Why School Is Trash And How Online Education Is The Business Of The Future?

business Nov 17, 2020

Information has never been easier to get a hold of than in our present day. You can jump on Google and literally search for anything you want.

Yet even with all of these advancements in technology, schools have been lagging behind every step of the way.

Colleges and Universities bleed you dry for every penny you have and don’t have so that you can get that degree that they’ve been selling you since Kindergarten. Some people graduate with almost 100k worth of debt, to land a 50k a year job. Oh and don’t even think about filing for bankruptcy like every other business can do out there, not you, you don’t get that option because after all it was for higher education, it’s only fair that you pay it all back with interest. Makes sense, right? Well not the way I see it…

Public schools here in the U.S. were originally established back in 1852 in Massachusetts by a guy named Horace Mann.

Good old Horace saw that there was a wide gap between the rich and the poor and he wanted to level the playing field.

His theory was that education was the key to do that and so he set out to make it a mandatory thing to provide education through public schools funded by tax dollars.

You see, the other aspect of this is that this was the rise of the Industrial Age. We were going from an Agricultural Age where everyone was farming. But then factories started rising and becoming the popular jobs.

So on one side we had all these factory jobs that required a basic level of education and on the other hand we had all these farmers that needed to adapt and land these new jobs. This started the push to get kids to school where they were taught how to follow orders, punctuality, reading, writing and arithmetic. They decided to pack the classes because the more kids they could get into one class, the more kids that went through the system, the more workers these factories would have.

Now to be fair, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. And a lot of people back then would start out as entry level factory workers and work their way up the ranks to higher paid positions. This was sort of a normal admirable pursuit in those days.

The problem with school is that the process hasn’t changed. Still to this day, it is still an assembly line for manufacturing employees. They pump kids through a system that’s meant to teach them all the same thing in the exact same way, when the truth is, we all learn things differently. The students that blindly obey everything their teachers tell them, get good grades and high test scores are on their way to becoming the perfect employee. On the other hand, the student that doesn’t conform to the way he’s being taught, gets bad grades, and low test scores, this kid gets tossed aside. They hold him back a grade and tell him he won’t amount to anything. On top of that, his parents rag on him for not being good in school, yet they themselves dropped out at an early age.

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen this story before, where the C student that drops out becomes the successful one later in life and runs a business that the perfect A student works for. It’s foolish to think that we all need to learn everything the same exact way and if we don’t, that we should be punished for it.

I remember getting a D- in Algebra in High School and my mom and dad looking at the report card. They were so mad at me that they decided to ground me and not let me go out on the weekends, no movies, no video games, until I turned that grade into an A or B. I tried explaining to them that the teacher never taught anything, all he did was put problems on the board and talk on the phone the entire hour. They didn’t believe me, said I needed to study more and that there’s no way I should be getting bad grades. So what did I do, I decided to cheat on my tests so I could get the grade up. I ended up finding a way, right?

Now I’m not advocating cheating here, all I’m saying is that this is the logic that gets spewed in almost every home nowadays. Parents have the tendency of looking at School as this inherently “Good” thing. If you get bad grades, you’re a horrible person and you won’t amount to anything. You’ll never make something of yourself if you don’t get good grades and go to college.

Oh College, the wonderful world of higher learning. I mean at one point in time, it was definitely that. It was a place where you could further your knowledge and get a degree that would enable you to get a higher paying job. And don’t get me wrong, it’s still good for those that want to be doctors, lawyers or work a government job. If that’s what you really wanna do, then by all means go for it. This is more directed at those that wanna do something else and think that college is the only way to get there.

As it stands right now, a 4 year college education ranges anywhere from about 15k to 70k. In some situations it can go as high as 100k depending on if you’re going to college Out of State or if you’re going to a private university. And what ends up happening is you come out with a 4 year degree, almost 100k worth of debt to land a 50k a year job. The first step you take in your career and you’re starting with a large sum of debt that you can’t file for bankruptcy for. If you worked during college, then you got a better shot at getting a job because at least you have some job experience, but if you didn’t work and you’re starting fresh, good luck.

Today, we have more people going to college and graduating from college than we’ve ever had in history. And if you remember this from Economics class, what happens when supply goes up, demand goes down? We have an abundance of people with degrees, but a low demand of jobs that require those degrees.

Almost every interview I’ve had for a Job since I turned 18 back in 2005 has never cared about my college degree. All they’ve cared about is my ability to perform and do the job. In fact, I’ve been in interviews where I’ve beat out every college grad just because I was a better communicator. I knew how to answer the interview questions, I had stories to share about my experiences in previous jobs. The grads just had a piece of paper stating they got a degree and they were looking for a job opportunity.

I’m not saying this to brag, I’m saying this because it’s the reality of where we’re at now. The times have changed. We are now in the Information Age and what used to take years of schooling to learn, can now be learned in weeks, days, or even hours. Technology has advanced rapidly and it keeps advancing exponentially. Those that are not adapting to this change are getting left behind.

This is why people that are subscribed to the old model of, school and college will teach me everything I need to know, are in for a rude awakening. Schools are not adapting, instead they are sticking to their old traditional methods of teaching and a lot of people are starting to wake up to that fact.

The Internet has made it possible for us to share information and connect with people across the globe very easily. This has given rise to a new business that is growing rapidly.

The world of Online Education. It was projected back in 2015 that this industry would make 107 Billion dollars in revenue and it did, now Forbes is projecting it to reach 325 Billion by 2025.

Think about that, that’s an incredible amount of money. But why is this the case?

Well there’s 2 factors that play into this. One is that college is way too expensive and two, people like learning from those that are actually doing what they want to do.

Let me explain.

There’s a lot of people out there that go to college to learn about Business and to get a Business Administration degree so they can graduate and start their own business. Here’s the problem, the professors they are learning from, are not business owners. They are professors employed by a college who make about 40k a year and have no actual successful business experience, because if they did, they wouldn’t be there. Does that make sense?

But nowadays, I can go online and find someone selling an online course on how to start a business in any market of my choice depending on what I’m into. I pay a fraction of the cost of what I would pay in college. Can learn everything at my own pace and I can get results a lot faster. The worst thing that can happen, it doesn’t work out, maybe I’m out a few hundred bucks and a few months of my life, but I’ll take that any day over 100k of debt and 4 years wasted.

Learning from someone that’s in the profession you wanna be in is not a new concept. Before public schools, there were masters and apprentices. If you wanted to learn how to be a blacksmith back in the days, you went and learned from the blacksmith. It’s a simple tried and true concept and it appears that we are getting back to that now.

Education is really the key to success, but the quality of that education is what determines the level of success you can reach. Don’t limit yourself, use the information that’s accessible to you whether it’s free or paid to acquire new skills and make yourself even more valuable in the job market.

If you really want to capitalize on this industry, think about skills and knowledge you possess that could benefit others and how you could package that into a digital course. Trust me, even if you don’t consider yourself an expert on a given topic, as long as you’re a chapter ahead of the person behind you, you can help that person get to your level.

So that’s gonna wrap it up for today’s post.

Until next time.