Tag: College

Answered on Quora: How to Do Stuff Outside the Normal Path

A Quora user asked:

How can I start studying at college or any school program without a highschool diploma?

My response:

I have no HS diploma and I got an associate’s then bachelor’s degree (and later MA). I never got a GED or took the ACT or SAT.

At age 15 I just enrolled in community college. They don’t care, they just want your money. I took an assessment test to determine which classes I should start with. I did two years of classes there and got an AA. The AA and my CC grades transferred to the nearby state university no questions asked. They, too, want your money.

There may be a more fundamental question: Why do you want to go to college? Getting a HS diploma was (correctly, IMO) deemed not worthy of your time. Why is a degree better?

If you want the college social experience, or the knowledge from classes, or anything other than the piece of paper, just move to a college town, go to parties, sit in on classes without registering, etc. Save yourself tens of thousands or more and get all aspects of the experience.

If you want the piece of paper, ask yourself why. It’s a signal to employers that you are roughly average. If you’re even a little bit ambitious and creative, you can build a better signal yourself. Google>resume, and a portfolio of value created, an online presence that proves it, a network, and great experience>generic degree.

The most compelling reason to go to college is if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt you want to do something that legally requires a degree – law, medicine, academia, or government bureaucratic work – even here, I’d encourage some thinking about entrepreneurial ways to approach it, or at least spend a year or two working in these fields before sinking 4+ years and 6 figures into a degree that almost locks you into that work for life.

If entrepreneurship, art, software, sales, marketing, or a host of other self-directed, creative endeavors appeal to you, don’t wait around in a classroom. Save the time and money and start doing awesome stuff now. (check out Praxis if you want some help doing awesome stuff with no credentials.)

Whatever you do, don’t be bored. Life is too short and too valuable to do things you don’t enjoy.

I’m Not Qualified

I don’t have a high school diploma.  I’ve never taken the ACT, or SAT, or GRE.  I can’t even type properly – I used one finger on each hand.  Who do I think I am to write books and blog posts, give talks and podcasts, and run a business?

I don’t think I’m anybody.  The thing is, I don’t think anyone else is anybody either.

I’m not qualified.  Neither are you.  No one is.  That’s the big secret.

I’ll never forget the day I first realized that no one knows what they’re doing.  I was sitting in a classroom at Western Michigan University and feeling stressed about how I was going to get a job and figure out how to survive in the world.  I had imposter syndrome.  I’m a fraud!  I don’t know how to do anything.  I’ve faked my way through everything.  I BSed essay answers on tests.  I pretended I was reading music during my piano lessons when I was really playing from memory.  I took shortcuts and found the quickest ways to avoid pain and boredom.  How could I gain enough mastery of anything to navigate the world?

The professor droned on. (It was a particularly boring political science class where the professor, who must have been at least at old as the Declaration of Independence, wrote the $150 textbook and taught word for word from the chapters he had written.)  I looked up from my desk and around the classroom.  It looked like the biggest bunch of half-witted, half-sober, half-pajama’d, half-serious degenerates I’d ever seen.  Kids talked loudly to each other over the oblivious professor about how “schwasted” they were, where they puked the night before, and where to go do it again today.  They scrawled incoherent sentences on essay questions I had to decipher when it came time to “trade and grade”.  They chuckled and bragged about who they knew in the infamous “Crime Beats” section of the college newspaper.

If I’m worried about how I’ll cut it in the world, what will these kids do?  How will they survive?  I recall one of them said he wanted to be a dentist.  How could he possibly?

Then I remembered a dentist whose office I had worked in recently, installing a telephone system.  They guy made good money and ran his own little small town office, but he was a big goofball.  He snuck into the back room every few minutes, making patients wait mouth agape, to day trade stocks.  He was clearly an addict and a thrill junky without a serious bone in his body.  He joked constantly and loudly and always wanted to get lavish lunches with alcohol….

Holy crap, this kid is going to be a dentist!  And that girl is going to be a lawyer.  And that other guy will probably be a government bureaucrat.  Most of the rest will end up teaching middle school (Western had a lot of future public school teachers.  It was common after flunking out of majors like “Communications” to switch to elementary education).

I realized in that moment I was going to be fine.  More than fine.  Not because I had any special ability.  It hit me that everyone is making everything up.  The bar isn’t actually that high.  No one knows how to be a proper adult, or worker, or parent, or researcher.  There’s no magic permission slip or grant of expertise that makes you qualified for anything.  You just have to do it.

If you find a way to create value for people, you’ll be fine.  And there are a surprisingly vast array of ways to create value for people.  The demand for human minds and hands is so great that even these party-loving students would be gainfully employed.  They’d probably be doing my taxes or taking an X-Ray for me some day.

Don’t worry about your lack of qualification.  You’re not qualified for anything really.  Neither is anyone else.  You are, however,  more qualified than anyone else in the world to do the things that are uniquely you.  Go for it.

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*If you are a teen or you have a teen that’s interested in entrepreneurship, creative thinking, and out of the box living, check out the Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course!

Praxis Teen Entrepreneurship Course

It’s That Time of Year When the Emails Start to Swell

I’ve gotten so many emails from bored, unhappy college students in the last few weeks I decided to write a post addressed directly to them and others like them.

You can check it out over at the Praxis blog.  Here’s an excerpt:

You haven’t done much more than read textbooks and sit through lectures.  You haven’t been around many entrepreneurs, innovators, or creators.  You begin to suspect that your grades aren’t a reflection of your value-creating potential in the market.  You begin to wonder why they matter at all.  Same goes for your second major…and your first.  You ask yourself what your plan was coming here in the first place and realize you didn’t really have one.  It just sort of seemed like the next stage on the conveyor belt moving you along to an undefined “normal” life.

Here’s the good news.  You can get off the conveyor belt.

Read the full post here.

If you want to explore whether you might be a good fit for Praxis, shoot us an email.

How to Discover What You Really Want to Do?…Don’t!

Here’s an answer I gave to a question on Quora about finding out what you want to do in life.

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I find this question to be too stressful and unrealistic for most people to answer.  What you really want to do with your life is a lot of things, many of which probably haven’t been invented yet.  How can you pick one and plot a path to it?

Instead, do the opposite.  Think of things you know you hate doing or things that bore you or make you feel dead inside.  Don’t do those.  Try new things and add to that list whenever you find something not for you.  Make it your goal every day, week, month, and year to reduce the number of things you do that you don’t like doing.

Don’t think about careers, majors, titles, industries, and jobs.  Think about activities.  Stuff you do every day.  What do you not want to do?  How can you create a life where you never have to?

