What is College Good For?

College is only a waste if you go for an 'education' I went to have fun, network, and learn a bit. The idiots that spent all day studying and worrying about grades are the same ones without jobs now wondering wtf happened.

No it is not a waste...the only thing I regret is not going to college.

People who get a degree have more options...

Any education is never a waste.
I gets harder to study when you get older.
Young people have minds like sponges and absorb more info.

Depends what and why you are going. If you are a rich daddy kid going for the "experience" i would consider that a waste. The people who i know went to college went so they could get a job. Only people who can afford go for the "experience". the regular college kid eats KD and lives in cramped dorm rooms i do not find that as an experience.

I make more than all my friends with a degree and i never went to college. But by the age of 15 i had figured out what i wanted to do with my life.

I think business experience trumps college any day.

critical thinking skills and problem solving skills if you do not have these by the age of 18 you are doomed anyway and it has nothing to do with college.

alot of you elders do not understand the world we live in now. you really really do not. i know so many people with degrees that arent even able to find a job.

i dont need a school to teach me anything, i will read about it on the internet and if i wanted to take it a step further find someone through my connections to teach me hands on. classroom teaching is dead, this is now a global market. your piece of paper means nothing now unless you can make people money (the real paper that matters)

so in short your question is to broad, you are grouping just like the other people who said it is a waste, i base things on individuals not groups. i bet you they didnt teach you to do that in school.

College is what you make of it... If you are there and think and treat it as a waste of time you will come out of it with nothing and sure enough it will be that--a waste. If you treat it as a stepping stone, for wherever it takes you in life, then you will succeed in making it worth your while.

I know people who have been successful with and without it so I hardly believe it is the only way to become successful either...

it boils down to the person. so yes it could be considered as a waste.

I'm predicting 3 pages for this post.

only good for creating a shit ton of debt imo

I'm not calling you one here, because you are not, but only a fool thinks they have these skills by 18... The hormone levels alone cloud the mind beyond any form of reason! ;)

It sounds like you had a head start in the business world and that far succeeds most of us I would bet, but their are bigger things in this world than just being successful in business. What if it fails? What if you make a few bad investments and can't cover the losses? What if you get involved in some killer lawsuit and can't recover? These things can happen to anyone, no one is impervious to this kind of bad luck. School is just an option that gives us a possible plan b

that is unless you're donald trump and have lots of rich friends to front you the money every time you go bankrupt anyway hehe

my skills i have developed are my plan b. i have worked for companies before. hired no problem without a degree. my experience is also my backup.

and all these things you post, what if the world ends tomorrow? what if you are hit by a car in university? there are a million things that COULD happen you can never be fully backed up in life.

it is because i am not afraid of failure i know i will succeed.

Depends on the person. People can obviously be successful with it and successful without it.

what if your industry collapses? what if it's shipped off to asia?

are you going so spend 50 years in school getting a "backup" for everything. every backup plan has its flaws.

This is brought up a lot. It all boils down to this: college educated people are more likely to succeed. Is it a guarantee? No. Can you succeed without a degree? Yes. Take 10,000 random people with a college education and take 10,000 random people with just a HS diploma. I will wager both my nuts that the college educated people are "better off"--e.g., more income, more toys, etc.

Business experience has nothing to do with college.

Critical thinking skills are developed when evaluating one's own thinking. So, by 18 years old you had the world figured out. Congrats!