How College is Harming American Entrepreneurship:

Townhall.com ^ | February 3, 2013 | Charlie Kirk

[Kaslin]

When I was in grade school, I remember going to birthday parties at the local bowling alley. Before the games would begin, the workers would install bumpers inside the gutters in order to prevent gutter balls and avoid "failure." When I was growing up, it was common for sports teams to award trophies to all the players so no little kid would have his or her feelings hurt at the end of the season. Today, there are school districts which no longer give out "F'" grades, and hundreds of high schools have removed class ranks so that my generation will feel less pressure to succeed. By the time my generation gets out into the "real world," what will happen when our bosses criticize us and rattle the core of our tenuous self-esteems? While my parents and grandparents grew up enduring the Great Depression and two World Wars, will history look back on my peers as the "Bumper Bowling Generation?"

Previous generations pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and risk taking was encouraged as millions sought the American dream. A dream encourages one to stretch their imagination and think outside the box. I am afraid that my generation fears risk taking because we haven't been encouraged to take chances. We fear failure and this undermines the entrepreneurial spirit. To make things worse, the bias in our schools encourages today's youth to feel entitled to a certain standard of living just as we felt entitled to our little league trophies.

More recently, I see how my peers are being conditioned to believe that a college degree will automatically lead to success and the American dream. However, the economic reality is there are many taxi drivers and sales clerks today who are university graduates making modest wages while burdened with huge college loans.

As a society, we accept the collective belief that as long as we put more kids through college, our society will naturally progress. There is the assumption that if students continue to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to pay for an inflated education, they will automatically become more prosperous. Nowadays, higher learning is more about accreditation than education. It's about telling people you have a degree rather than turning knowledge into something palatable.

Some of the greatest innovations in our country's history have come from entrepreneurs who did not fear failure. They sought the American dream by creating businesses from scratch and working tirelessly towards their vision instead of sitting in lecture halls. From Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, many of our greatest entrepreneurs never graduated from college. Will my generation be able to produce a similar number of successful new businesses? What long term effects will the entitlement mentality have on today's bumper bowling generation? Is our system of education pouring water on the flames of entrepreneurship? Are we pushing young potential innovators into a system that will crowd out their instinctive abilities to invent new products and services?

Imagine a young entrepreneur who recently graduated high school with an idea to improve the internet. Typically, this ambitious student has been told by peers and teachers, "Wait until you graduate college, then you can pursue your dreams." However, this future college graduate will have an average of $50,000 dollars of student loan debt to pay off. Instead of trying to create a new business, this young man or woman will be worrying about getting a job to pay off their student loans. The weight of these student loans can slowly drag down a young entrepreneur's vision to create a new business and take new risks in the marketplace.

Some forward looking pioneers of a new paradigm are already starting to reshape the path of some of our nation's best and brightest entrepreneurs. One such program, the Thiel Fellowship, was founded by Peter Thiel who started several companies including PayPal. Thiel also provided important venture capital to a company we all know as Facebook. The Thiel Fellowship program annually selects 20 of the top young entrepreneurs in the world and gives them each $100,000 over two years to pursue their dreams. Instead of going to college, these young innovators are busy creating more cost effective solar panels, turning cooking grease into fuel, making nuclear fusion more readily available, and unlocking secrets to slow the aging process. The mission of the Thiel Fellowship program is based on the belief, "Some ideas are so good they just can't wait." By empowering and enabling young entrepreneurs from across the world to pursue their dreams, these Thiel Fellows are on the cutting edge of innovation and creating new paradigms in our educational system.

Although college is the right decision for some young people, it is not the catch all solution. Instead, we should encourage young people to take risks while they are still idealistic and have the spirit of innovation alive within them. We need to foster a new generation of innovators, and we must support young people who make the bold decision to skip college in their quest to make the world a better place. Every person has ideas, but we need young entrepreneurs to turn those ideas into reality.

You don't need a degree to start a successful business. It's time to accept that college can put shackles on some of our best and brightest. College was once considered a stepping stone but now has become a stumbling block for countless innovators of tomorrow. Let's accept the fact that the next Apple, Microsoft and Facebook won't be inspired by reading textbooks. Together, we can embrace the future and give the next Ford, Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg the freedom necessary to succeed.

[Kaslin]

The rest of the title is: A 19 Year Old's View of Today's "Bumper Bowling Generation"

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

As a society, we accept the collective belief that as long as we put more kids through college, our society will naturally progress. There is the assumption that if students continue to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to pay for an inflated education, they will automatically become more prosperous. Nowadays, higher learning is more about accreditation than education. It's about telling people you have a degree rather than turning knowledge into something palatable.

Preach it brother. This is one of the pillars of our secular American faith, and it needs to be knocked down. Viva education! Down with college!

[Huskrrrr]

As a college instructor I couldn’t agree more! As companies find it harder to compete (especially in California) I see more and more of their former employees in my classroom, looking for that mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

[Tupelo]

Today's kids are being seduced into thinking that everyone can be the CEO or a top executive. Reality is, we still need worker bees. We need that machinist who can make and repair things. We need that carpet installer, that bricklayer, that carpenter, that pressman, that assembly line worker, that truck driver. All of which can make in excess of 50K-75K right now and lots more with OT. Instead of millions of mew college graduates driving cabs, we need TRADE SCHOOL graduates, (since apprenticeships seem to have disappeared) working for themselves and their families instead of working to pay back student loans.

[Yellowstone Joe]

As far back as I can remember, my father told me that the day we started sending everyone to college, America’s future was bleak.

The vast majority of High School graduates should be getting jobs to learn the value of work, not going to college to learn the value of Socialism.