What you want is to not be bored in life.  So find out what things you can quit, and find a way to quit doing them.  Everything else is fair game.

That’s always worked well for me anyway.  Certainly better than trying to find out what I want to do.

‘Will a Good School Accept Me?’

I answered a question on Quora (well, I guess I didn’t really answer the question, but spoke to the ideas behind it) about getting into a top university without straight A’s.  You can read the question here.

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First and foremost, don’t stress.  This won’t make or break your life.

I don’t know what those institutions require for admission but I have another idea: don’t spend your time trying to get approval and acceptance from academic institutions but instead go create value for yourself and the world.

Our world is awash in official accolades and credentials and padded resumes.  You’ll realize when you get into the world outside the education bubble none of that matters much for value creation and personal fulfillment.

Identify what you want in life, identify the obstacles to getting it, and create challenges and habits to help you overcome those obstacles.  All of this can be done without the official sanction of formal institutions.

If what you want is to be a professor or to work within academia, then of course that’s the way to go.  Or if you simply wish to enjoy college as a very costly consumption good, go for it.  But the notion that you must jump through the right hoops to earn the approval of X or Y university is backwards.  You want skills and experiences and knowledge and a network.  You’re the customer.  See if you can think of the best, most effective, quickest, least expensive, and most enjoyable way to get them.  The question isn’t whether those universities will take you, the question is whether you’ll deem them worthy of your time and money.

Whatever path you take, good luck!

Voice & Exit Interview

An interview I did for the Voice & Exit blog.

1. Isaac, you wrote an article on the V&E blog earlier this year about changing the world through creative entrepreneurship. Can you explain how this mindset informed your decision to start Praxis?

I was tired of talking. Don’t get me wrong, I like to talk. Probably too much. I had some big, radical ideas about the uselessness of the high school-college-career conveyor belt and what kind of alternatives could be better, faster, cheaper, and more fulfilling. Ideas are costless. Anyone can have ideas. If I really believed my theories about the huge opportunities for young people to do something different, why not put my money where my mouth is?

Who cares if professors or experts disagree with me? The market will determine if the idea is valuable. That’s the part I love the most. You don’t need to convince everyone about your theories of a better world in the realm of argument when you can create value for customers in the market. You can ignore the haters and focus on creating value for those who benefit from your idea.

I’m a happy person. I like being happy. I don’t like being grumpy. Arguing about what you want the world to look like is pretty depressing. You never win. Going out and creating it – putting those ideas into a business model – is exhilarating, informative, and has a real chance of changing things.

Entrepreneurship is philosophy in action.

2. How did you know “it was the right time” to launch Praxis? What were some of the risks and upsides involved for you?

I don’t think there’s ever a right time for any big move in life. At least not one that’s identifiable ahead of time. What made the time right for me was that I had an idea burning so intensely inside me I almost felt I didn’t have a choice.

Sure, I’d had ideas before, but none of them had the clarity or plan for execution that I had with Praxis. It was the sum of a decade of smaller ideas and observations, and it came to a head all at once. Without sounding too sensational, I just knew I had to build this thing. I needed to get my question answered by the market. Can this thing work?

I wanted to know the answer so bad that I was totally willing to fail in my effort to find it. I think the “willing to fail” test is good one. If you need some guarantee of success, it’s probably not a good time to launch a venture. It will test you, and have to accept and internalize the possibility of failure up front.

The biggest risk honestly was not the risk of failure. That didn’t scare me as much as the risk of not going after this thing. If I didn’t, I’d regret it.

The biggest upside? Keep an eye on Praxis. You’ll see soon.

3. Much of the buzz around Praxis focuses on education, but education is just a means to a certain end. What is the broader goal you’ve set for Praxis? What has Praxis “exited?”

Education is a boring and stale word. Yes, learning is crucial to any endeavor in life. But textbooks and tests and classrooms and schedules imposed by others and credentials conferred for hoop-jumping are just stupid in most cases.

What Praxis is really about is freedom on a very personal, individual level. We exist to help young people discover what makes them come alive and create a way to do it. We exist to help them find an environment, a mindset, a community, and a set of questions that will enable them to awaken their dreams. We know that for the world to be free and prosperous, individual humans must be. We want young people to take the reins of their own living, learning, working, and building. We want them to be the driving force in their own life. We want them to get a jump on the opportunities exploding around them to be entrepreneurs and innovators, and to live life on their terms.

Whether it’s freedom from the classroom, the cubicle, the expectations of others, or your own fears and doubts, we want to help you achieve it.

We weren’t content to criticize the conveyor belt of debt-fueled classroom credential chasing. We want to help people not just wake up to it, but leave. Praxis is exiting – and helping others exit – the ‘higher education’ industry and the debates about how to reform or improve it. Forget all that. Criticize by creating. And start with creating a tailor made life that you love.

4. What do you think is the single biggest force driving this awakening of thought in education?

Ideas are free. They can’t be chained up. You can’t dam up the stream of information that’s been unleashed by decentralized technology. Now that the information gatekeepers have no special power or privilege the credential gatekeepers will be the next to decline. The best ideas aren’t housed in a single place or owned by a group of elites, and next the signal to the world of an individual’s intelligence and ability won’t be conferred by some big central institution. It will be created and demonstrated by the individual him/herself.

People are realizing they now have the power to be their own credential and let their work speak for itself. That’s a power no one can stop.

5. You’re taking on a leviathan system. What are some of the barriers you’ve had to work around and what are some ways you’ve been able to succeed?

Everything from weird laws and regulations to the obvious financial challenges of a startup from scratch. But there are always workarounds if you’re impatient and determined enough to find or create them.

The biggest barrier to any entrepreneurial endeavor are the mental and emotional challenges. It takes a toll to fight every day for the thing you’re building and pouring your life into, and sometimes it’s easy to underestimate how much stress that can bring. You’ve got to really master your inner life and summon the strength and humility to keep at it.

And you have to ignore the critics who love nothing more than to sit on the sidelines while others create and take potshots or nitpick. Just remember who your customers are and focus entirely on rocking their world. Forget about the rest.

6. How big do you see this community growing? Where is Praxis in five years and what are the opportunities for others who want to enter this space?

There is no limit to the growth of the self-directed learning and entrepreneurial self-starter community. We were all born entrepreneurs and self-directed learners. Anyone can re-awaken that if they’ve got the will. In five years? We’ll be everywhere. I envision Praxis and similar combinations of work and self-created learning structure to be everywhere and not slowing down.

