I’ve recently done a great deal of thinking about the entire American education process.  As a new parent, I’ve really started to brainstorm the best path for my child and future children.  While college is very far away for my kids, it’s an interesting topic, especially since I’m only a few years out of college.

A little background… school was always something that I was good at.  This is not to toot my own horn, but to help provide context for my college experience.  Because, in some respect, many aspects of my education came fairly easy to me, my work ethic towards school was awful.  I learned pretty early that I could get by, even ace, some tests with nothing more than some last minute cramming.  Naturally, this stayed with me into college.

I scored a 1380 on the SAT back in 2000/2001 and went to the University of Florida.  While not Ivy league, UF is easily the hardest school to get into in Florida and currently, the average SAT score for incoming students is in the high 1300 range I believe.  I majored in Computer Science (an above average program with regards to difficulty) and minored in Business Administration.  I graduated in 4 years with a 3.7 GPA and had a great job prior to graduation.  A success, right?  Yes and no.

Now, that you’ve read the resume version of my education, let’s look at the real version of my education.  I can say with confidence that I probably attended less than 50% of my classes.  I had incredible amounts of free time.  What do I have to show for my free time?  Memorization of movies such as Rounders, an above average tolerance for alcohol, and a high interest in the stock market (ok, the last one isn’t bad).  The point is, that if I worked hard and had a system that was more applicable, that education should have taken 2 years max.  There was a great deal of wasted time and money that was a part of these 4 years.

Pros and Cons

On the plus side, having a degree is essential for landing high paying jobs and starting your career.  Besides the simple “check mark” that a degree offers you, many companies use the college campus to do recruiting.  It’s much easier to get a job while you’re still in school than a year out of school in my opinion.

Furthermore, many students do mature and become independent by going off to school.  While this is true for me, I also did the stupidest things I’ve ever done during my years in college (not exactly a sign of maturation).  I won’t get into details here. Lastly, while not as important, there’s nothing I’d trade for the ability to wake up on Saturdays in the fall and go to a Gator game each week.

On the negative side, there is a great deal of wasted time.  Even when I was actively learning, only a small segment of what I learned in college actually became applicable to my work or career.  While there is an argument to be made for a “well rounded education”, some of my classes were well outside this label of well roundedness.  For example, in my computer science program, some of the theoretical math classes I took were insane.  Since the day I left that course, never again have I heard nor will hear of anything discussed in that class.  Ok, whatever.

The one highly marketable skill that I have, my development/programming skills didn’t really even come from college course work.  They came from picking it up on my own, and they grew 5x during my first year of work for Accenture (not from course work).  My business skills?  Marketing & management were both a joke.  I picked up some basic financial and accounting skills through those classes, but overwhelmingly, everything I know about business, entrepreneurship, finance, the stock market has come from real world experience and reading on my own.

Final Thoughts

The society and business world that we live in today pretty much demands that you receive a degree for any significant level of success.  I think the goal then is to make sure that you spend your 4 years of college (or more) learning marketable, specific skills that will make you valuable and give you the opportunity to succeed.  If your course work does not offer this opportunity, then it is up to you to find other educational opportunities outside your typical course work.

Here are some tips:

• Find a mentor to help you develop real-world skills that will help you in business or whatever area you see yourself going in
• Find a hobby and learn it – for me, it was the stock market and computer programming – probably the two greatest skills that work for me today
• Enjoy yourself in college but also maximize your free time for productive use – I used my free time for leisure; if I could go back, I would have used those years productively!

What was your college experience?  Do you feel you wasted any time during those years?  Do you use the skills that you learned through college course work?

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