[Dr House]

https://fee.org/articles/ditch-college- ... good-life/

Scene one: I needed a haircut and someone suggested I go across the street to the Aveda Institute. Fine. My hair was cut by a student who was grateful to be working on a regular person, not a manikin. She had another six months in training to before she could become a certified cosmetologist with a credential to work at any salon, cosmetics counter, or spa in the country. It was my first exposure to this institution that was founded initially as a cosmetics line.

Scene two: I met a brilliant young woman with top scores and a great chance for admission to a top college. Her goal from childhood had been to become a physician. Then one day she realized that this future actually sounded miserable. She didn’t want to hang out in dingy operating rooms, struggling with bureaucracy. What she really loved was hair, makeup, and fashion. Why not follow her dream? Instead of college, she enrolled in the Aveda Institute. She can’t be happier.

Scene three: I’m getting my haircut somewhere else and I ask the lady cutting my hair where she moved from. Washington, D.C., came the answer. How did she end up cutting hair here? It was closest to her house that she bought in Atlanta because she liked the neighborhood and the house was affordable. So she could choose to work anywhere she wanted? Yep. Why? She graduated from Aveda, which is the best credential she can have in this industry.

So I’m thinking about this. Here is a school (there are dozens around the country) at which enrollment lasts about one year and costs between $15-20K to attend. This compares to the four years and $100-400K you will spend on a college degree. Many people who leave college are lost and confused, with few skills, no work experience, and no network to tap into for jobs. Aveda graduates have real skills, can work anywhere, and tap into a vast network.

It was the first I’ve heard of this school. The more I look at it, the more it seems inevitable that such models are going to replace college for many people in the years ahead. It makes no sense to spend all that time and money getting a degree that has marginal benefit in the job marketplace. Yes, it is necessary if you are pursuing a career in medicine, law, accounting, engineering, or academia.

That accounts for a small percentage of people who pay for college degrees. We keep hearing about how a college education is connected with higher earning power but the cause and effect relationship here is complicated at best. Some people argue that it is entirely illusory. Meanwhile, real-life experience in fields outside those requiring college credentials is showing something very different.

Meanwhile, Aveda seems to be thriving, and its students and graduates seem very happy, with as much upward mobility as they desire. The one in Atlanta that I visited was teeming with male and female students, all working very hard to master a trade. There are others in New York, D.C., Chicago, Nashville, and many other parts of the country.

I thought I could easily do some research on when these schools started and how many people attend them. Not so. Not even the Wikipedia entry on Aveda mentions their highly successful training programs. It seems to be flying beneath the radar, growing based on industry reputation alone. I’m sure their products are great, but the schooling is the disruptive innovation here.

Scene four: I was invited to attend a data science meetup in Atlanta. It was held at the headquarters for the General Assembly, which is a training camp for the management of digital properties. The meetup was fun, but what really stood out was the very existence of this institution. General Assembly teaches front-end development, project management, beginner website creation, social media skills, and high-level coding. Their classes range from one evening to three months. The pricing of the service depends on the class. The resulting credential is impressive on the resume, and, like Aveda, you tap into a vast network of people.

Unlike the typical university, General Assembly seeks close connections with the surrounding business community. They host socials a few times per week. They bring in business leaders and technicians to give lectures. Many of the teachers here are actually workers in real world enterprises around town. General Assembly is there to facilitate an exchange of knowledge between practitioners and aspirational workers.

It turns out that there are other such institutions in town, including Iron Yard. And around the country there are Code Camps. The tech industry is the fastest moving and among the most profitable in the country, so it makes sense that the industry would demand actual credentials and skills, none of which are provided by the stodgy old-world institutions of colleges and universities.

The tech industry may have given rise not only to all the wonderful new technologies that have changed our lives so fundamentally but also to a new form of education itself. These camps could point the way toward a new path after high school. Why precisely should a person spend yet another four years sitting in a desk, listening to a lecturer, when he or she could be working while training and getting better at a skill for which there is a real market demand?

We all know people in their twenties who look back at their college years and wonder why it all happened. For many of them, the time they took off to get their degree was misspent. Many graduated without any real awareness that jobs actually do require people to bring value to the firm. No one is going to pay for an undergraduate degree. Employers pay for services rendered, not a resume. The only purpose of the resume is to signal the highest likelihood of success at doing a real job.

Stay in School?

For a very long time, young people have been told that the key to success is to “stay in school.” But what happens when life experience begins to tell them the opposite? Or perhaps the definition of what constitutes school needs to change. Work can be school. Education can be combined with work. Education should be structured not just to impart abstract “knowledge,” but actual know-how. And what if it turns out that doing things differently also turns out to be more fun in any case, not to mention more financially rewarding?