7. Do you have any advice for someone in the V&E network who wants to challenge an existing community and build their own?

Three things:

1) Tighten your pitch. What problem are you solving? How? Why will it work? That should be communicated in a few sentences.
2) Know your market. Who are you solving the problem for? Where are they? Do they care?
3) Be willing to fail, but do everything you can to avoid it. The best way to succeed? Start. The longer your ideas remain ideas, the less likely you are to act.

Why Does College Matter so Much to Parents?

This is a written transcript of a portion of an Ask Isaac podcast episode.

We get this question a LOT, with people who are interested in Praxis or just interested in opting out and creating their own path. They know that college is not going to do anything for them. It’s boring. It’s super expensive. They’re not interested in sitting in a classroom and hearing things that they could learn on their own or things that they don’t even care about, often from professors who don’t care, fellow students who aren’t into it. I mean there are just a lot of people, a growing number, who are just like this isn’t all that great. And all the social aspects… I can get those. I can go to football games and parties and whatever. I don’t need to enroll for 4+ years to do this. But, it’s so much the dominant view among our parent’s generation that – I shouldn’t say “our”, I’m sort of in between – but college… that is really like a signal that you’re doing OK.

It gives Mom and Dad something to brag about at the cocktail party with their friends. It’s kind of like if you grow up in a religious community and people say, “How are you doing with God. Are you on the right track?” And if you just say, “Yeah, I’m going to church,” they’re fine. But, you could be going to church and horribly depressed or like doubting everything or totally unhappy… everything in your life is not going well. But, to them, that’s all they needed to hear. That signals that you’re OK. It’s a shortcut for them that makes them feel like you’re “good-to-go.” And you could be like, “I haven’t been going to church for a year, but I’ve never been better. My spiritual life is really great. I’ve been exploring new ways to connect with God,” and it doesn’t matter what you say they’re going to be scared. Right? They’re going to be worried about you because that signal, that shortcut: going to church equals I’m doing well spiritually… or going to college equals I am doing well in my life professionally.

You know… maybe that emerged for a reason, where the correlation was so strong, that it made sense for people to make that shortcut. You don’t want to get to know everyone’s life story so it’s like “oh, you’re in college, cool. You’re good to go.” But that correlation is so poor and it’s getting poorer. And it’s such a weak correlation and there is certainly no causation there. So you could say, “Oh, I dropped out of school, but I’m working on a start-up. I’m doing this fitness routine. I’m traveling the world. I’ve never been happier. I’m writing a book.” And all they heard was, “I dropped out of college,” and they’re just like, “Oh, my Gosh. You’re sleeping on a park bench and you’re a loser. I’m so depressed; I’m ashamed of you.”

And you could say, “Oh, I’m just about to graduate from a good school and I’m having really dark thoughts, and I hate my life, and I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t care about the job I was just offered. I’m depressed. My girlfriend broke up with me.” And all they hear is “Oh, you’re about to graduate. Well, that’s good. Everything else will take care of itself.” Right? It’s this weird, weird thing. So, it is very hard to convince your parents to let you do something other than college.

See part one for the answer to how to get your parents to open up to the idea.

Check out www.discoverpraxis.com if you want to take a year to get out of the classroom and do something awesome, on your terms, in the real world.

How Do I Convince My Parents to Let Me Do Something Other Than College?

This is a written transcript of a portion of an Ask Isaac podcast episode where this questions was asked.

The first thought when I read this question is you shouldn’t be trying to convince anyone to let you. You are free to do what you want to do, especially once you are 18+. You don’t need to have that permission-based mindset. “I have to win them over. I have to convince them to allow me.”

You’re free to do what you want to do.

Now, once you acknowledge that, “I’m completely free. I could just not go to college right now. I could leave home. I could pack up my knapsack and do whatever I want to do. I am utterly and completely free. There is no power or moral law in the universe that obliges me to do otherwise.”

Now that you have that freedom… now you can start talking about it in costs and benefits. OK, if I do that, what are going to be the costs to me? Am I willing to bear those costs? Are there ways to mitigate those costs? Then you can have an honest conversation about what you are willing to put up with. But do you see how it puts the locus of control on you right away? No longer are you able to blame. “Well my parents won’t let me.” Well, that’s irrelevant. You can do what you want to do. You may find that your real reason is “if I did it, my parents wouldn’t support me financially, and I am not willing to live a lifestyle that’s beneath whatever amount of income – and I don’t believe I can bring that amount of income in myself without my parents’ help.”

Now that’s an honest admission. And that’s one that many people don’t want to be true of themselves. They want to be such rugged individualists that they’re not willing to compromise their dreams just to have a certain amount of money or financial safety net. So, they tell themselves stories. “My parents won’t let me.” But that’s not the truth, and the quicker you can identify the true reason that you’re being held back, the quicker you can overcome it, or work around it, or work with it.

I do know people who truly care more about material comforts than going and pursuing something like that, and the quicker they can be honest with themselves about it, I think, the better they’re going to be. So, it’s not about you convincing them to let you do something. It’s about deciding what’s going to be the cost. If your parents are going to disown you, hate you, not help you, not support you financially in any way, you have to determine what that’s worth. That’s a pretty horrible thing.

But you have to decide if it’s worth 4 years of doing something you mildly dislike, or maybe something you absolutely hate, so that your parents are happy. So, you have to ask yourself questions like what matters more, your happiness or someone’s happiness with you?” And again, I’m not advocating “yeah, screw your parents,” because, I think, at the end of the day, they want you to be happy. They’re just always going to lack the imagination – any other person besides you – is going to lack the imagination to understand ways that you might be happy, that they haven’t thought of before. And only you can find those.

So the easiest practical advice I would have is to start small and say, “Hey, Mom and Dad,” and again don’t approach it like “I need your permission,” and say, “Mom and Dad, I have been thinking,” and let them know this is not some spur of the moment thing and ate some Cheetos with your buddies and was like “I don’t want to go to college”.  Say, “Hey, Mom and Dad, I’ve been thinking and I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and a lot of examining my own life, and making priorities. I am going to take a gap year.” Whether you’re already in college and you want to take a break or before you go – Say you haven’t gone yet, “I am going to take one year and I have very clear goals. I want to experience two different kinds of work (paid work), live in two difference cities, or whatever it might be. I want to earn X amount of money. I want to gain a particular skill like a programming language. I want to become an expert on this. Or whatever…”

You’ve got a couple things that you say. “I am taking one year to do the following things, because it’s really important to me. And I think if I don’t do this now before I go into college and get roped in on a path, I’m always going to regret it. I’m always going to wonder. Furthermore, here’s a bunch of evidence and research that shows people who take a gap year, perform better in college and perform better after college, etc.” Frame it as… not this once for all. Frame it as “give me a year.” And at the end of that year, we’ll see where I am and we’ll see what I want to do next, but I need this year.”

