I haven’t watched a non-007 movie in almost a year, and over the weekend I finally broke that streak by watching “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force.”
Needless to say, the movies had an effect other than making me wish that I was a cop working in 1970s San Francisco. Dirty Harry extols the virtue of playing by your own rules, even if it means clashing with your superiors (granted, Detective Callahan’s boss was a crook too, so that makes it a bit easier). As Dirty Harry says many times, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”
But limitations are exactly what most of our educational backgrounds seem to be forcing on us, as James Altucher writes in this old blog post of his: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2013/03/unschool-yourself/
He’s even got a handy comparison chart for school and prison: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/07/how-i-would-unschool-my-kids/
Think about it: for years on end, we’re just sitting there being talked at (and apparently, if stats are to be believed, we won’t remember or use most of it anyway). We’re implicitly taught the assumption that everything has a correct, concrete, oftentimes simple answer. That teachers, bosses, and “leaders” know best; that what you’re taught to read is actually essential and important; that if we would all just sit quietly and listen, these loving little quasi-parentals will transform us into productive members of society, with all the right opinions and all the right language, and of course having read all the right books…so we can exchange the same words with other people who hold all the same opinions, all say the same things, and who have read all the same books.
Remember that recent college graduate who wrote the Wall Street Journal editorial about her graduating class being sold a “fake bill of goods” (or words to that effect)? I think she may have had a point. Being good at school helps, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be good at work, or life, or entrepreneurship.
So as soon as the confetti gets swept up and the last graduation party ends, the “unschooling” can at last begin. You have to un-condition yourself from it to a degree. Perhaps the person who’s always challenging and struggling with accepted ideas, often openly…understands something the rest of the hive does not. He knows to ask, “What if we’ve got it all wrong?” Or even more horrifying: “Who cares?”
Hence why characters like Dirty Harry still have so much appeal.
My grandfather used to say to my dad, “You know, you got awfully stupid after you went to college.” Don’t get addicted to being in the educational bubble…it’s honestly better outside.
Thoughts?
Flesh, you are spot on. It's refreshing to hear this kind of attitude on WSO. I haven't posted on here in a while, because I've become bored with hearing from college kids that are still, albeit unknowingly, wearing their blinders. All they see is "prestige" (I wish this word would die a long horrible death), and they are all reinforcing to each other this myth that they will be "successful and happy" if they can check a list of boxes on their resume. (target school? BB internship? Top MBA?)
I grew up a middle class midwestern life. I did well in school and my parents' friends always told me I'd be successful. But, I was never really rich or poor. In high school and early college, I worked for four summers on a construction crew, alongside guys that were making ~$20k a year (plus wife making similar money). Juxtapose that to my evenings, which were spent in a social circle with girls and guys from the 1% (although that term didn't exist back then). I will tell you something that forever has shaped the way that I view "success" and "happiness:"
Rich or poor, EVERYONE has the same sorts of problems. Problems related to health, children, jobs, and family all affect people regardless of income level or "prestige." Rich people actually complain about not having enough money/possessions MORE often than poor people. And, given the people that I've met and been close to, I can't honestly say that the richer people seem more happy.
I've been flat broke, and now I have more money than I really know how to spend. I already have more disposable income than my parents. It's a weird feeling for me. I bought an M5 because I always wanted one, and I thought "if I have this car, I will be happy." I was wrong. Yes, it's fun, but it's JUST A CAR. The thing that makes me happy is going home and seeing my beautiful girlfriend bounce to the door to see me. I'm going to sell the car, and keep the girl.
To all the college kids trying to check some boxes thinking that it will make that much difference in your life: pay attention to the above advice. Unlearn what you have learned. If you find satisfaction and interest in your job, your significant other, and your friends, you will be happy.
Whether or not you went to HYPS and worked for GS, JPM, McKinsey, or whatever else everyone's jacking off to these days on this site, is just icing on the cake.
Totally agree with this. Its really nice to know that not all of WSO posters are like that Ryan Allis tool from HBS (see link: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/a-letter-to-the-hbs-class-of-2015).