By analogy: for generations, Americans were also told that the single greatest and safest investment they could ever make was to buy a house. That illusion blew up in 2008. Now people see houses for what they are: good for some purposes, bad for others, and by no means a guarantee of high future income.

So it is for college. The difference is that most people don’t know it yet. Meanwhile, these many institutions offering real training for the real world are thriving as never before.

[anasawad]

I haven't read the Articale to be honest, 'll read it though.

But in general for the appearent topic. I went to collage only to leave in second year.
But i still have a career as i have been training and working in my domain for 10 years now since i was 11 years old.
And even if without getting extra money from my family. I would still make more money and stability on my own better than most people.

Why ? 2 things.
First of all, school and university isn't the only place where you can learn and it for sure not going to teach everything.
Anyone who believes he or she is going to get a degree and land a perfect job and all good is simply immature and ignorant of life.
You can learn from anywhere or anyone and you can make something out of yourself whether you went academic or you went and learned directly in the market.

secondly. The main problem for most people is that they go after the money not after comfort. Now true there should be a certain minimum level of income to provide for them but that can come from many places and can be secured.
What they need is to put them selves in a place where they're comfortable about it. Where they enjoy it. And most importantly a position they know and can progress and achieve in and from it.
Other wise its a losing bid.

And many do reach quite a good rank and life doing so.
So people shouldn't focus on that dumb routine that you can only succeed in life by going to collage or attending full school then getting a normal job.
'm not saying collage isn't important, but collage is a mean to education and education can be from some where else.
So people should explore all the possible options, know what fits them most, then porceed in that path.

[mikema63]

I love what I'm studying and I could never do what I want without going.

And frankly I think pretty much everyone would benefit personally and we would benefit societally and culturally if people got a basic education which is no longer provided in American high schools. If it ever really was.

[Dr House]

It's not provided in colleges either, mostly they're focused on social engineering and the students are focused on going through the motions to get their degree.

We could all benefit from a desire to learn and make ourselves better people, but that can't be manufactured, and more people going to college will not actually help. All it does is cheapen the institution, because if a student doesn't want to be there the student and the entire class are worse off for it.

[Harmattan]

You cannot become a programmer in three months, period. By miles. You do not even have the basics, nor what it takes to gradually improve in a pro environment. Just like you do not become a physician after learning how to change an old man's diapers. Instead you become an "unlicensed assistive personnel" if I may trust wikipedia for the translation.

The only thing you can do after three months is basic static layout, and you leave the rest to a programmer. It is actually enough to do rudimentary websites for local businesses all alone, although those businesses could achieve an equally satisfying result by themselves with some click-click UI.

And you know what? Their skills will be quickly obsolete in just a few years. A few of those people will have, through smartness and thousands of hours of personal work, grew to become actual programmers. The rest will be back to square zero. But frankly, I wonder how they fare professionally. And before that I wonder who recruit them and how things go for them, their employers, colleagues and customers.


There may be a path out of college, but not this way. This is a very bad example.

[yiostheoy]

Bill Gates and John Dell and Larry Ellison were not benefitting from college much, so they bailed out.

If you want to be a military officer then you need to go to college however.

If you want to be a licensed professional (physician, lawyer, CPA etc.) then you also need to go to college.

Some jobs require it. Others do not.

Sure I could train any bright kid out of high school who can add, subtract, multiply, and divide to be an accountant or financial analyst. But the State would not let them certify without the college diploma first.

[Dr House]

Which is a great case for abolishing state licensing requirements.

50% of professions require licenses in California, vs 11% in Indiana. Something tells me living in Indiana is not actually any less safe than living in Cali.

[Saeko]

Yeah gee I can't wait to be operated on by an unlicenced doctor.

This trade school propaganda is just great. "Don't get an education. Come to our "trade school" and work for a company of our choice for free!"

[Dr House]

Misrepresenting your skills as a doctor is a felony (actually several felonies: fraud, reckless endangerment, assault), irrespective of the existence of a state licensing bureaucracy. Eliminating licensing requirements does not eliminate the need for doctors to be skilled, only the redundant requirements that usually go along with it.

[yiostheoy]

Which is a great case for abolishing state licensing requirements.

50% of professions require licenses in California, vs 11% in Indiana. Something tells me living in Indiana is not actually any less safe than living in Cali.

Fallacy of argument from ignorance. You can read-on here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

[Dr House]

Allow me to rephrase:

There is no evidence that I've come across, that Indiana has been negatively impacted in any way by its lax licensing laws.

[yiostheoy]

Allow me to rephrase:

There is no evidence that I've come across, that Indiana has been negatively impacted in any way by its lax licensing laws.

That's still a fallacy of argument from ignorance just more smart-sounding.

[Dr House]

I'm comfortable with that. True wisdom is knowing what you don't know.

[Saeko]

Misrepresenting your skills as a doctor is a felony (actually several felonies: fraud, reckless endangerment, assault), irrespective of the existence of a state licensing bureaucracy.