Now, if you want help from them say, “I would like to propose to you… you were going to pay X for college… I propose you to pay less for that but you help me in the following way.” And be prepared if they say, “No,” and to be on your own. Do it anyway. Make up your mind how bad you want it, and what you want to do. And tell them in a non-confrontational way “this matters to me.”

If they see that spark in you and they see that this is so important to you and that you’ve thought about it clearly and you’re calm and rational about it, and you’re going to do it with or without them – this is like raising money for a company, by the way. The best pitch for an investment is, “this is what the company’s doing. It’s going to do the following. If you get on board it can do it faster and you can benefit, but it’s going to happen with or without you.” It’s so much better than “Oh, my gosh. I have this great idea. It won’t go anywhere, though. I need your help so bad or else the whole thing is not going to work.” It’s not as strong of a pitch in my opinion.

Anyway, “This is what I’m going to do, Mom and Dad. If you can help me, it would mean I could do the following. If you can’t help me, I’m going to have to do X, Y, and Z. I’m going to have to get 3 jobs to make it happen. And I’m totally prepared to do that. I don’t want you to be unhappy with me. I want your support. I want to be able to lean on you.”

Open it up and remind them that if they shut you down, they’re basically shutting down a line of communication and support to you emotionally. If you say, “I want to be able to come to you if this is hard and struggling with it, without you saying, ‘See, I told you so. You should have gone to college,’ I want that. I don’t want you to be upset at me for doing this, and I understand if you are but this is where I am coming from.”

I think if you present it like that, you have the highest chances of results. Again, it’s up to you what you want to do. You don’t need permission, but you need to understand the costs and benefits you’re willing to internalize and calmly and passionately share with your parents what it is that you want and have a clear idea. Not just “I don’t want to go to college.” Because to them, going to college means you’re making some sort of progress. To you, even if all you do is wander around for a year and do nothing, and that’s possible that it could give you more progress than college, but in their mind if you at least say, “I want to do X for a year, or two years, or whatever,” and at the end of that year if they’ve seen you grow and change and you know you don’t need college and “I’ve got this cool job, and this and that,” you can be like, “Hey, Mom and Dad, I’ve decided I’m going to take this further.”

You’ll have more courage. They’ll be more comfortable with it by that time. It will be much easier if you can get yourself to a position where they are excited about you having that one year.

If you want an awesome way to spend that one year, working with amazing startups and getting rigorous, self-guided personal and professional development, coaching, and a portfolio of projects, check out www.discoverpraxis.com.

What Praxis Set Out to Do

When we created Praxis we did it to fill a large and growing gap in the option set facing young people.  So many smart, ambitious, curious individuals are languishing in fluorescently-lit cinder-block classrooms.  Bored.  Racking up debt.  For no clear purpose.

The myth they are steeped in is that they have to do this.  There is no choice.  The options are presented: Be a loser, or sit around for 4-6 years at a cost of tens of thousands.

But the myth goes deeper.

The myth is that learning itself, and by extension self-improvement, are terrible, boring, passionless and must necessarily be enforced by bureaucrats and self-proclaimed authorities.  Your job, if you want to succeed in life (by whose definition anyway?) is to follow the rules, memorize the disconnected facts, take the tests, pad the resume, apply for the jobs, and wait for the conveyor belt to drop you off at ‘normal’.

How depressing and frustrating this is to so many of the best and brightest.

We set out to cut through the crap.  We wanted these talented young people to stop waiting for real life and to jump into amazing work experiences at amazing companies eager for their help.  We wanted them to shatter the old paradigm of education and start fresh, like newborns do, exploring questions that matter to them, creating their own challenges and structure, diving into a rigorous self-improvement project.

The mindset is simple and powerful.  Awaken your inner entrepreneur.  You own your life.  You own your education.  You own your career.  You are the driving force in your own process of creation.  Do things for the results you value, not the hoops arbitrarily placed before you.

We wanted this entire life-shifting experience to take place in the span of a single year and for a net cost of zero.

I received this email yesterday from current Praxis participant Mitchell Earl.  It beautifully illustrates the mindset shift.

“If I had to estimate, I’d say I skipped class 2/3 of the time in college. I don’t sit still well. I couldn’t learn in that type of environment. I need to be stimulated. When I did go to class, I used to take the daily puzzles; either crosswords or sudokus because I needed something to direct my nervous energy toward if I was going to be forced to sit and listen to someone talk at me. I can’t even count the number of times I had a professor yank my newspaper away from me IN COLLEGE.

In my web design class, the syllabus alone put a burr under my saddle reading, “One absence is considered excessive for the course.” I redefined excessive. I turned in my work on time, but I refused to go sit in a classroom and be told how or what to code, design, or write. That’s not how I learn.

I didn’t and don’t want my work to be like grocery store milk, micro-filtered, ultra-pasteurized, standardized, and homogenized. For me to do my best work, I need to have the freedom to explore my creativity. Praxis has shown me that. It’s given me the freedom to explore my own needs as a learner. No one is yanking my puzzle away telling me to pay attention. No one is telling me how to learn. No one is shaming my individuality. With Praxis, I’m free to be me.”

Yes.  That’s exactly it Mitchell.  We set out to create more freedom.  To help you carve out a space, to break the other-imposed mold, and plot your own path to fulfillment as you define it.

Freedom isn’t easy.  It’s much harder work than just doing what everyone else wants and expects.  It takes a lot of deep, philosophical thinking.  It takes self-knowledge and self-honesty.  It takes discipline and hard work.  It takes tolerance of failure and the courage to put yourself in new situations, often over your head, and learn on the fly.  It takes the humility to be in environments where you’re not the smartest person in the room.  Your desire for personal growth must be strong enough to sustain these challenges.

Mitchell is tasting it.  So are our other participants and grads.  This is what we set out to do.  And we’re doing it.  One life at a time.

If you know anyone who sounds a lot like Mitchell was in school, give ’em a little nudge of encouragement to be free.  Remind them the dominant path isn’t the only one, and the best paths are the ones they’ll blaze themselves.  You can even send them my way and I’ll gladly talk with them about taking creative control of their education, career, and life, with or without Praxis.

Let’s awaken people’s dreams and increase the number of those who are truly living free.

