Get High at Work!

Tag: college

  • Don’t go to college

    Following on yesterday’s topic, “Your college degree is worthless“, I’m tacking in a different direction today. What I learned in college is serving me very well today. However, when I was in college (get ready), we didn’t have smart phones, email, laptops, or social media. The world has changed – completely – and the mindset around a college education has to change along with it.

    Even before my time, if you had a college degree, you really set yourself above the fray. If you got an MBA (which I did), then you were head and shoulders above everyone else. There are still a set of very specific areas in which a college degree (not “the equivalent”) is required, including (but certainly not limited to):

    • Medicine
    • Engineering
    • Accounting
    • Law
    If you are going to pursue a career in these or similar fields, you must get a college degree, and then some. No getting around it, and all of those are very respectable and much in demand careers that pay well, enabling you to pay back all the loans you’ll probably need to get through all that schooling.



    However, if your bent is toward technology, either software development or networking technologies or any sort of digital skills, you do not need to go to college. I’ll say that again: to work in the fastest growing sector of jobs in today’s economy, you do not need to go to college. You do not need to spend 52 months pursuing a college degree just to say you got a college degree. You do not need to spent a ridiculous amount of money over those 4+ years when you could be working and earning money.



    College ain't cheap!



    Instead, you can engage in shorter, more specific, more valuable, and more employable education, like any one of the following:

    • learn to write software in 3 months for less than $15k. Software developers are experiencing negative unemployment today, especially in Atlanta. There are many choices:
    • attend a series of computer networking (Cisco, Microsoft, RedHat, etc.) bootcamps and earn the highest level networking certifications in less than one year.
    • attend a series of part time digital classes in UX design, Analytics, Business Fundamentals & Tactics, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Product Management, User Experience Design, Visual Design (just to name a few) while you’re working and earning money and learning to be the most valuable digital master in your company. 

    Not one of the careers that result from these skills requires a college degree. None.



    Or you can spend $100k to live with little or no responsibility for 4-5 years, learn how to drink beer, and then try to get a job in the digital age. Seriously, though, if you’re not going to pursue a career that absolutely requires a college degree, spending 52 months and well over $100k just to say you have a degree is not a wise investment of anyone’s time or money.



    If you’re inclined towards working in technology, you don’t need to go to college.

  • Your college degree is worthless!

    That’s what retired talk show host Neal Boortz told me this morning (on the radio). Specifically, he said my degree in English is equivalent to one of those “BlahBlahBlah Studies” degrees. Ouch. But it made me think of two things, the first of which is the subject of this post. Follow up tomorrow.

    What learning is important in today’s digital economy?  Hint on tomorrow’s post: it’s digital expertise, in various forms.  But for today, my English degree has never served me better than it does right now.  Think about it. You can communicate like this:

    sum ppl thnk they cn alwys use txt 2 tlk 2 any1 lol

    Or you can communicate in language that anyone – not just my 13 year old daughter – can understand. There’s nothing wrong with texting, so please don’t get me wrong. I’m so very much in agreement with Jeff Hilimire that voice mail should die a rapid death. However, whether you’re a back end Java developer or a social marketer or the leader of your company, the one thing that everyone has to be able to do is communicate in writing.

    • How many emails do you send every day?
    • How many times do you tweet each day?
    • How many times do you update a project status in Google Docs, MS Project, or Basecamp?
    • How often do you update your startup’s investors and advisors?
    • What do you write on your Instagram posts?
    • Do you run your company’s blog?
    • Do you respond to and engage with your customers on social media?

    Every one of these – and this is just scratching the surface – instances requires good communication skills.  I majored in English because I intended to go to law school. Didn’t work out that way (I went to B-School instead), but my ability to write is even more valuable today than it was when I was writing and editing the first edition of the CWNA Study Guide.

    What did you learn in college that you’re actually still using today?