I was sick to my stomach after reading that post and really lost faith in WSO so I am happy to read this. The post essentially represents the overall thought process and sentiment of the general user on WSO and I really think that it is getting out of hand.
The school you attend will only help you out with where you want to be in life, it will not take you there. It is not indicative of your future success and it will not automatically lead you to a good life. It is not a golden ticket. Book smarts can only take you so far. Your classroom experience can only take you so far. None of that shit even matters in the workplace.
Many of these kids need to get off their high horses or they will seriously be in for a rude awakening later on their lives. The classroom does not teach you to build the soft, inter-personal skills that are needed for success. It does not teach your drive and determination. It does not teach you hunger. Academia is like a fucking plague.
The HBS email was probably ok for an email to HBS admits, but it looks douchey when written for a general audience.
At my old firm, we would always tell ourselves that we were the best of the best at X, Y and Z. If someone had put the same thing up on their personal blog for everyone to read, he would have been told to take it down; it looked douchey.
Great post ITF. I do want to clarify that my profs have all got a good 25 IQ points on me. However, I see them make mistakes all the time and a lot of the assumptions made in financial academia are just that- assumptions, often designed to make calculations easier.
There are very few people in the entire world who beat you by 1.5 standard deviations, even among all of your esteemed professors at Nerd U. You underestimate your intelligence far too often.
For some people, this is good advice. For most smart people, however, this is bad advice. For people on a finance board who're interested in the field? It's really, really, really terrible advice.also, which school is someone considering dropping out of? Michael Milken actually "dropped out" of business school before going back and finishing later. But he didn't drop out of Dakota College at Bottineau, he dropped out of Wharton. And he already had a degree from Berkeley. Sort of like Gates or Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard. These are great schools to drop out of. Larry and Sergey both finished Masters degrees at Stanford. So did Jerry Yang. This has probably been argued before, and it might just be correlation, but I notice that some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in history happened to spend time at certain excellent schools, so perhaps a college campus isn't the most evil environment in the world.
Jeffrey Epstein didn't graduate college and he was a quant of some sorts in the early 80s. Take it for what it's worth.
A super smart person might not get the job at Citadel, AQR, etc but he'd def. get a good job somewhere else.
Exactly.
In some sense, being good at school should help you be good at other stuff (in the same sense that learning how to be good at anything, whether it's pitching a baseball or programming in Java, can help you apply those methods elsewhere).
On the other hand though, being good at school has a really high opportunity cost because it teaches you things that aren't very practical to business or life. There is very little emphasis on marketing, how to sell yourself, how to be charismatic, etc. Instead, you spend years learning algebra and grammar rules. Maybe even more troubling, a lot of schooling seems to be an exercise in conformity -- making sure you don't leave your seat when you're not supposed to, asking for permission to go to the bathroom, doing assignment that someone else dictates (and on a schedule that they decide), etc.
Formal education is marxist filth.
Going to college was a good idea, dropping out was a better one.
great post and great thread.
that's true, academic knowledge has some side effects. nothing can teach you the lessons of life other than life itself and your experiences. nothing. no brilliant books, no presentations, no lectures, no MBA's and PhD's, no professors and no formulas. you have to live and touch the reality firsthand. the more you live it the more you learn it. this is the only way to better know yourself, develop certain skills, how things work in real life and what the form of the truth might be. and real life is different from one class of society to another, from one peer to another, from one friend to another, from one circumstance to another. all have values but not necessary the same ones. what might be valid for one might the opposite for the other one.