Get Off the Conveyor Belt

Excerpted from Freedom Without Permission.

The reason many people fear opting out is because of a paradigm of linear, externally-defined progress that I call the conveyor belt mentality. This mentality is holding you back and must be demolished. It goes something like this:

You are plopped onto a production line at whatever stage you’re supposed to be based on arbitrary things like your age, class, and gender. Then you let the belt do the work. By essentially doing nothing but what you’re told, you get handed certificates at each next stage. 18? Unless you did something truly outrageous, here’s your diploma. 22? Here’s your degree. Degree? Here’s your job (or so you’re led to believe).

Most people believe this and live it. It’s revealed in the kinds of questions we ask strangers. “What grade are you in?” “What’s your major?” “What kind of job do you have?” If your answer is not the appropriate one for your age and assumed station in life, people worry. “I dropped out of school to do X” is cause for concern to almost everybody, no matter what X is. “I’m a sophomore at university Y” is cause for comfort to almost everybody, no matter what you’re actually doing with your time at Y. So long as you’re at your station, no one much cares if you’re productive, happy, successful, fulfilled, or free.

Parents obsessively check their child against a list of averages on everything from height to reading ability and stress if junior is not “on track.” No one really ever asks who built the track, where it’s going, or whether junior has any interest in arriving there.

The conveyor belt sucks. It’s not taking you where you want to go. Aggregates are not individuals and your goals and abilities are not definable by summing the abilities and behaviors of everyone your age and dividing by the population size. Time to get off.

It’s scary at first, because your mind is trained to think that progress is defined by moving on the conveyor belt in the only direction it goes. Maybe really special or hard working people go faster, like the people who run up an escalator instead of letting the machine do all the work, but everyone is channeled in the same narrow corral moving in the same direction. That’s not progress.

Progress, for you, is moving towards your own goals and desires and becoming more fulfilled as you grow and overcome challenges. There are as many directions as there are people. Once you jump off the conveyor belt, the hardest part is actually discovering what makes you come alive, then being honest and unashamed of what you discover. It’s worth it. You can never start too soon.

The thing is, the mold-breakers who jump the belt don’t struggle any more or less than those who stay on. They have a hard time too. But it’s a different kind of pain. It’s the pain of working to achieve a goal they’re passionate about that has huge rewards when won, not the pain of subjugation to a monotony that brings you nothing in return.

Income Is Not Automatic

Ernst & Young no longer requires degrees for entry level jobs.  A lot of people shared articles about the change on Facebook.  On one thread I noticed the following comment:

“[T]his is great but it could also be an excuse to pay people less.”

The word “excuse” stuck out to me.  Why would EY need an excuse?  If they want to offer less pay they can do so at any time.  Of course any potential hire can just as easily refuse the offer and only agree to work for more.

Employers want the best workers for the lowest possible price and workers want the best jobs for the highest possible pay.  “Best” and “highest” of course include the entire bundle of compensation, benefits, work environment, etc.  Both parties have an incentive to bargain.  Both parties have an incentive to only agree if they don’t think they can get a better deal elsewhere.  It’s a bet on the value they’ll receive from the other party.

The comment reveals a bizarre but common belief about work.  There’s an idea that jobs and income are an automatic and deserved reward for moving on the conveyor belt and jumping through all the right hoops.  It implies that pay is based on a rigid credential scale and companies can only adjust pay if they adjust the hoops to jump through.  It implies that, with ironclad causality, a degree will automatically entitle the holder to higher pay and the only way to pay less is to hire those without one.

A degree has never made someone more valuable.  What you can do determines the value you can create and demand.  The degree is only a signal that, with more or less accuracy, tells employers that you are likely to be better on average than someone without the degree.  That signal is no longer working for EY because the reality isn’t backing up the assumed correlation.

EY does potential employees a favor to announce and implement this policy.  The degree is not signalling enough value to distinguish those with it from those without.  Degrees are very expensive.  Everyone who buys one assuming it will bring them a good EY job is buying under false pretenses.  They need to create value to get hired.

EY is saving potential employees money and time by telling them what’s always been true: it’s about the value you can create, not the paper you have.  The paper was used because it often correlated and it was a quick and dirty way to eliminate some weak applicants.  Now the applicants with degrees are not sufficiently better than those without.

This represents not an excuse for companies to pay less, but an opportunity for young workers to pay less.  You are not required to spend four years and six figures poured in cinder block walls with fluorescent lights to take tests on things you mostly have no interest in.  You are free to learn to create value any way you can.

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Want a better way to get the skills, network, knowledge, confidence, and experience you need?  Want to be more than a worker?  Want to be an entrepreneur?  How about an education that comes with an awesome job.  It’s college plus your first job plus a lot more wrapped into one.  In one year.  For a net cost of zero.  Check out Praxis.

Five College and Career Fallacies Young People Should Avoid

It’s possible you’re preparing for an economy that no longer exists. Let’s explore five common myths and mistakes when it comes to getting educated, building a resume, landing a job, and starting off on the right foot in the professional world.

Fallacy #1: You can’t turn down “free” opportunities

Things too good to resist can be dangerous.

So many young people suffer through stuff they don’t like with no clear future benefit just because everyone else calls it a great opportunity, or something they’d be crazy to turn down. “If you get in to an Ivy, you go!”, or, “If Goldman offers you a job, you take it!”, or, “If your parents will pay for this expensive education, you can’t walk away from that free experience!”.

But it’s not free. Every action has an opportunity cost – what other things you’re giving up in order to do it – and money is the least important. “Free” comes with strings attached, just like your parents money. Most unhappy young students and workers are unhappy because they feel like they can’t turn down something someone offered them. You can. In fact, you probably should.

The more skin you have in the game, the more likely you are to succeed. Watch students who are paying their own way through a school or educational program.

Watch people who pay to go to conferences or professional development trainings out of their own rather than their companies pocket. Consider books you buy for yourself vs. those gifted to you. Which do you get more out of?

There’s a reason Bruce Wayne couldn’t climb out of the prison until he tried it without the rope. There’s a reason Vegas is better than experts at predicting sports outcomes. When you have something of your own to lose, you sharpen your focus and perform your best. Place a bet on yourself. Put yourself in positions where you stand to lose or gain based on your failure or success.

Don’t do things you don’t like doing just because they are “free”. It can tether you to the expectations of others and make you a worse decision maker.

Make it a goal to become independent of the goodwill of others and dependent on your own success as soon as possible, even if that means turning down opportunities others would salivate over. They don’t have to live your life. You do.

