I know a lot of people can list a lot of problems with college. However, they all fail to list the biggest problem college applies to learning. The only person I know who correctly talked about this is dead. With that in mind, it falls to me to take up the mantle.
But before we can do that, we need to describe how college works. When you pick a degree, you are given a course schedule. This schedule will take you through your 4 years in college. Every class. Every semester. This schedule will go over everything you need to know about that subject to do your job.
There will be multiple classes on the same subject, but that go deeper into the material. This is good. There will be multiple classes that go deeper into individual parts of a subject. Also, good. There will be multiple classes that help you put everything together. And in there lies the problem.
Did you see it?
I’m willing to bet, most of you did not. Would you like a hint? Go read through the 12 laws of learning. You can find it in the guided tour or click here. Don’t worry I’ll wait. Still didn’t get it? It has to deal with law 12, 3 and 11, in order of importance. Any ideas now?
Why College Sucks
I’m willing to bet that some of you didn’t get it still so let me explain. The problem starts with you are only getting one side of an issue. The “consensus” in the academic community. In truth most things in academia are controversial. Many theories we teach as fact are fiercely debated.
But, because the people in charge of academia, for the most part, are all in one party, that is the only side you get. Let’s take business for example. There is this theory that the best management style is to have an open-door police. Any of your employees want to talk to you they can just stroll on in. This way there is as little barrier to what you want people to know as possible.
What Makes a Business Owner Work at the Zoo
Do you know why and by who this is debated? Every business owner ever. Anyone who has tried it found out that they immediately don’t have time to do any of their work. They just get swamped with people. I read about one man who tried this and started going to the zoo because people bothered him less there. Can you imagine trying to do office work in a zoo?
It took him something like a week to figure out the open-door policy does not work.
This also ties into 11. You never test anything important. Unless you are actually using the information, you will get nowhere. The best way to do this is to test it and see what works best. Go were the data does. It doesn’t matter how good your theory is. If the data goes against it, your theory is wrong.
Why College Might Make You Worse than Your Competition
This takes us to our last point. Third we are talking about but second most important point. The 10,000/1,000 hour rule. I didn’t talk about this much in the guided tour, but there are multiple reasons for most of the 12 laws. One I did not mention about this rule is that it makes you become more inventive.
Think about it like the man with a hammer saying. If you only have one skill set, every problem looks like it can be solved with that one skill set. But if you have multiple skill sets, even if they are weak skills, you can approach the problem differently. Now go back and read my description of college.
Kind of one skill set-ish isn’t it?
Don’t get me wrong it does a great job of getting you close to that 10,000 hour mark. Except you can’t count all those hours. Most of the hours are spent not improving by doing but by reviewing. You need to actually practice doing the thing you are learning before you can say you mastered it.
Why You Should Go To College Anyway
So, with all this wrong with school, why do I say you should go anyway? No, it’s not so you can get a better job. No, it’s not because all learning is important. No, it’s not because I’m in the big pockets of the college system. It’s actually in the 12 laws of learning too.
Any ideas what it is?
No guesses?
Ok I’ll tell you. It’s law 8: go to an immersion class. This is perhaps the single hardest Law to follow but also one of the most important. When you are in an immersion class you meet people, who care about the material just like you do. You will meet people ahead of you. who can help teach you. You will meet people behind you, you can teach.
Most importantly you will get a taste of what it’s like to be successful with this material. This is more important than most people think. Being successful is sometimes not as successful as people want. An immersion class can help you weed out what is not worth studying, fast.
For example, let’s say you are trying to lose weight. So, you start to go to a class at the gym. You get there and start exercising with everyone. Suddenly you look around and realize you are all overweight. Even the teacher.
Probably not a good class.
You Still Need Better
So, you go to a diet class designed to make you lose weight.
You go in and there are a range of people. Some fat, some skinny. You talk to a few people and hear how this person lost 100 lbs, and this person lost 50. But you want to get a beach toned body. You want a six pack and tight skin. No one here is anywhere close to that. You found a more successful class but not as successful as you want.
Now you know to keep looking. Immersion classes are awesome for this. College is still, despite it’s many problems, the ultimate immersion class. You will find none better. Now think about this. We are talking about your career. You will probably spend 50+ ours a week doing this. You will set your standard of living by your career. If you take an immersion class in nothing else it should be in this.
In other words, GO TO COLLEGE!!!!