The Value of Education
Earlier this month, Dale Stephens, a 19-year-old student who has won a $100,000 scholarship declared that “College is a waste of time” and dropped out of school. His comment had created many debates and discussions among students and News media. He went on to TV interviews where he continue to complain that education system is broken because it taught theory rather than application and it is expensive. He urged students to drop out of college and be entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. He said: “The success of people who never completed college makes us question whether what we need to learn is taught in school”.
Few days later, several students responded to Dale’s argument. One of them, Brian Forde, a successful entrepreneur who went back to school for an MBA degree because he found gaps in the knowledge he needed to lead his company. Brian is a 25 years old multi-millionaire who started his first company when he was 17 and his second when he was 25 argued: “Nothing is more precious than an education, there are so many things to learn and you can learn all of your life and still know nothing. I am constantly asked by people why go back to school? My answer is simple: I was good at technical things but I did not have the business skills to build my company into a larger company. When you run a company you have to make decisions. Make the wrong decision in school and you fail a class; make the wrong decision for your company and you put your employees’ jobs at risk. I cannot do that, so I went back to school to learn more”.
Another student Donald Zhang, 18 years old and multi-millionaire is also attending school for his Ph.D. He told the newspapers: “Let us look at college education and the number of world-changing inventions and discoveries. Where do you think the World Wide Web come from? Where do all genetically foods come from? Where do the life-saving cancer drugs come from? Where do the algorithm for Google searches come from? They are all products of a college education. If you look closely, you can see that universities have created so many industries, from electronic to biotechnology, from computer to robotics. It helped the creation of thousands of companies and millions of jobs. Education has helped me because without it, I probably end up sweeping floor like my father”.
He explained: “My parents were immigrants, they worked hard to raise five children and put us in school. Because the lack of education and limited language, they could not find good jobs. My father worked two jobs sweeping floors in restaurants and schools. My mother sewed clothing for a company so she can earn money and took care of the children. We were so poor that we did not even have TV. The only things we had were books borrowed from the library. When I was seven, I like to read Biology books so I followed my brother to his school and begged the teacher to let me sat in Biology class. When I was twelve, I was the youngest person to win First prize at the Science fair of the local college. My experiment about Cell molecular extraction was so impressive that the university allowed me to attend school as a first year student. I completed 3 Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology, Biochemistry, and Computer Science when I was 15. The next year, I started a company based on an idea that I had when I was at school. I was able to convince several people, including professors to lend me money to start the company. My idea turned into a medical patent to cure disease so pharmaceutical companies were interested to buy my company. Last year, I sold the company for several million dollars to help my family. I went back to school to learn more about Biotechnology as I intended to find more things to cure disease. I owed everything in my life to college education”.
I was so glad that both students who response to Dale's comments were successful entrepreneurs. They represent a new type of people, young, aggressive, knowledgeable and willing to take risks. They both consider education important as evidence in their return to school to learn more. Both were young like Dale, they also received scholarships like Dale but better than that, they both have goals in life. They know what direction to go and what they will do in life. One is returning to learn more about business so he can manage his company better. The other wants to learn more to help fight diseases. More than ever, young people today need to have goals and direction like that. Having goals and direction will help them to overcome obstacles in school, in life to reach their destination. Without goals and direction, many will get lost.
Today, so many young people are still immature to be a good judge of the value of college education. They look at the success of few extraordinary people and want to model themselves after that. Everybody want to be Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. Most want the money, some want to be famous but probably they will not go anywhere. Without goals and direction, without proper education, they will end up like any people without jobs.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
