In my day job, I have the wonderful opportunity to work with a lot of young people. Some I lose contact with when they get older, others continue to connect over the years and friendships develop. Today’s guest post is from John Michaels, recently graduated from college and filled with great ideas on how to tackle the world.
John has also become a friend, and it’s a lot of fun to bounce ideas/concepts/dreams off one another. He just started his blog, Better Than Getting By, and I know his posts will give you plenty to think about. Please check it out.
Seven Reasons Why Our Education System Is Dead And What You Should Do Instead
This post is going to offend some people. If you are involved in education, know that this is not meant as an attack. It is a wake up call. Things are changing and as Darwin says, if you can’t adapt to change you won’t survive.
1. The best experts are online.
At TheGreatCourses.com you can buy videos or audio recordings of classes taught by the best professors from around the world – Award winning, Ivy league professors — and it only costs around $50 – 100 for the whole class. A class at a mediocre liberal arts college could set you back $1000s, easy.
I did some math, and found out that EACH LECTURE at my college cost $208 for someone paying full tuition.
Why in the world would you pay that when you could get an entire class from a much better professor for ¼ of what you pay for a single lecture?
2. The smartest teachers are realizing that they can do much better teaching online than in a classroom, so that’s where they’re going.
If you had really valuable information to share, why would you limit your teaching to a few classes of 25-100 students?
If you have information that people have a need for, there are millions of people on the internet that are eager to pay you for it—you will benefit many more people and make much more money.
If you can’t succeed online because no one is interested in your information, then you probably shouldn’t be teaching it.
3. It’s too expensive.
Our country is broke and in debt. A bachelor’s degree can easily set you back $200,000, and tuition is rapidly inflating. Soon no one will be able to afford it.
4. You can learn more from a YouTube video or a blog than a class any day.
Do a quick search and you can find powerfully educational, life changing content.
Try Ted.com.
Most of it is free. (And if it isn’t, it’s cheap)
We think we need teachers because they provide the necessary human interaction for quality education to take place, but most teachers today just lecture.
Going to a lecture is the same thing as watching a video, except you can’t be in your underwear.
5. If you need the human interaction and dialogue, join the blogging community.
The blogging world has become a modern-day Roman forum. It represents a new era of education, where the best thinkers and teachers get together to share information and ideas, and students come to learn.
It’s not hard to find quality information, because the best bloggers become the most popular, so they’re the easiest to find.
Bloggers succeed by forming relationships and dialoging with their readers. You’d be shocked at how easy it is to get on a first name basis with even the biggest bloggers. For more on this, read Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. He turned a 4 million dollar liquor store into a 50 million dollar business through blogging and social networking.
6. The quality of education is much more consistent and controlled on the internet.
Professors have to prepare for every single lecture, then they give it live and hope it goes well and they don’t mess up or forget a point. They give multiple lectures a day, so they don’t have much time to prepare each, and many fall behind and their teaching suffers.
Educational videos are scripted, edited, and created once, and the creator has as much time as they need to make sure it perfectly conveys the message.
7. Tenure eliminates competition, competition is necessary for quality.
How hard would you work if you knew you could never be fired?
There is very little incentive for tenured professors to perform well. On the other hand, if internet educators perform poorly, no one will listen to them, they will get no hits and they will fade out of virtual existence.
Internet natural selection is a beautiful thing.
What does this mean for you?
It means you NEED to self educate. It’s becoming easier and easier to get valuable, high quality information on the internet.
Invest intelligently in your education, don’t just throw money at a college and hope you’ll learn something. Your education will be 10x better, and you will put yourself miles ahead of your competition.
People get overwhelmed and even shocked by how much I know when I talk to them about eBusinesses and Entrepreneurship. I was talking to a friend yesterday about online business opportunities. He asked me at least 3 times if I had learned any of what I was telling him from my college. I told him “none.” He couldn’t believe it.
Learn More:
Check out my posts on Self Education and How to Become an Expert on Anything in Two Weeks. (This is a placeholder, posts will be up soon. Subscribe and you’ll get an email when they’re up!)
What do you think?
Comment and let me know if you agree, or if you think I’m dead wrong.
Also, if you know of any great self-education resources, I’d love to hear about them.
One reply on “A Young Person’s View on Education”
Kudos to you Paul for posting this and well done John Micheals! The true learning in college is the safe haven of being on your own, which is especially important in today’s over-parenting culture (I am guilty of this no doubt). However the best learning in life is the learning we do “on purpose” and outside of a traditional classroom. Many professors teach only from a book and not from having “done it” in the world…give me the lessons of the doer any day.