Waaaayyyy to many low income, children who watched their parents raise them on the Government tit, are now being taught by University professors that capitalism is evil and government is good.

[logitech]

I remember bowling parties when I was a kid in the 60’s.

There were no gutter guards.

[FreedomPoster]

Ping.

[fremont_steve]

How right you are - my kid wants to be a movie director. Yet he had a run-in with reality by doing an internship with the cities’ PR department as a sophomore in high school. He hated it! I asked him why. He had to do what someone else directed! He hated it! He indeed thought he would go to college and upon graduation be hailed as the next Stephen Spielberg.

Well - it was a VERY valuable lesson. He is now in college majoring in Mass Media Production. He has a National Merit Scholarship, and chose a school that would make that award pay for perhaps 2/3rds of his costs.

He still wants to direct movies, but realizes he won’t be starting at the top. He right-sized his expectations to his financial realities and will graduate from college owning no-one money. Our small savings for his college tuition are going to cover all expenses above the scholarship. He put this all together himself.

Yeah - I’m proud of him. However, the point of the story is more to agree with you that unless more of this current generation opens their eyes - it is going to be a RUDE lesson.

[Impy]

Mama Boucher says College is the DEVIL!!!!!

[lula]

The problem is there are no consequences, everyone does what they want. When they fail they blame someone else. Look at our leadership power hungry liars, thieves, philanderers, etc...and they all get a pass. It used to be a scandal would yield career ending consequences. Our culture is done...stick a fork in it.

[WesternPacific]

Without giving students the opportunity to fail sets them up to fail or actually guarantees them to fail.

[GenXteacher]

“Instead of millions of mew college graduates driving cabs, we need TRADE SCHOOL graduates, (since apprenticeships seem to have disappeared) working for themselves and their families instead of working to pay back student loans. “

Spot on.

[Valpal1]

As homeschoolers, we have always taught our kids that you can learn more from failure than you can from success, so don’t be afraid to try different stuff when solving a problem or making something.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

my father told me that the day we started sending everyone to college, America’s future was bleak.

The vast majority of High School graduates should be getting jobs to learn the value of work, not going to college to learn the value of Socialism.

Exactly right. I remember when people had a skeptical attitude about higher ed, back when Professor Irwin Corey was the caricature of a college professor.

There's nothing wrong with a true liberal arts education. But it's not the same thing as vocational training, or learning the value of hard work.

[KantianBurke]

“However, this future college graduate will have an average of $50,000 dollars of student loan debt to pay off. Instead of trying to create a new business, this young man or woman will be worrying about getting a job to pay off their student loans. The weight of these student loans can slowly drag down a young entrepreneur’s vision to create a new business and take new risks in the marketplace.”

WARNING - GOP HACK ALERT! Odd how the schmuck fails to mention that when Dubya and GOP controlled Congress they did squat regarding the affordability of college. Wait, scratch that. They DID do something: they passed a law prohibiting the discharge of student loans. This was a financial payoff for the college loan industry which plenty of us conservatives decried for the very reasons the author lists above. And dum dum’s answer is to skip college? Even money his kids are offered a place at Harvard, they’re damn well going to partake.

[Painesright]

You could not be more right!

I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for a table the other night and I overheard two guys sitting next to me who work in the Eagle Ford shale oil/gas fields in TX.

They were talking about the fact that they cannot find enough skilled tradesmen (or even unskilled workers who are willing to be trained) to take the jobs that they have available in the oil and gas fields.

They said that someone straight out of high school could start an apprenticeship (which the employers are willing to pay for) and could easily be making 100K+ within just a few years.

No takers.

But a high school graduate (and his co-signing broke family) will gladly become an indentured servant... going tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars into lifelong, non-dischargable student loan debt, in order to further enrich liberal professors and multi-million-dollar salary college presidents, while being indoctrinated for 4 years in the art of victimhood/entitlements/guilt and graduate with a worthless degree that qualifies him to work at Starbucks.

Then, he’ll cry to his fellow underemployed, over-indebted adult-child “friends” on Facebook and Twitter night and day about how unfair the system is.

Sad, sad days in America.

[The_Reader_David]

...we need TRADE SCHOOL graduates, (since apprenticeships seem to have disappeared)...

I heartily agree, but we also need something we don't have all -- polytechnics -- sort of high-end trade schools focused on job training, but giving a broader education than a simple trade school. Let universities go back to being universities instead of misconceiving of their purpose as job training, rather than education. What most people seem to want from college is what a polytechnic offers.

[ponygirl]

I went to a major state university (in the ACC conference) where I learned to look down my nose at kids who either skipped college for work, joined the military, or went to community college. I had a bit of a rude awakening when I graduated after six years with a double-degree and discovered that the grads from the local technical school were getting all the jobs in my field (graphic design). They were trained on graphics software that my school didn’t even have. I, however, had in-depth knowledge of art theory, socialism, “sustainability,” and keg stands. Cutting-edge computer graphics software skills? Yeah, not so much.

[Tupelo]

I understand. One of my oldest friends (40+ years) teaches Machine Shop at a public school.
According to him the other teachers refer to the kids that take any of the Vocational training classes as “Losers”. My friend stays in a constant Mad-On over this.

[married21]

I am a total liberal arts geek, but I am determined that my kids should have both employable skills and “big picture” knowledge, of the kind that college can offer. Not sure how this will play out, but in the meantime, my highschool student is learning all about shop tools in her robotics club. She comes home with a huge smile on her face, because she has been trained on another piece of equipment, or helped do something real, like building shelves. Something good is going to come from this.