Universities (Especially Online) Are a Waste

I attended the University of Washington and really enjoyed my experience there. I probably enjoyed it too much: I graduated in four years with a 3.5 GPA, but most of my time was spent partying or not really doing anything at all. Perhaps you could consider that learning about life, but I think I have learned far more about life out in the working world.

For people who are self motivated, the internet provides an enormous treasure of learning resources. You can get the course schedules, textbooks, lectures, quizzes, and everything else for major universities like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and many other top tier schools online. For a tiny fraction of the cost of a university education, you can rapidly go through all of the course materials on your own and learn at your own pace and on your own schedule.

The main benefit of a university comes from those who are not self motivated. If you can’t study unless you have a regimented schedule forced on you from the outside, a university can help with that. However, spending $200,000 is idiotic. Go to a local community college and spend $10,000 for the whole thing.

The other reason people go to university is to get a piece of paper saying that they went there. I know a lot of employers look at this piece of paper, but I also know a lot of employers that couldn’t care less. All I care about is your work skills and previous experience.  Further, almost no employer cares about if you got a piece of paper from one of the for profit universities…  Full Sail University, University of Phoenix, Devry, Kaplan, ITT, etc. Don’t waste your money on any of these.

Published by

Joel Gross

Joel Gross is the CEO of Coalition Technologies.