You’re 20 Something and Spent 320k to Go to College. That Was a Terrible Choice.
Tags: Social Media, College, Digital Life, Scam, Education

You’re 20 Something and Decided to Spend 320k to Go to College. Here’s Why That Was a Terrible Choice.

Via David Perell on Twitter

The one question you probably have right now is “how dare we?”

You might be one of the 2.3 million students who hurried to college right after attending High School. You’ve already mentally accepted that you’re going to be buried under mountains of insurmountable debt in the hopes of a *dazzling* future.

The absolute last thing you need right now is some random article telling you you shouldn’t have done it.

And why would you want to question this predetermined trajectory? All your life you blindly followed its direction, seldom questioning its authority. You jumped from one controlled institution and milestone to another. High School Homecoming. Prom. Graduation. Freshman Year.

You’re going to college because you’re a good person. Going to college will allow you to land your dream job, which resembles some sort of 9-to-5.

Doesn’t this trajectory seem kinda…depressing?

You should absolutely question the reason behind why you’re going to college.

College is pushing forth an economic engine of homogeneity. To them, students are either academic…or not. They either can memorize information…or not. They can either pay upfront or be in debt. They can either fit in or drop out.

It’s time we figure out how to fix education, because right now it’s broken.

The most glaringly obvious issue above them all: the money.

A Price Tag Beyond Your Wildest Nightmares

To begin with, college isn’t a very effective ROI (return on investment). You don’t need us to tell you private 4-year institutions rack upwards of 80,000 dollars a year for an out-of-state student. That’s more than a quarter of a million dollars. And for what?

College is good for two mediocre reasons:

Perceived Credibility Connections

Yale = Credibility

Connections = Serendipity

Traditional American institutions can only deliver so much. Sure, they’ll slap some perceived credibility on your LinkedIn (which is a scourge, anyways). However, we still bet your resume will get lost alongside the other hundreds of applicants, college-approved or not. Sorry.

Your second best bet is that college delivers you pristine, surface-level connections.

You know, the type you might have paid $600 a semester for (hint hint, Greek Life). Nothing like bonding with Zach and Jessica over Natty Light beer pong at the Sigma Tau basement. It’s an intimate experience that’ll pave the way for when you ask them for a reference at whatever bank they’ll end up working for a few years down the road.

Jokes aside, let’s ask ourselves: what’s the ROI here? For the average fresh-faced college graduate the starting salary hovers at around $51,000. Roughly speaking, it would take you several years to crawl out of that debt. We’re being generous here with our prediction.

Not to be an additional damper, but currently 53% of recent graduates are underemployed to full-blown unemployed. Things aren’t looking too bright for that 51k starting salary.

But maybe that’s just because it’s 2020 and things are tough, right? You’re shaking your head at us going, “college is gonna teach me everything I’ve gotta know about life.”

You think it’s worth the price tag.

What college actually “teaches” you proves it isn’t.

College is A Relic of The Industrial Age

YouTuber Graham Stephan made nearly 2 million dollars this year from his channel.

What he posts?

Educational content on personal finance.

Graham isn’t alone. People are noticing that recently, teaching financial literacy is trending on TikTok. What does it say about the American education system when young people are educating themselves on financial literacy on an app that also features lip syncing 15-year-olds?

TikTokers aren’t exclusively tackling personal finance. They’re also sharing tips on business, entrepreneurship, taxes, spirituality, mindfulness and creativity. This is telling us two things:

Modern American institutions are doing a poor job at teaching people the foundational tools for life And they’re also not teaching what many kids actually want to learn these days

Whether these Gen-Z TikToker’s are qualified to teach or not isn’t the point.

It reflects a larger problem within society. Currently, many 18–24 year olds are getting duped by phony entrepreneurs promising them riches through e-commerce ventures. You might laugh, but there’s a reason why a young person might want to believe people like Tai Lopez instead of putting 80k down on their first year at college.

College isn’t adapted to the future of what lies ahead.

There’s a dizzying horizon up ahead where people can make money from their passions (the creator economy). A future where money is completely virtual (crypto). Where the Internet is an endless goldmine of startup potential (unbundling of the internet).

College doesn’t prepare you for this type of outcome. And why would it? It’s a relic of the Industrial Age, designed to train people for filling commercial jobs that focus on the production of goods.

A Cog in The Machine

Simply put, college is a type of business. Shocker.

A typical university president not only has to manage an influx of new students, but is also dealing with alums, board members, and schmoozing faculty. Their priority is ranking in the top 20 of the U.S News Rankings. This comes before cozying up rich alums, batting their eyes for donations.

It’s pretty obvious that most private institutions don’t care about the individual student. You’re more like a means to an end; a wire transfer to keep the cogs in the machine humming.

What’s broken here above all is the sense of community. A whopping 40% of students who begin college end up dropping out, according to UC Berkeley Professor David Kirp.

The reason why students are dropping out? Because it’s not about them anymore.

University boards are so busy paying attention to their own wealth and status that students don’t belong to the institution; they’re owned by it.

When students feel undervalued by their institution, they’re more likely to quit. This is because a college’s community promise is academic success. If they don’t fill up their end of the bargain, suddenly the student feels a whole lot less invested.

If a student is looking for help and encounters cold professors and useless help centers, of course they’ll feel cheated. 40k a semester for that? Yeah…no wonder they drop out.

The Solution: Education Must Value Critical Thinking and Collaboration Over Regurgitation

Higher education is one of the most valuable and enlightening things you could have.

However, we live in a world of traditional systems such as money, political and educational. It’s our duty to examine these systems and ask ourselves if they still work for us. Considering the current education system remains relatively unchanged after hundreds of years, it is clear that this model is desperately outmoded.

We’re now entering a new era of decentralized higher education and our options are starting to expand exponentially.

Private institutions are being unbundled thanks to the internet. We’ve already seen this with Udemy, Coursera, and Skillshare. Regardless of whether private institutions are ready to change, internet creators are forming their own courses and schools to enlighten others.

Everyone is now waiting for shared knowledge online. Creators and academics can release their content specifically curated to a niche audience. Go find a school in this new social world — and try to create a career with it.

No one really knows how to fix the current education system, but we’re on the way to finding out.

With knowledge being openly distributed, we’re able to test out what works best for us, instead of opting for a “one-size fits all” approach.

And let’s just say, spending $320,000 for education is definitely not the best fit for all.

To find these new schools in these bustling social worlds, we need an ecosystem that lets you find the communities you resonate with. But this ecosystem doesn’t exist just yet, which is why we’re creating it for you at Officeparty.

We are creating this world of decentralized education for you. It’s a future that will embrace the direction things are going in, and wants to change the game. We’re on the brink of something life changing. But don’t just take our word for it. Go find out for yourself ;)