Alternatives to College

In my family, education is highly encouraged. I look around, though, and I notice that many celebrities either don't have college degrees or they went to relatively unknown schools and do something completely unrelated to their majors. If you want to be an artist or an actress, you are better off just starting young and not waste time in school. I highly encourage everybody to get into the best school possible, but I feel like we barely learn any useful information in class. We learn data we are going to forget anyway and is readily available on our iphones if we need it. I wish we had more classes teaching us critical thinking and problem solving, alternative learning technologies, strategies to handle stress and work place politics. I'm sorry I have to say that, but I spent so much time reading the classics and the more I get into real life the more I realize I should've spent my time playing sports instead. At least with sports you don't learn some 18th century values but sculpt your body and learn to be competitive and persistent. Here's the article for you anyway...


"It's been nearly a year since Formula Capital's James Altucher discussed his theory on why sending your kids to college is a bad idea. The segment proved to be one of Tech Ticker's most popular...and controversial of 2010. More recently, a report based on the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses found that after two years of college, 45% of students learned little to nothing. After four years, 36% of students learned almost nothing.

Meanwhile, the cost of college keeps rising -- 20 times the rate of inflation and much faster than say healthcare costs -- and student loan debt keeps growing. As of mid-2010, U.S. student loan debt totaled $850 billion vs. $828 billion for credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve.
So with more people coming around to the idea that maybe Altucher is onto something (vs. being on something), the money manager and author is back with a follow-up: 

• -- Start a business.
• -- Work for a charity.
• -- Travel the world.
• -- Create art.
• -- Master a sport.
• -- Master a game.
• -- Write a book.
• -- Make people laugh.

"Whenever I suggest 'don't send your kids to college' a lot of very smart people invariably come back with the response, ‘well what else should they do?'," "So I figure I will help people out by coming up with a list and try to handle the criticisms that will certainly arise even before they arise. I can do this because I have a college degree. So I've learned how to think and engage in repartee with other intelligent people."
In the accompanying video, Altucher "repartees" with Henry and me about his alternatives to college and addresses the most powerful thing working on behalf of higher education: The huge gap in employment between those with and without college degrees." - yahoo.com