I was able to handle debates with my social sciences professors on certain subjects, without any prior academic knowledge. was I a genius? no way. I just couldn't accept a person who had never been outside his/her circle give me certain ideas as true without questioning their truthfulness. at times I even made them question their own arguments and unintentionally made them feel uncomfortable. if there was any genius was that I had seen both sides of the medal. I had learned from life by touching it not by reading it. I felt 'superior' in that sense by default. in fact my reading started when I entered college but I always learned something from my mistakes (and there were many) and felt the burden of responsibility for all the consequences that followed: the good and the bad ones.
to all the students, open your mind and don't take anything you are taught by your professors as given. question it. use your your reasoning and don't worry if you'll be wrong, express your thoughts. because if you're wrong then you will learn you're wrong, if you're right you'll gain confidence and eventually have a free spirited mind. and this is precious. if you achieve it you'll have an asset that not many will have. for school not only doesn't teach you real life wisdom, but in some cases it might mislead you. it might paint a fake reality. and it's not that fun when you're faced with different reality. so keep that in mind.
there is no doubt that academic knowledge helps one to be more rational and develop a better analytical thinking, but at the same time it format it to the extent of herding, which sometimes restrains your natural skills and makes you biased of certain things.
This thread reminds me of a conversation I had last year with a talented econ PhD student specializing in decision theory. He was struggling with a personal decision, and when I pointed out his discipline may be of some help in this matter, he said that it works better in theory and that it is easier when making suggestions for other people…and then trailed off
The debate between street/book smarts seriously annoys me the same way that the nature/nuture debate does. BOTH are integral, and the world in general is becomming far too competitive to think that educational pedigree alone or some vague notion of common sense are enough on their own to carry you: hit the books then get out and do stuff. There are exceptions, but people who argue one over the other are usually wrestling with some personal issue more than anything else.
It's like Sonny said in "A Bronx Tail" .....you want to be street smart and school smart, this way you get two educations.
I don't really view this as a "street smarts vs. book smarts" debate at all. I think it's more of a discussion about how to properly approach your life. We're taught one approach via the education system (and general social conformity), and the point Altucher and Flesh are making is this approach often leads to a very unfulfilling life. In no way would I take this as a disparagement of "book smarts" or a glorification of "street smarts." Don't confuse a condemnation of the education system as a condemnation of education itself.
If you're coming from a heavily institutionalized educational background, Altucher may seem like a breath of fresh air. If you're coming from a more freeform and/or self taught background, he's really not saying anything you haven't heard yourself thing many times before.
My formal higher education experience was actually more of a chance to learn how to deal with people (how to have a roommate, pay bills, juggle multiple responsibilities, plan a day...) and be a real "adult" person than about learning new academic information.
Those soft skills have benefitted me tremendously in the working world, and the limits placed on me in college allowed me to learn them in a safe environment. Like the person above said, though, both types of knowledge are important - one is useless without the other. I'd like to add while college is the conventional route, every potential college-bound person should consider the fact that it's not the only option for learning. To me, it doesn't matter what route you take to get there - it just matters that you consider all the options and choose the best one for yourself. That's the real test of intelligence.
Very much like the "unschool yourself" concept. Now that I am getting a little older and "wiser," it's amazing to me how much counterproductive bullshit has been pumped into our heads throughout the first 25 years of our lives, and how little quality information makes its way through the filter. I feel that only now am I getting to the point where I am really developing myself as a person and figuring things out (and I just turned 30 a few months ago).
Does anyone know how this thread got locked for 24 hours before going back to the front page?
Durn scheduler threw me for a loop.
SBs to mgotrade and ITF, great posts
I think it's pretty obvious that you college should be based on what kind of job/field you're getting into. To be a Senior Reactor Operator you don't need a degree, you "just" need to get licensed. That's a nice 6 figure starting salary and most plants will pay you while you go through their training program, which is a nice 60-80k plus bonuses for passing sections. In that situation going to college is more of a waste of time and money unless you needed it to break in, in which case going to the Ivys is pointless. For any low paying job you don't want to go to an expensive school, at most you want to go to a full ride school or something cheap. Obviously on this forum we need to go to college, dropping out won't help you break into Wall Street.
America's educational system does children and young adults a disservice by perpetuating unrealistic expectations. It also oversells the college degree by undervaluing careers that don't require them. If the economy is the sum of all goods and services traded amongst people in a society, then clearly there is tangible value to learning trades.
