College is a dead man walking
What will you do about it?
For less money and a lot less time than college, you could become a competent fighter, healer, horseman and pilot. And that's not all. You'd still have time and money left over to learn to sell and know how to start your own business. You could know how to design and build your own home. You could obtain the skills to survive in the wild and comfortably speak a second (or third) language.
Young people are taking notice. In recent months, there’s been an awakening among young people. We’re getting a clear picture of the world and realizing…we’ve been screwed. The path that was laid out before us doesn’t work.
You’ve probably seen the videos of young people complaining about how, out of college and now in the real world, they feel trapped and can’t make ends meet. It’s easy to make fun of these people until you realize intentionally or not, they were sold down the river.
Hoping for rescue
This time last year, I struck up a conversation with my uber driver. He graduated college in the early 2010s. A decade later, he was still struggling to pay off his student loans. At the time there was a lot of talk about student loan forgiveness. His hope was that the government would forgive his remaining loans so he could finally be free of it.
He's not alone. According to the Education Data Initiative, 20 years after entering school, half of the student borrowers still owe $20,000 each on outstanding loan balances.
Your parents, having the best of intentions, told you to go to college, get good grades and the rest will sort itself out. In school it was assumed that anyone with any intelligence was going to college. All of your friends were excited to leave home and go off to college.
It turns out that when you emerge from four years of comfortable life on campus, loaded with debt, and a narrow band of skills - real life hits you like a bucket of cold water.
Perhaps nobody bothered to explain the life altering costs of the college path? Or, perhaps, we just didn’t want to hear it and buried our heads in the sand? Either way, the costs must be paid.
The most obvious cost is debt. Millions of Americans – like my uber driver - are burdened with debt they will never shake.
Again, according to Education Data Initiative:
The average federal student loan debt is $37,338 per borrower.
Private student loan debt averages $54,921 per borrower.
The average student borrows over $30,000 just to pursue a bachelor’s degree
A total of 45.3 million borrowers have student loan debt; 92% of them have federal loan debt.
Even if some tyrant steals from others to wipe away your college debt, he cannot replace the precious years squandered in college.
When I mention this colossal cost to defenders of college, they act like I’m attacking a cherished cultural rite of passage. “But the college experience! The fun and the lifelong friends you acquire! That’s important!.”
Yes, fun and friends are important. So important, that they can and should be pursued outside the boundaries of institutional living. You can skip college without skipping fun.
What To Do
You could be the average college grad and spend 4 years in an institution, accumulate at least $35,000 of debt, and emerge in the real world like a babe in the woods with little preparation to thrive in it.
Or - you could chart your own extraordinary course.
For less money and a lot less time, you could become a competent fighter, healer, horseman and pilot. And that's not all. You'd still have time and money left over to learn to sell and know how to start your own business. You could know how to design and build your own home. You could obtain the skills to survive in the wild and comfortably speak a second (or third) language.
All this accomplished before your peers become college juniors.
Where do you start? It depends on your preferences, here’s some that have caught my eye:
Learn to design and build a home at the Shelter Institute - $7,000
Become an EMT for $1,500 (cost varies depending on where you live)
Earn a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu $2,000
Take a beginner horsemanship/ranch work class for $2,500 in Texas:
https://americancowboyacademy.org/beginner-ranch-course#cc6d8889-a87d-4f92-bedf-360f7c7eef99
You could go to a 7-day wilderness survival school - $2290:
Learn how to write copy that sells - $497:
Learn Spanish through real conversations BaseLang - $1200
https://baselang.com/
Attend a wrangling school in Wyoming - $2,500:
You could get your student flight certificate for $75-$250, then go on to get your private pilot license for $15,000-$20,000
Real skills, real experiences, real stories…what more could you ask for?
Aim High & Be Aggressive
Time is pure gold. Those who use it wisely will turn a profit.
What if those 4 crucial years, which are usually dedicated to college, were used to gain real skills?
This is where our opportunity lies, and Dana White gives it to us bluntly:
"If you are even remotely a savage, you will run over every one of these kids in this next generation. It's easy to sit there and cry about everything. Get out there and get what you want."
-Dana White
Those who have an aim, who get after it, will rise to the top.
We’ve gotta choose a direction to go and take life by the horns. Yet, while we are young it makes no sense to confine ourselves to one type of study. With 4 years of “free time” who knows what could be accomplished?
Proper use of resources and time, in combination with a willingness to look like a fool, is a dangerous combination.
You can learn to build things, heal injured people, become dangerous in chess or in an alley. You can become well-read, well-traveled, and well-connected. You can become useful to the world and an asset to yourself.
It turns out the world really is your oyster if you wish it to be.
I am being used as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program, designed by Doug Casey and my dad, is designed to be a replacement for the only route advertised to ambitious young men - college.
This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.
I’m more than 20 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.
You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did. To see a recent update, click here.
My objective in sharing this is three fold:
Documenting my progress holds me accountable.
I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.
For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.
What will I do? The same thing I have done since the Summer of 1980. Be a professional teacher.