@Account Closed so as someone who never graduated from college, I can say there are pros and cons to getting a college degree.
Let's look at both options for a moment:
Getting a College Degree
Pros:
-You Get A Four-Year Personal Development Experience Like No Other
I think some of the best value in going to college, doesn't come from the classes. You get to experience community in a way that no other part of society lets you experience. You get challenged on all of your assumptions and beliefs, and it's easy to find and create your own path in life from the experience.
- You Get A Network
Especially if you go into finance or business, another incredible value from going to college is you walk away integrated into a very close-knit network of professionals, who will give you the time of day, over others, simply because you went to the same school. There is insane value in this!
- You Have A Fallback Plan
If real estate or some other business doesn't work out, even if it's just for a short season, you can get a decent job easier (typically) with a college degree.
Cons:
-Unless You Get A Scholarship Or Have Someone Paying Your Way, You Start Life Substantially In Debt
And it's BAD debt - there is no relief from that thing, even in bankruptcy.
So if you have to go into large amounts of debt to gain the experience and degree...you should really count the cost, and make sure you have a clear ROI for your investment.
-You Don't Really Learn Much From Classes
As someone who loves learning, this was one of the most frustrating aspects of my short term, college experience (I went for one year at a four-year university).
What the current education system teaches you to do, is take assignments and produce results.
It teaches you how to develop your short term memory, (which granted has some benefits to it), where you memorize a bunch of facts that you can recite on Friday and forget on Saturday.
It teaches you punctuality and how to meet deadlines - which is good... but for me, it isn't the essence of what education is supposed to be.
Education is supposed to give you an experience that transforms you as an individual into something better.
It's supposed to give you a skill you can serve with and knowledge you can use to make money with, which in turn creates more value in the world at large.
Again, I think you get more from the college experience than you do from the classes.
-A Degree Doesn't Automatically Equal A Good Job Or Good Income
Four years is a long time and the cost for college is very, very expensive, which you'll be paying off for a long time (potentially).
For that much cost, you would think a lot of entry-level jobs that make a four-year degree mandatory would pay better than others that don't require a degree... but typically, they pay around the same (unless they're specialized like medical or engineering).
So you're investing a lot without much ROI, unfortunately.
Not Getting a College Degree
Pros:
-You Start Life Off Debt-Free
Not starting life with a hefty monthly payment gives you a lot of options and flexibility.
You have to be a go-getter to take advantage of those options, but those options are there all the same.
-You Have The Flexibility to Experience Life In A Different Way
Instead of spending the money on college, you could spend a fraction of it on traveling the world, doing a gap year, joining the peace corps, going on missions, etc.
Those experiences are extremely beneficial for your personal development (but as a heads up without college, you have to be self-reliant on cultivating your own personal growth).
-You Have A Much More Realistic Of How The World Works
College, despite how great it can be, gives people a false sense of adulthood. Life isn't all about partying and what's happening on the social circuit (though office politics and the pecking order is definitely a real thing, and you'd benefit from learning how to navigate that).
When you get started working right out of high school, you learn WAAAY faster how money works, how employers work, etc.
You'll find that people value your ability to think critically over your ability to recite information.
-You have a four-year leg up on work experience compared to your college-bound peers
Even though a lot of jobs want you to have a college degree, if you have four years' experience in your respective field... that can be A HUGE advantage over someone with a degree.
I always applied to jobs regardless if they said a degree was required or not and I landed a lot of them, despite lacking a degree.
Cons
-Your Career Becomes Much More Niched
Based on my work history I'm experienced in real estate investing and in online content creation.
I can shoot videos, write blog posts, podcast and so on all about real estate investing, but inherently, if I were out of a job tomorrow it would be harder for me to find another similar job to what I have now (or a job that can pay me what I need to make ends meet).
So as a fallback plan, I don't really have much of a safety net, or at least not one as wide as someone with a degree.
So I have to make sure I'm investing my money properly and that I have resources in place beyond on my day job, in case that day comes.
-You Have The Skill Of Developing Yourself On Your Own
If you are not someone who can hustle and develop yourself, on your own... you should go to college.
Without reading widely and intentionally seeking how to rapidly improve myself, I would be nowhere in life... whereas if I had a degree, I could at least (potentially) have a mediocre job, worse case.
So that's my two cents on the subject, I hope you found it helpful.
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P.S. If I were to do it all over again, I'd work and save up $35,000 - $50,000 and join an apartment syndication coaching program and get super involved and learn everything I could and hustle like a madman.
Something like Think Multifamily or Joe Fairless's coaching program.
They're expensive but if you take action (I mean REALLY take action, no B.S.) you'll make your initial investment within the first year, get a network and be on a course to be financially free within 3-5 years.
Within the time you'd get a bachelor's degree you'd potentially have more money than most people in 50's! But you'd have to work like an animal!
