I don’t remember anything from my three years at university.
Sure, I’ve learnt a lot more about life and killed a few brain cells since then, but the point remains.
Like many, I went to university because it was just ‘that thing you do’ after school.
After all, it’s the only way to get a ‘good’ job that pays well, right?
If you’ve read enough of my articles, I’m sure you can already sense the sarcasm permeating through your screen.
I think university is a waste of time and money for the majority of people.
Let me tell you why.
One Choice Can Shape Your Future
Picture a 17-year-old me, graduating from school in November and having to quickly decide what I wanted to spend the next three years of my life doing… by January.
The same 17-year-old me that really just wanted to get drunk and bask in this newfound ‘freedom’ for the first time in my semi-adult life.
So, why didn’t I just do that then?
See, at my school, the idea of heading straight off to university was pretty much drilled into our heads from Year 10 onwards.
We even had a weekly ‘careers’ class where this proverbial drilling took place.
Basically, if you weren’t prepared to commit to a further 3–5 years of studying something you really weren’t that passionate about, then yeah, you were the odd one out.
And that’s the first huge problem with university.
You’re making this massive decision when you’re 17!
At this stage in your life, all you’ve ever done is follow instructions from people above you.
Your parents, your teachers – doing the things you’re ‘supposed’ to be doing so you fit in and don’t fall behind in life
So when they tell you that university is your next step, of course you’re going to listen to them.
And yeah, maybe this kind of was the ‘right’ move a decade ago.
But my god, the world has changed since then.
We Are In The Information Age
It truly baffles me that universities are still doing as well as they are with the sheer amount of free education at our fingertips.
It also baffles me that in 2024, most jobs require someone to have a degree to even be considered for the role.
To me, a degree is simply proof that someone has handed in their assignments on time and committed to something for a few years – do you know how easy it is to pass these days?
Funnily enough, most tech firms in Silicon Valley (you know, where Apple, Google, Adobe, and Meta were founded) don’t require their employees to have degrees; they value skills and experience instead – crazy, huh?
You can learn anything you want online for free.
I’ll repeat, you can learn anything you want online for free.
My Bachelor’s Degree consisted of 25 units (or subjects) and cost me around $25,000.
That comes out to $1,000 per subject.
I decided to look back at my academic transcript when preparing to write this article and I saw something quite hilarious.
One of the subjects I took was titled ‘World History since 1500CE.’
I remember picking this because it was the best out of an absolutely atrocious bunch of electives that you’re forced to take alongside your core subjects (gotta rack up $10k more on the loan).
At the time, I think this was included so you could learn how to reference.
I paid $1,000 (more when you include the interest on my student loan) to sit through eight weeks of world history classes during my JOURNALISM degree.
I honestly didn’t think I’d get annoyed whilst writing this article, but that sentence above seriously pisses me off.
And yeah, I’m still paying off my student loan.
And no, I don’t remember how to reference.
The College Dropouts
“It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life … but some career goals don’t require college. For Kanye to make an album called College Dropout, it was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you.”
Donda West
The list of college dropouts is quite astonishing.
Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, Larry Ellison – the list goes on.
I think it’s easy to look at these people and think, well yeah they’re geniuses, college was below them anyway.
But what about people like Kanye West?
An anomaly, no doubt, and by this point I’ve probably lost some of you.
But don’t you think Kanye West absolutely optimises what it means to follow your own path?
I think the quote at the start of this section is incredibly poignant, “having the guts to embrace who you are.”
Half the reason so many people go to university when they leave school is because they don’t even know who they are yet (I certainly didn’t).
And by the time you start to actually learn this, you’re three years into a degree, $25,000 in debt and about to head into a career that doesn’t really excite you.
I think the absolute best decision when deciding whether to commit to higher education is to wait until you’re absolutely sure that it’s something you want to do.
But if it was easy to do that, I probably wouldn’t be writing this article.
Real World Experience Over A Piece Of Paper
At the end of the day, universities are just like any other business looking to make money.
In my country, and I’m sure it’s same in many others, they have managed to position themselves as a very attractive, almost rite of passage for their target market – and fair play to them.
I may be biased (and I’m sure I am) but looking through the lens of a creator, I believe real world experience is so much more valuable than a piece of paper.
The most impactful part of my university degree was the four weeks of work experience I was forced to take at the end of the course.
Doesn’t this tell you everything you need to know?
Four weeks of real-world newsroom experience was infinitely more valuable than three years in the classroom.
I realise that university may be essential for some career paths – nurses, doctors, dentists etc.
I also think it can be a good choice to expand your knowledge on a topic that you know you want to pursue, or something you’re truly passionate about.
But for those looking for a flexible journey that doesn’t lock them into a decade of debt – doesn’t university just seem like a flat-out bad move when there’s so much opportunity out there?
For many careers, a university degree is the price of admission – that’s fine, whatever.
But I’ve written about how, these days, your online presence is more important than your resume – and I’ll include your university degree in that argument.
This is 2024, the age of the creator.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think spending your time creating, trialling and failing in the real world is much more valuable than sitting in a classroom paying $1,000 to learn about what happened to some guy in Europe’s Middle Ages.
