LIFE EXPERIENCE AND PASSIONATE INTEREST TRUMP ESTABLISHED EDUCATION

Choosing experience over education as a formula for success is not a new idea

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/04/26/choosing_experience_over_education_as_a_formula_for_success_is_not_a_new_idea

Rush Limbaugh – 4/26/2013

Both Rush Limbaugh's comments are interesting, but check out Penelope Trunk's blog for truly fascinating commentary about RETHINKING education.  The last two paragraphs below are truly thought provoking.  

Parents, bookmark Penelope Trunk's blog spot before you think about taking on debt for "higher education."

"New Paths To Get A Great Job," and I read it, and I'm fascinated.  She's obviously a young person.  It's an advice piece.  And I'm reading it, and I'm saying, "It's exactly what I did 40 years ago."  But yet to her it's brand-new.

The whole point of this is that we've got a factory set up here.  We've got a formula that starts with kindergarten, preschool, whatever it's called, then elementary school, then middle school, then high school, then college, and this is a young person who is starting to say, "Wait a minute, I finish all that and I'm still not employable. I finish all that and I'm still not trained to do anything, and yet I owe somebody anywhere from 25 to $200,000." 

So you've got young people starting to ask themselves about the formula that they're being plugged into, and looking at alternatives to actually learning something.  It's fascinating.  Internships, think of apprenticeships, think of things that have been done in the past

Then the next suggestion here is: start a company instead of writing a resume.  Entrepreneurs are starting Internet type companies

And those type of things are referenced in this piece as young people actually in the workforce rather than in school.  They're just focusing on things they love, they like to do using their talents and expertise, and they're earning a lot of money doing it without any real formal education. 

So young people are seeing this happen, and they're asking themselves, "Why am I in school here?"  I don't know if anything will come of it.  To me it is primarily fascinating because all of this is about going against the grain.  Forget the formula. Screw what everybody says you have to do. Find what you're interested in, and find a way to go do it, which is what I did.

Penelope Trunks’s Blog

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2013/04/23/new-paths-to-a-great-job/

Check out the Archives – many posts about career success

But here’s the big takeaway. A fundamental shift is taking place, where the path to getting a job is massively circumventing college credentials. And, at the same time, the American public is fed up with the insane debt that college are expecting new grads to take on in order to graduate. (Good essay: How College Ruined My Life.)

New paths to a great job

Of course I have to open this post with something about how stupid college is. Colleges are finally responding to the problem they charge tons of money and then graduates are unemployable and in debt. Colleges are responding by becoming job preparation centers. And Frank Bruni, opinion editor for the New York Times, says this is a waste of time and resources. Here’s what’s better:

1. Skipping college.

2. Focus on internships instead of school.

Kids should do internships in high school and by their college years, they are capable of real jobs where they are doing work that people value, with cash.

You cannot take this route if you’re saddled with huge student loans. You can’t take this route if you’re inundated by homework in required subjects you don’t care about. You can’t take this route if you have no work experience when you graduate college. It’s too late.

. . . if you get an internship with someone great, and your performance is great, your network will cover your employment needs for a very long time.

3. Start a company instead of writing a resume.

4. Refuse to present yourself in a linear way.  Young people are selling stock in themselves - paying out dividends for decades at a time.

A fundamental shift is taking place, where the path to getting a job is massively circumventing college credentials. And, at the same time, the American public is fed up with the insane debt that college are expecting new grads to take on in order to graduate.

(Good essay: How College Ruined My Life.)

If you are not going to school in order to “fit” into the adult world, then why are you going to school? The love of learning, presumably. But school reform pundits are 100% sure that kids will choose to learn if you put no constraints on them. They will just learn what they want.

Best example: The MIT program that gave iPads to illiterate kids in Ethiopia (pictured above), and they taught themselves to use it, program it, and read it in English. No teacher.  No curriculum.

The biggest barrier to accepting the radical new nature of the job hunt is the reverberations throughout the rest of life. If you don’t need school for work, and you don’t need school for learning, then ALL YOU NEED SCHOOL FOR IS SO PARENTS CAN GO TO WORK AND NOT WORRY ABOUT TAKING CARE OF THEIR KIDS.

It takes bravery to go against the grain. 

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