Who Needs College, the Poll

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  1

  mbmattis@...

  06/17/08 | Report as spam

  College Collage

  College is necessary, but only for those wanting to pursue white collar careers or go into the professions, where the prejudices of the people already there determine who is eligible for what role. I say ?prejudices? because that?s what they are. There was a time when people could become lawyers without ever attending law school, let alone college. In fact, there was a day when that was common. Abraham Lincoln never went to college, yet became a highly successful lawyer (and a few other things besides) nevertheless. Jack London barely saw the inside of a school room, and yet he did pretty well for himself, too.
  
  I?ve met Harvard MBAs I thought dumber than posts. But they had the lingo down and the degree behind them and so they got the kudos. And remember, our current president ? call him ?President Mumblesalot? ? attended Yale and Harvard Business. Clearly, a college degree does not equate to acumen.
  
  I once went on a three-day private cruise to Catalina aboard a 65-foot power yacht. Our host and the yachts owner, a friend of a friend, had, through dint of hard work and buisness savvy, struck it rich in the optics business. He was one of the most interesting men I?ve ever met. And he was a high school drop-out.

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  Michael Fitzgerald

  06/17/08 | Report as spam

  RE: Who Needs College, the Poll

  The tech industry is almost notorious for successful college dropouts: your
  optics person, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell. Not that Google hasn't
  given the PhD cachet.
  
  I was reading Richard Florida's new book and he talks about Jane Jacobs, a
  brilliant sociologist and thinker -- she never went to college, either.
  
  On the other hand, I would have been lost without college (come to think of
  it, I was lost in college for quite a while). So it's nice that I have a degree, and
  it gave me some seasoning, a sense of where I wanted to go. And learning is
  a lot of fun. I don't knock college, but I'm not sure why it's a rigid
  requirement, or counts more than, say, two decades of experience.

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  3

  mbmattis@...

  06/18/08 | Report as spam

  Google

  "The tech industry is almost notorious for successful college dropouts: your optics person, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell. Not that Google hasn't given the PhD cachet..."
  
  Google even demands college transcripts with good grades, even for relatively minor posts. Granted, having a lot of PhD's around seems to have worked for them if their stock price in any indication. But it seems that they might be missing out on a significant talent pool of smart people just because those people made poor students.

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  Michael Fitzgerald

  06/18/08 | Report as spam

  re: google

  that's the AdventNet model that was in the post I did on Is College Necessary?
  It calls itself the anti-Google. It's kind of fascinating.
  
  MFF