One example of this is the demand for skilled manufacturing workers (tool and die makers, et. al.). Many skilled workers are required to set up and supervise manufacturing operations. Most of the guys that know how to do this are now in their 50s and 60s, and there are few young people apprenticing to replace them in this country. Germany, conversely, has its secondary educational system set up to direct non-college-bound teenagers into profitable trades. These guys aren't living below the poverty line, either. A typical tool and die maker or skilled operator can make $50-60k per year or more (non-union) plus benefits. Not bad for someone with no college degree living in a low-COL area.
I think our society is beginning to see that there simply isn't high enough demand for degrees to warrant every person having one, especially now that the ROI can be very low depending on occupation. Hopefully, our nation will also start placing a higher value on skilled tradesmen that are necessary to keep the middle section of our economy running.
This is easy to say, but at the end of the day most people would not be willing to switch places with anyone working a "trade job". There's a very real emotional need for validation that pretty much everyone has and I don't think going around telling people you're a plumber is going to do it.
I don't necessarily know about that.
I know plenty of office drones who make $60k a year to work 55 hours a week who would probably switch places with skilled laborers who often earn $40-$50 an hour. They just don't realize it until it's too late.
"I know plenty of office drones who make $60k a year to work 55 hours a week who would probably switch places with skilled laborers who often earn $40-$50 an hour. They just don't realize it until it's too late."
This is my point. An office job can become quite tedious and pretty much forces you to become sedentary. Some of these people are just not aware that a skilled tradesman's work is actually pretty satisfying, based on feedback I've received over the years. People in trades do feel a sense of strong pride in their work, and they believe that their work is valued by other people. When I worked construction, I felt proud when our team stood back and saw a beautifully crafted home take shape out of a pile of boards and a lot of sweat equity.
Now, when I visit factories and meet with toolmakers and production engineers, I can hear the pride in their voices when they tell me that they think that no one else can make XYZ components better than them.
To be fair, the point of this thread is that we need to reassess and think critically about our educational experiences and priorities, both in an individual and societal context. We also should understand the reality that not every job requires a college education, although every job does provide some level of intrinsic and social value.
Nobody is asserting that we should drop out of college if we are going to earn a return on that investment. Nor is anyone advocating that we should not have a choice over our own educational and career goals.
Said it even better than James and I could!
Institutionalized education for its own sake is fruitless. The Bachelor's degree has become the modern equivalent of the high school diploma was two generations ago.
My father told me about how my grandfather dropped out of high school because he needed to start working to support his family. He wasn't stupid, he just needed to be the primary breadwinner at 16. He spent years in the shop, was promoted, ended up attending night school at a college in that city, and got a degree in engineering. He learned a trade, went to school to study it, and continued working in that field for the remainder of his life. The degree wasn't earned so he could check a box to get a job, it was so he could master the skills he knew he needed to continue working at GE for another 20 years.
Now, you can look at your firm's internal job database and see that even a secretarial position requires a four-year degree. Tell me, how on earth does a job whose sole duties include answering phones, operating a PC primarily to manage schedules and write emails, and managing office supplies require a Bachelor's degree?
This trend alarms me for several reasons. Not only does it extend the phase of irresponsibility (essentially, the supervised adolescence) of our nation's youth, but it saddles them with an ever-increasing burden of student debt ... all for jobs that their degree is either unrelated to or does not truly prepare them for. It also shifts people away from industries or jobs that need employees. Not everyone needs to go to college; it's that simple. As others have mentioned, European nations do an admirable job of helping young people identify whether or not they are college-bound at an earlier stage, and if not, supporting them as they explore vocational training (which can offer an incredibly satisfactory quality of life).
I think we do our young people a disservice by essentially mandating the college track.
Personally I think that instead of going for a college just to earn a degree and get a job, one should reasses oneself. I personally have a code in life which I live by. The code is to constantly improve my body as well as my knowledge. How do I do that? It depends on the circumstance in which I'm placed. Either I can do it through college or do it on my own in real life. This code to live by has saved me a lot of money which I would have wasted in tution fees.
