks, just to get that experience. I wish I were as smart as you during my college years and got a jump start on the game. I think education now must have the practical component of how to use this knowledge. That's the real creative part anyway. Higher education and preparing for a profession is great, and it's great to cram your head with knowledge, but most of us have to also earn a living.
Applied knowledge, that is the key. Even though a component of the education I took was applied, it was still inadequate to what the "real world" needed. I would have been better off learning the fundamentals on my own and then offering to work for a company for free until I was up to par as a "junior". That is much more cost efficient than attending school for computers and being required to learn about cooking and US history.
Creativity can take you a long ways these days as well and I have heard on numerous occassions that business are hiring people in "business type" positions with an arts degree often times over a business admin degree...because of the creative value they represent to the company.