Fallacy #2: You major matters

What you know matters. What you study in school not so much. (With the exception of legally required majors for heavily regulated industries).

All the most valuable things you’ll learn in life won’t come from a classroom. How to walk, talk, drive, use Google, navigate social situations, and creatively solve problems are learned by doing. The most important ideas you’ll deal with are more likely to come from your own experience, reading, and discussing than from assignments. You can’t outsource the development of knowledge to a department, program, or credential.

Studies and majors won’t automatically grant you useful knowledge, nor will they provide a deep and rich network. We all need one. A pool of people with whom we’ve established social capital, and who we can work with and call on for resources, expertise, and support is indispensable. It’s not uncommon for a university experience to provide you with some friends and future associates, but never assume just being around a bunch of other students with similar interests is enough. That’s a recipe for building a horizontal network, not a vertical one. You need both.

A network of people mostly the same age with mostly the same interests at mostly the same skill and experience level is a start, but only a very small start. You need to step outside the institutional setting and build a network that includes retired pros, middle-aged managers, young investors, old experts, and an array of people up and down the world of enterprise across a diverse set of industries.

Fallacy #3: “Leadership” is a skill

In the real world product beats paper every time.

I read a lot of resumes from people who clearly obsess over them. They are spattered with a diverse array of activities and list vague skills like, “Leadership”, and “Integrity”. These don’t indicate anything but an obsession with credentials and titles. You’ve got to demonstrate value creation.

Resumes and degrees are signals. Their only purpose is to let you broadcast that you pass some minimum bar of intelligence and ability. They can’t do much more, and increasingly, they don’t even do well at that minimum signal. Activities are not outcomes. Anyone can join a club or be named treasurer. Few can actually create value in a demonstrable way. The latter crushes the former every time.

Can you show something you’ve actually “shipped”? Do you have an easily verifiable reputation for getting stuff done? Show, don’t tell. Show them the website you built. Show them the number of new page likes your Facebook ad campaign generated. Let them see the customers you served, the money you raised, the newsletter you produced, or the app you launched.

Whether any of these tangible creations succeeded is far less important than whether you finished them. Everyone can sign up for stuff and spout about ideas.

Everyone can pass a class. Very few can deliver results on time. Almost no one can conceive an idea and bring it to life without being forced to be some authority figure.

Focus less on the resume and more on the product.

Fallacy #4: There is one right path

Most likely your future job doesn’t exist yet. Don’t stress about it, this is a good thing.

It’s ridiculously painful to decide what your calling in life is, and what educational and career steps you must take to live it.

Relax. There isn’t a single path that, if missed, will doom you forever. You’re travelling to a largely unknown destination.

How can you plan for that? Simple: don’t try to do what you love, just try to avoid what you don’t.

Make a list of things you really don’t like, aren’t good at, and don’t even really want to be good at. Anything not on that list is fair game. Go try it. When you discover through experience more things you dislike, add them to the list. Pretty soon the field of viable options will begin to narrow. Any step within that field is a step in the right direction.

Fallacy #5: You are an employee

Machines and software are better employees than humans. So what.

You’ve got one amazing advantage: humans are wonderfully creative and adaptive. Use it. You can’t afford the employee mindset, where you simply specialize, follow orders, and expect your company to do the heavy lifting when it comes to your financial support, happiness, and reputation. You are your own firm, wherever your paycheck may come from.

You’ve got to think like an entrepreneur.

Take ownership of the company vision, whether you created it or not. Understand that you’re not just laying bricks, but building a cathedral. Ask questions. Look for ways to improve, even things outside of your department or direct control. Do one thing to add value to yourself and your company every single day.

This doesn’t mean you should ever consider yourself too good for old fashioned grunt work. Ask any entrepreneur if they’ve ever done their own data entry or toilet scrubbing. They have. It does mean you have to adopt a big-picture mindset and don’t wait for assignments, but look for ways to create value. Whenever possible, just do them rather than asking permission.

As the market changes demand for whatever specialized skills you have may grow or shrink. The one thing that will always be in demand is creative problem solvers who think big and act swiftly.

Conclusion

What does combating all these myths have in common? You can’t wait around for other people to confer status, knowledge, or success on you.

You’ve got to take the reins and build your own education and career, and it all begins with a mindset shift.

What is College Really All About?

I’ve always found it amusing when someone makes the case that a college degree is not needed for material and career success and a professor responds that college is not about getting a better job or earning more money.  They are offended at such a base standard by which to judge the service they provide, and remind of the wonderful and fulfilling aspects of a liberal education.

The reason it’s amusing is because, whether profs like it or not, the myth that college guarantees a better job is the thing paying the bills at just about every school.  It’s also the thing colleges explicitly, repeatedly market and sell customers.  The belief in the degree as a ticket to a better job is the number one driver of demand for college.  After that probably access to artificially cheap money and overall wealth increases which allow many kids to purchase college as a consumption good; a four year fun time courtesy of other people’s money.  A distant reason for a small number of people is the actual learning they can get from college.  It’s not that the learning isn’t valuable, it’s just that an intellectually curious person has so very many ways to dive in to philosophy or history that it’s a tough case to convince them the only way is to spend tens of thousands and four years.

A lot of people in higher education are so confused about the actual product they sell and so blinded by the trappings of the university that they assume it is a robust, competitive market.  Perhaps compared to government K-12 schools it’s a cornucopia of choice, but it hardly resembles a free market.  Not only is the demand artificially high due to taxpayer grants, subsidies, scholarships, and loans, but a great many careers legally mandate degrees before an individual can even enter.  Law, accounting, just about anything related to health, the growing range of bureaucratic government jobs, and more can get you fined or jailed if you dare practice without a degree.  Laws prohibit employers in other fields from using other measures of ability like IQ tests in hiring.  Add to this the pervasive belief that one simply cannot live a decent life without a degree – a belief more akin to religion than regulation for non-mandated fields – and you’ve got the current higher ed marketplace.

It’s competitive in a sense.  Imagine if every city had a handful of DMV offices, and the offices had budgets partly determined by how many customers came to their particular office to get a license.  This would incentivize marketing and enhancements to the experience as competition between offices emerged.  You might have entertainment while waiting in line, or nicer lobbies to sit in, or food and drink (the price of which would just get added on to your license fee, which could be deferred and paid out over 20 years with subsidies from taxpayers), etc.  Over time, the nicer buildings and other in-line offerings might distract from the actual reason customers were there in the first place.  They had to get the legally mandated license to drive.  Or, to make a closer comparison, maybe only half the people in line legally needed a license, and the other half could drive legally without one but their parents and friends would be ashamed of them and constantly tell them that they’d be better drivers if they got one.

