On Education

“I think we live in interesting times. We live in a time where businesses are demanding people with degrees for even the most basic jobs. We live in a time where many people, in the thousands, have degrees but no education. They have degrees but cannot express their thoughts. They have degrees but they cannot perform in their chosen areas of expertise. They have degrees from colleges that need the enrollments and have lowered their standards to the point where a degree from their institution should have no value in the real world.

I asked myself why there is such a push for degreed individuals at virtually every level and I concluded this: we no longer have faith in our K-12 educational system, so we go after people with college degrees in the hope that, maybe, these people can read and write. Note that I did not say ‘think’. A few years ago, actually it was over two decades ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam came out with his book, The Reckoning. It was a wonderful comparison of two auto companies, Ford and Datsun, which later became Nissan. One of the many interesting points he made centered around the way life had changed, He wrote that a fellow in the 1940s who left school after the eighth grade had a solid enough education to last his entire career. Not so in the eighties. An eighth grader then could not pass the eighth grade tests given in the forties. They simply are too hard. It’s even worse today. So, it is more important than ever that you choose a university with a rigorous, demanding curriculum consistent with the demands of the real world. I am thinking of schools like Carnegie Melon or the University of Michigan. Interestingly enough, Adizes started his own university, and I would not be averse to recommending them.

A major shortcoming of ignoring people without degrees is that you miss so many good ones. Maria would not have been hired by many companies and that would have mistake. Shep had a bachelors degree and, even though he turned around a failing plant, one that was almost destroyed by a guy with MBA credentials, his path forward is blocked for lack of an advanced degree. There are thousands more like them just floating, left out for no good reason.

Not everyone needs a degree. Just go online to www.millionairedropouts.com. You’ll find people you know who somehow achieved success without a degree. Journalist and News anchor Peter Jennings dropped out -- of high school. So did. Bill Gates, Steve Balmer and Paul Allen left college to become Microsoft billionaires. Steven Spielberg dropped out, too. He’s done alright.

Some fields are so new, there aren’t any courses to teach. And, in some fields the best education comes from on the job immersion.