No it isn't.

[yiostheoy]

Your word for the day is "moot" M-O-O-T.

Read the definition then use it in a sentence, such as "this issue is moot":

moot

/mo͞ot/

adjective

adjective: moot

1.

subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty, and typically not admitting of a final decision.
"whether the temperature rise was mainly due to the greenhouse effect was a moot point"

synonyms: debatable, open to discussion/question, arguable, questionable, at issue, open to doubt, disputable, controversial, contentious, disputed, unresolved, unsettled, up in the air
"a moot point"

•having no practical significance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision.
"it is moot whether this phrase should be treated as metaphor or not"

verb

verb: moot; 3rd person present: moots; past tense: mooted; past participle: mooted; gerund or present participle: mooting

1.

raise (a question or topic) for discussion; suggest (an idea or possibility).
"Sylvia needed a vacation, and a trip to Ireland had been mooted"

synonyms: raise, bring up, broach, mention, put forward, introduce, advance, propose, suggest
"the idea was first mooted in the 1930s"

noun

noun: moot; plural noun: moots

1.

historical
an assembly held for debate, especially in Anglo-Saxon and medieval times.

•a regular gathering of people having a common interest.

2.

Law
a mock trial set up to examine a hypothetical case as an academic exercise.

Origin

Old English mōt ‘assembly or meeting’ and mōtian ‘to converse,’ of Germanic origin; related to meet1. The adjective (originally an attributive noun use: see moot court) dates from the mid 16th century; the current verb sense dates from the mid 17th century.

[Harmattan]

Bill Gates and John Dell and Larry Ellison were not benefitting from college much, so they bailed out.

First of all they all learned programming in college I think, since there were no personal computers in their time. Also it was another era and programming was a much more shallow field, and those people are smarter than the average man. Not everyone can be an autodidact.

That being said I, too, like many others, did learn programming without any course (I went to college but studied another field). But we would have been useless in a pro environment after three months, it took us a few thousands of hours to become decent. And personally, I am likely an exception, but I eventually had to acquire all the academic skills that are normally provided in the most academically-oriented programming courses. Needless to say, I was glad to have already learned some in the academic courses for my other field.

[Paradigm]

Licensing is a mixed bag. It's true that there are some professions that really don't need licensing, but which try to pass licensing laws in order to create entry barriers to protect their livelihood. It is also true, however, that there are some professions, particularly in the medical field, where there are sufficient safety and privacy concerns that some sort of licensing is desirable in order to ensure that some professional standard is met. Dr House seems to think that this could all be worked out through litigation, presumably by unlicensed lawyers who would take up an increasingly large section of the economy along with the insurance industry as various professions have to take on more malpractice insurance in an increasingly litigious society.

[Dr House]

Or alternatively, it could simply all be met through voluntary certification, or even private certification. In Kansas, where acupuncturists do not need to be certified, there are more voluntarily certified acupuncturists per capita than there are certified acupuncturists in neighboring Iowa, where the profession does require a license by law.

[Cartertonian]

I saw this thread yesterday but didn't have time to respond.

For a very long time, young people have been told that the key to success is to “stay in school.” But what happens when life experience begins to tell them the opposite? Or perhaps the definition of what constitutes school needs to change. Work can be school. Education can be combined with work. Education should be structured not just to impart abstract “knowledge,” but actual know-how.

In addition to being a clinician, I'm also a Registered Nurse Teacher and university lecturer. In 'vocational' disciplines like mine we try to offer a blend of theoretical and practical education, but personally I would rather we focused more on the practical and taught people the skills of nursing. In the UK at least the problems come from the fact that universities are built on an academic and theoretical model. Particular disciplines that are more vocationally based are anomalous. To universities, their customers are just students - of fine arts, or chemistry, or architecture, or whatever. Thus the way in which the sector engages with what we still call colloquially 'nurse training' is very strained. Vocational disciplines rely on recruiting teachers who have credibility in the vocation they aspire to teach, but there are a growing number of nursing 'academics' who have, entirely wilfully, spent as little time as they could get away with in clinical practice before returning to the academic fold as teachers. If I had my way, no-one would be allowed to teach any vocational discipline unless they had practiced in that discipline for a minimum of ten years.

[Paradigm]

Karate tends to work on the basis of "voluntary certification." That is, there is no universal standard for what it takes to become a black belt (or to teach Karate in the first place), and there are many places, often referred to as "McDojos," where black belts are basically handed out for paying your membership fees long enough, regardless of whether you've actually learned anything. Now, when it comes to karate, this doesn't do too much harm except for the occasional idiot who thinks their black belt actually means something and gets into a bar fight to put it to the test. If, on the other hand, we're talking about surgery, I'd be a little more worried about such certification processes.