To understand anything about higher education today we have to understand what the actual product is in this distorted, unfree market.  Aside from those purchasing college as a consumption good and some small number purchasing college purely for the learning or “human capital” enhancements, the customer is buying the credential because it is legally or socially mandated.  Object all you want, but it’s not hard to prove.  Colleges themselves sell the degree-as-job-catcher angle harder than any other, and that’s the number one reason given by students for attending.  Besides, even the consumption good and human capital aspects of the product could be easily had for free if you just moved to a college town and took classes without registering.  The reason people don’t is because of the belief – sometimes true due to legal strictures – that they can’t make a decent living without a degree.

The discussion about problems in higher ed is not a discussion about learning or ideas or a liberal education.  It’s phony to respond to a criticism of college with a defense of philosophy.  It’s missing the point to respond to critiques of college with defenses of classroom style learning or other educational methods.  To do so implies that learning valuable ideas is only possible through the arbitrary four year debt-fueled system.  That is an intellectual arrogance of the highest order and a conflation of education and school that is dangerous for the former.

Good ideas are too important to be anchored to the current university system and its jobs focused mythos.  Good careers need a lot more than a prefabricated four-year bureaucratically managed prep process.  Separate the classroom from the credential and both will improve.

Credentials are Killing the Classroom

(A slightly tighter, probably better version of this was published for the Freeman.)

I’ve been to a lot of educational seminars put on by organizations like the Foundation for Economic Education and the Institute for Humane Studies, among others.  One thing these events have in common is incredibly high quality participants and deep discussions late into the night.  They tend to be multi-day intellectual feasts that leave you as tired as invigorated, and always challenged in the best of ways.

Nearly every time you hear one or more participants say something like, “This is what I wish college was like!”  The attendees are blown away by the caliber of the content, the professors willingness to engage amicably even in free time, and the intelligence and interest level of the other participants.  Faculty and students alike talk about how these seminars are far better than typical college classes.  This is no accident.

The obvious explanation most people give for this quality differential is self-selection.  Those who choose to give up a week of their summer to discuss ideas – both faculty and students – are high caliber and highly engaged.  This is true so far as it goes, but if we stop there we miss something even more fundamental and profound.  After all, college has self-selection too.  Shouldn’t it be full of professors and students who are earnest truth and knowledge seekers of the finest quality?  Yet college is nothing close to this, but for extremely rare exceptions in one or two classes.  Why does the self-selection only produce quality learning in these seminars?  The reason is right in front of us.

It’s because college offers an official credential and educational experiences outside of college do not.

That’s it.  Everything else is minor compared to this causal factor.  It’s easy to see when you look.  Imagine one of these summer seminars if they offered an official, government-approved piece of paper at the end that most HR departments used as a baseline screen, without which you couldn’t get past the first wave of job applications?  A summer seminar selling a magical ticket to a job that mom, dad, and society would feel proud of would be overwhelmed with attendees.  And most of them wouldn’t give a hoot about what they had to do to get the paper at the end.  Demand for faculty would spike, and most of them would do whatever it took to get the paycheck and quickly retreat to quiet corridors where they could be with their books and the few colleagues that actually care.  It would become, in a word, college.

The evidence is everywhere that the credential is killing the classroom.  I’ve guest taught entry level college classes before.  It’s pretty painful.  Most of the students are half asleep, grumpy, forlorn, texting, and generally inattentive.  I like to joke that if aliens from another planet came down and observed a typical class at a typical university and were asked what they witnessed, they would scan the cinder block and fluorescent room, ponder the pained look on student faces, and conclude it was a penal colony.  Imagine their surprise when told these people are not only here of their own free will, but paying tens of thousands for the suffering!

Not every classroom is that painful, but it’s the rule not the exception.  If you need further proof consider the fact that when class is cancelled everyone is happy, student and professor alike.  What other good can you think of where you pay in advance and are excited when it’s not delivered?  That’s because, much to the confusion of most faculty, the good being sold is not their lectures or the knowledge therein.  None of the students are buying that.  Sure, it’s nice if they get a little enjoyment and knowledge out of the deal, but that’s not why they’re there.  After all, if that’s what they wanted they could simply sit in on classes at will without registering or paying.

They are there for the credential because the credential is a signal to the working world that they are at least slightly better on average than those without it.  That’s it.  In some fields the credential is legally required, and in many others alternative ways to measure competence are illegal, so the signal of a degree retains artificially enhanced value.  Even so, that value is fading.

Large institutions form because transaction costs are high with tons of individuals exchanging goods, services, and information separately.  This is why family name mattered so much in times past.  Economist Ronald Coase famously explained the existence of firms using this basic logic.  It works for universities too.  When it’s hard to prove your worth alone, you get a trusted institution to vouch for you.  It’s s shortcut that reduces risk on the part of those who want to hire you.  But each passing year the value of this institutional reputation-backer declines compared to the available alternatives.  Technology has dramatically reduced information costs so it is now easier than ever to be your own resume.  You can vouch for yourself and create results easily seen by others that can speak for you.  It’s Yelp reviews instead of a few food critics determining whose steak is good.  You can build a better signal than what college is selling.

So long as legal and cultural (we might almost say religious) norms continue to see the degree as the primary signal of value in the marketplace the classroom will continue to decline in quality.  When the majority of students are purchasing one good (the credential) but are made to endure another (the classroom) they will continue to see it as a cost more than a benefit, and behave accordingly, sliding through with minimal pain and suffering.

On the flip side the classroom isn’t doing the credential any favors either.  Even though many still lack the imagination to see the alternatives right in front of them, most employers now admit that a degree signals very little these days.  Everyone has one.  Though there are still sometimes significant qualitative differences, most universities sell as many as they possibly can.  Cases of professors passing bad students and universities passing bad professors are well known, and the clout of the institutions is waning.  Even those who still require a degree ask for much more on top of it, because sitting through a bunch of classes you didn’t care about and doing the minimum amount of passionless hoop-jumping doesn’t convey much about your energy, eagerness, and ability to create value in a dynamic market.

A number of my professor friends sometimes chastise me for what they think are unfair criticisms of college.  Yet what I’m suggesting, that the credential be separated from the classroom, reflects my respect for great professors and the value of their style of education.  It is precisely because classroom learning at its best, like I’ve experienced so many times in those seminars, is so powerful and valuable that I wish to see it no longer destroyed and diminished by artificial attachment to a supposed magic job paper.  The subsidies, loans, restrictions, requirements, licensure laws, as well as the parental and societal worship of college as the great economic security blanket have filled the classroom with so much clutter it’s a rarity for quality interaction to occur.