Lots of interesting viewpoints here, and I would love to address all of them, but that's not practical. I tend to agree with the idea that the four-year degree has become commoditized, and that's why you now see Ivy League educations becoming more valuable, because their degrees, even if not ACTUALLY more valuable, have a higher value to employers based on the name only. Their degrees are not commoditized. Similar to cars. Cars are now a commodity, essentially. Bentleys, despite all the whining by the traditionalists, are not. They are more expensive, there are not many of them, and they are better, higher quality vehicles. That's how Ivy-League degrees are treated. Except there is no discernible difference. It would be like if a Bentley was built exactly like a Toyota, and still cost the same as it did now. That's a bit of an over-simplification, but that seems to be the way we are heading.
The reason that four-year degrees have undergone "inflation", so to speak, is partially unavoidable. There are more people in the world every year, the world gets a little richer every year, so more people can go to school, and therefore there will be more degrees and therefore more "qualified" individuals. The problem is that obviously, this means that many will be forced to take jobs for which they are over-qualified. On the flip side, businesses, faced with more and more highly qualified individuals every year, decide to list higher and higher requirements for even the most entry-level of jobs, and therefore we get the example given above of someone who has a $100,000 education and now uses it to answer phones and type dates into a calendar. This will continue to happen as the number of "educated" people outnumbers the amount of "educated" jobs available. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as competition is a good thing, as well as education. We want people to be smarter. We want people to not only know more, but more importantly, to know HOW to learn more. You can't possibly learn everything there is to learn in even a lifetime, but you can be better at it. You can learn how to think critically. What we want is not people who think a certain way, but just people who know how to think. This goes back actually to something interesting in another post on the front page, where we are given the case of three analysts, two are great at there job but seemingly care nothing about personal advancement or learning. They simply want to do the tasks given to them, and that's all. The third is one who, while seemingly not as good of a worker, is much more focused on bettering himself, and looking ahead to exit ops and trying to get there. As a result, his work suffers. Who is the better person? We know who the better worker is, but who will really get farther in life, and feel more fulfilled while doing so? I think we all know who it will be.
Mentioned this in another thread, and will say it again. Sometimes, especially having finished my undergrad education feeling like about the only things I learned were the ones I taught myself, the line from Good Will Hunting seems to have some truth in it..."See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna start doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library." This is not to say that we shouldn't have higher education. We most certainly should. But it should sure as hell be more effective than it is for the money, and one thing's for certain, the best thing about going to HBS shouldn't be the fact that you can type the letters "Harvard Business School" on your CV.
At the end of the day, we all want to be successful, and I'm just as guilty about following the money as anyone else. But sometimes you have to take a step back and say, what do you really know? What have you really learned? And if I don't like either answer, how can I change that? And finally, how can better myself, and hopefully, become more successful, by doing that?
Wow. Way longer than I thought it would be. Chalk it up to late-night rambling.
My own experience backs some of this up. UIUC's engineers were as smart as Princeton's- they were just a lot more driven and wanted to provide a lot more value for $90K/year than a Princeton graduate. Incidentally, US News ranked Illinois and a few other state schools higher than every Ivy at practical disciplines like Engineering and Accounting.
The problem is that not all subjects are in demand by employers. If you are going to school to get a job, you're paying full price, and you choose Art History at Brown over Engineering at Berkeley, you're an idiot, no matter what your IQ is.
Education is getting commoditized, but practical disciplines like engineering and accounting will always be a valuable commodity to businesses. An engineer- a good engineer- who graduates from the University of Phoenix or Morton County Community College- is still pretty darned valuable. Better, that value is fairly easy to determine in a 30 minute interview and from technical certifications.
I think an elite education matters if you're studying a liberal art. In that case, you need an elite education. If you're studying Accounting, Engineering, Actuarial Science, Medicine, or Computer Science, you don't really need an elite education. You're one of the lucky people who can do a job that most people can't do, and yes, you're commoditized, but you're a hot commodity.
