Let’s cut to the chase: Yes. Drop out. College is horrible.
A) you only learn things when you love them. Since college, like every crap school, forces you to take a “curriculum”, how likely is it that you will love everything in the curriculum. Probably close to 0%.
B) If you don’t learn something, but you are forced to take classes, tests, and homework in it, then you will learn one thing: you will learn to hate. That’s not fun.
C) you learn things when you love it, immerse yourself into it, and gain practical experience while at the same time reading eveything you know on the topic. Do you need a college campus for that?
D) College costs money. And given that you will hate most of it, why pay money for something you mostly hate.
E) Almost every college student graduates with debt that they don’t realize they will not be able to pay back. 50%+ of college graduates remain unemployed or underemployed well into their 20s and now, even into their 30s. I’m on the board of directors of a billion revs temp-staffing company. Believe me when I say, we are like a violent army of unhappy college grads.
F) The government backs your student loans when you are 18. But then seizes your assets when you’re 22 and can’t pay back. And bankruptcy doesn’t get rid of it. Good luck fighting Uncle Sam.
G) There’s one basic reason for college: so young men don’t commit violent crimes. When colleges first appeared on the scene 600 years ago there were guards all around the “campus”…..Facing in. To prevent the violent young men from leaving. It was a prison then and it’s a prison now.
H) There’s a bogus statistic that someone with a college degree makes $700,000 more than their peers without degrees (Georgetown University study). This study fails Statistics 101 by not taking into account Selection Bias. For instance, normalizing across the income levels of parents.
I) College doesn’t teach these basic skills (there are exceptions but in general): creativity, salesmanship, negotiation, leadership, dealing with failure. It just so happens these are the main critical skills for success in life. So you just wasted five years (oh yeah, the average duration of a college student is five years. Not four)
J) Why not get a five year head start on your loser peers who will end up $200k in debt. Here’s a plan: do whatever you want for one year (it will undoubtedly cost less than college) and then start any kind of business on the planet. It doesn’t even matter if you fail. You will learn the basic skills faster than your loser peers who are trapped learning things they hate.
K) College supposedly teaches social skills. You get to join fraternities and have lots of parties. Well, figure out a way to socialize without that. It’s a lot of fun. Everything is fun at 19. You won’t miss out.
I) College doesn’t really build your network. Your network gets built in the real world when you actually deliver value for the people you work with.
My own story in a few sentences. I went to a great school for Computer Science. Got good grades. Went to a great graduate school. Then got a job as a programmer at HBO. My programming was so AWFUL they had to send me to remedial classes for two months at AT&T in order to get me even partially up to speed. The only reason they didn’t fire me outright was because I was giving chess lessons to my boss. A skill I learned in elementary school.
This was written by James Altucher as an answer to the question “College Dropouts: Should I drop out of college?” that was asked on Quora