The exciting thing is that a cleavage between the credential and the classroom is happening right in front of us.  It’s not MOOC’s that will fundamentally change college in countries like the US where access to information is already rich.  That’s just a new delivery system for a current good, and one that most American’s aren’t buying anyway.  The real shift is occurring as fewer and fewer employers look to the degree as the dominant signal, and as more and more young people build their own.

When the dust settles I’d love to see every great teacher and researcher doing their thing with eager audiences who are actually there to purchase that unique product, rather than suffer through it on their way to getting something else they really want.  The host of mediocre faculty will lose, but the good ones will win big, both in economic opportunity and quality of the craft.  So will the young customers who wish to learn from them.

Why Innovation Beats Politics in Reforming Higher Education

(The following article is adapted from a speech given on July 31 at the Pope Center’s Friedman Legacy Day event in Pinehurst, North Carolina.)

There is a powerful lesson in the emergence of companies like Uber for those who wish to reform higher education. All the focus tends to be on political and policy debates, but meanwhile innovators are busy working around the status quo without waiting for permission or consensus. 

Government granted monopolies are inefficient and unfair. The cartel structure of the taxi industry is a clear instance of the economic losses, higher prices, and lower quality that results. Policy wonks and would-be political reformers have been writing papers about this for decades.

All the arguments and efforts of reformers largely fell on deaf ears.

Then Uber came along. A startup completely outside of the political system and not interested in winning economic arguments or policy battles simply put a better experience into the hands of consumers. No academic or bureaucrat had to be convinced, and no politician had to fight union interests to pass a bill.

The status quo never saw it coming, and by the time they caught on, it was too late. Uber is here to stay.

This is a powerful case contrasting two approaches to changing backward institutions. Cab customers don’t care about economic arguments or cartel regulations. They just want to get from point A to point B. They may complain about the experience, but dissatisfaction won’t be enough to warrant hours spent educating, lobbying, or protesting.

The status quo persists because the regulatory regime concentrates the benefits on a few special interests while the costs are spread over millions of individuals with busy lives.

Uber, by providing an alternative experience directly to the consumers, made them the beneficiaries of a better system. Alternative experiences are a powerful force for change, even more feared by the status quo than critical ideas and theories. That’s why the Soviet Union banned not just free-market textbooks, but blue jeans, jazz, and Marlboro. When citizens experience the alternative, suddenly they are dissatisfied with the stagnant options on the table.

So what does innovation look like in higher education? How can alternative experiences be created to force academia to get in shape and better serve customers?

To answer this we need to first establish what the actual good being sold is. Taxis and Uber sell the same basic service, transportation from A to B. What are people buying from college?

Contrary to what many people—including professors—assume, students aren’t buying knowledge or skill. They’re not buying a network or even a social experience for the most part either.

To prove this you can simply ask why anyone would pay tuition. You can move to a college town, go to parties, hang around the campus bookstore and student union, and even sit in on classes and do assignments for free without enrolling.

The reason students don’t do this is because none of those experiences are the product they are purchasing. In fact, class is often seen as an additional cost that they must endure to get the product, which is why they are excited when it’s cancelled.

The product being bought is the credential. The credential drives the entire industry and is what causes millions to go deep into debt for an experience they often don’t love and admit doesn’t make them any more valuable in terms of tangible skills.

College credentials are valuable due to their signalling value. Your degree sends a signal to the world that you are, ostensibly, better than a similar person without the credential. This signal has some meaning; making it through college means you’re probably better than someone who lacked the intelligence or drive to do so–but it’s a shockingly low bar.

The proliferation of degreed people and the decline in ability among incoming freshman has turned college into little more than what high school once was.

I remember sitting in a classroom and having an epiphany as I overheard the hungover conversation of some classmates. Those people, I realized, were going to walk out of the university with the same credential as me. So all I was really buying was a piece of paper that said I’m no worse than that guy with his half-sober head on the desk.

Employers readily admit that degrees tell them little these days. Everyone seems to have one but few have relevant skills and experiences. Many, especially small businesses and startups, don’t even use it as a baseline anymore. Even those that still do require something more on top of it to signal who is really high quality.

Getting back to our Uber example, until the alternative was created and made accessible to consumers, no one was dissatisfied enough to demand taxi reform. Students today are in a similar place. A growing number are dissatisfied with the product.

The problem is that most students don’t become dissatisfied until they’re already in college and realize it’s not all that valuable. Or worse, they only realize that after they’ve graduated with a load of debt but little knowledge, skill, or ability to create value.

Most college students still believe that the credential it gives them is the one and only way to get from point A to point B. They thoughtlessly apply like New Yorkers used to hail cabs.  That’s where competition comes in. Today, it’s possible for young people to build their own signal that is more valuable than a degree.

No longer do you have to rely solely on an institution to vouch for you and open doors. You can let your product, your reputation, your individual ability and brand speak for themselves.

Consider the popular story of the woman who couldn’t get through the application process for the fast-growing tech startup AirBnB. She had a great degree, but so did all the other applicants. So she built a better signal. She researched the industry and built a basic website describing her take and how she’d add value to the company.

It turned into an internet sensation—infinitely more valuable than a generic resume listing a degree like everyone else.

LinkedIn pages, GitHub profiles for coders, personal websites, and modern communication tools make it easier than ever for young people to create value, build a network, and make it easily accessible and verifiable to the world. No longer are they confined to purchasing prefabricated credentials from large institutions.

Competition in higher education means competing ways to signal value to the world. The alternatives are limited only by imagination.

The force of government loans, grants, subsidies, and laws that artificially enhance the value of degrees, along with the force of the public religion that the college degree is the only way to a respectable, successful life, have made it hard for most to see the opportunity to create alternatives. Yet they are emerging.

Sometimes they emerge with great fanfare, like tech investor Peter Thiel’s fellowship program that pays kids under 20 $100,000 to dropout and start a company. Sometimes with less notice, like the many coding schools, online courses, and combination work/education/professional development programs.

As this proliferation of alternatives continues, it spells nothing but good for young people, employers, the economy, and yes even for some professors and universities. Really good schools that offer a truly valuable experience will thrive while colleges that function mostly as credential mills lose market share.

What’s left when the credential ceases to be the magic ticket is anyone’s guess, but we do know only those providing real value to the educational consumer will survive. That’s a good thing.