I think this information can be scary to people at elite schools. Life is tough and it's not a party like spending four years studying a liberal art at Harvard.
Very true. But, unfortuantely, that's the way it is. Lots of people who have no idea what they actually want to do will go somewhere they don't really need to in order to get an education. I mean, ideally, every college education should be valuable. And if you're able to think critically and truly want to learn, you should be able to get a lot out of your education, whether you're a comm major or a finance/math/econ triple major. If you don't, all the prestige in the world won't get you anywhere. The problem is, many are too naive to realize this until it's too late. And that's a problem. Too many feel they have the "right" to opportunity, instead of feeling the need to earn it. I think the only reason anyone "needs" an Ivy education is if they are desperate for the "exit ops", so to speak. Someone that went to Yale, with my major, my GPA, and approximately the same extracurriculars and skills will have more intrinsic opportunity than I will. And that's fine. But I think that too many actually think somehow they deserve that rather than realize they are lucky and are afforded this opportunity partially on prestige alone and not merit.
"I think an elite education matters if you're studying a liberal art. In that case, you need an elite education. If you're studying Accounting, Engineering, Actuarial Science, Medicine, or Computer Science, you don't really need an elite education. You're one of the lucky people who can do a job that most people can't do, and yes, you're commoditized, but you're a hot commodity."
I think a lot of people on this board would be shocked at how much money the state school (think Purdue, Illinois, Texas A&M..) engineers make in a F500 environment. But the downside is they have no preftige.
IP, props for the UMich reference.
WSO is a very northeastern, finance-focused forum. Ivy League bankers and consultants think they have the lock on money, but they really don't. A hotshot Python developer or oilfield engineer can come out of undergrad these days and make more money than a guy who graduates Summa from Harvard and lands at Lazard.
My favorite thing about Michigan was that we had the whole package: top notch academics, great campus life, nationally competitive sports teams, and the best team colors and fight song ;)
I also didn't even really know how good of a school if was until I started traveling around the country and randoms would give me props. To me, it was just our best school in the state. Incidentally, I had a coworker come to America for the first time (from India) and he knew what UMich was.
On a side note, just had a frat bro of mine get into HBS. He was an engineer, too.
I have to respectfully disagree with the OP. I think that chasing prestige has its own time and place in people's lives. the vast majority of young people are fairly uncertain about what they want to do in life, and chasing prestige helps them to set goals and gain some sort of structure in their lives. Why do so many students who originally arrived in college with aspirations to pursue other careers often end up applying for finance jobs at top-tier firms? The security and the perceived clear-cut path. We're taught to find serenity in that, and honestly, while you are young I think that's fine. It takes time to get to know what you want out of your life, and as you mature you will not only discover your passions, but also discover what is important to you and what isn't. At that point, I think more people are willing to let go of prestige. Asking someone not to consider prestige when they're only 21, are deciding between junior year summer internships and have no idea what they want to do with their lives, is really asking a lot.
there is one important point that should be stressed out for the young kids that might read this post and have second thoughts about college or are not doing well: don't never ever drop out of college, if you're not 99.99% sure that you'll make it big in your own business.
and not going to college is unquestionable, be it a private or public. you'll have a key that opens doors that otherwise you won't have it, no matter how smart or a hustler you might be.
this debate about whether college is worth it or not is very tricky because we are all coming at it as people who have decided already what our careers will be (or at least the field). Obviously in a perfect World if I knew i was going to be an interest rate trader i could have started before college...hell i could have started in about 8th grade once i knew basic math. But I had no idea what a trader was or did back then...part of getting a broad education is figuring out what you want to do in life and where your passions lie.
Also, "prestige" is a part of life and nobody is just going to give it up. This is deep-seeded, human nature-type stuff...i guarantee that even cave men did ridiculous stuff that had no practical value in order to increase their prestige within the tribe. People like to think we are smarter/cooler/whatever then others and while that may mean different things to different people there is nobody that truly doesnt care about what others think about them.
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