Interesting that it comes up under the UK section of the FT.

It doesn't cost anywhere near 200-400k USD to send someone to University in the non-US Western world, so the opportunity cost would be quite different.

Also going to university is not mutually exclusive to what he suggests doing. He started his own company, there's plenty of time to travel during summer vacation (or go to college somewhere foreign), and you can also have a job if that's what you're into.

"I can't remember anything good coming from my freshman year"

Mostly, I feel sorry for him, especially since myself and everyone I know at UC Berkeley discovered:

1) How tough life really is when you're on your own
2) No one coddles you when you're an adult
3) Learning about what you want to learn is awe-inspiring and amazing (the only bad professor I had at Berkeley had won a Nobel prize for econ the previous year - go figure)
4) Loving, laughing, and
5) Lifelong friends and flash-in-the-pan relationships
6) An incredible amount about ourselves

I can't imagine NOT going to college and figuring out where my academic interests truly lay, being up to all hours of the morning for academic and social reasons, and experiencing more activities than I'd ever have time for.

He may be your friend, but he comes off as kind of sad.

I agree with James. Far too many individuals go to University/College at 18/19 for no other reason than everyone is going.

Little is learned; the individuals would be much better off going into a major corporate institution and learning skills.

One last thing - what a complete contradiction in thoughts about personal responsibility!

"Take half the fee for one semester, give it to your kid, and tell him or her to start a business."

"And what about travel? Well, I'm not a big believer in that unless it's completely supervised."

I couldn't agree more with Mr. Altucher. The only drawback to not attending college is that there are still a percentage of jobs for which dimwit HR people or managers will throw out resumes that do not have a college degree listed. But would you really want to work with or for such people? Of course, there is some value to a minimal fraction of college courses so it would help if you learned that stuff on your own (James suggests the internet); there's a great business opportunity here to offer online education that focuses solely on this beneficial kernel. As for Matt, it's a good thing you weren't coddled at school (just imagine if you'd gone to work and been spoiled by some motherly corporation) and that you discovered how to love and laugh at Berkeley. Can you imagine how miserable your life would have been if you hadn't learnt that at school?

@Ajay: You missed the point entirely. There's a process of growth and cultural and academic socialization that happens in many university environments that is extraordinarily valuable beyond the actual classroom learning. I can't help but wonder how many people are awkward, social introverts who hated college precisely because they didn't value these things. For those tech dorks that comprise both the hit list and the graveyards of Silicon Valley and other entrepreneurship playing fields (which apparently includes James and Ajay), college is absolutely the wrong place.

But for the other 98% of the population, there's a process that happens outside the classroom that is invaluable for personal (and yes, professional) development. Most people are not bitter about being an outcast or not being inspired academically.

Key word: "sending." Nothing prevents his kids from going of their own volition.

I'd like to preface my comments by saying the following: I got bored with college my 1st Sr. year (I had a five year double engineering major),.and dropped out to start a business 18 months later I was earning about six figures at age 23 in management consulting.

While my current earnings may be peanuts on Wall St., I still out-earn 98% of the population right now..with no degree...

..and I wouldn't trade my college experience for anything, AND I wish I had finished..for the following reasons:

My real problem with college was wrong major, wrong school, not college itself.

The anti-college crowd is comprised of well, freakishly smart people who are capable of accomplishing thing 98-99% of the population couldn't without it.

The socialization benefits are huge, not to mention the fact that 98% of the population does learn from college and many of the issues graduates have around employment is choice of major NOT college itself!

Entrepreneurship is great, however it has a small chance of success. Handing $20k to the average 18 year old and asking them to start a business is a rather dumb investment, considering the maturity level of most 18 year olds.

It's myopic and quite frankly ridiculous for a hyper-intelligent minority, many of whom (quite frankly) were the awkward techie types that just didn't have any fun....to denigrate college.

As (again) only a minority % of people are going to succeed without it and statistically speaking college grads do a lot better (on aggregate) than non college grads as far as income and wealth.

-M

Not every kid should go to college that is for sure. But that is a far cry from say its bad for all or even most kids. Just becasue kids have a lot of energy at 18 doesn't mean they should not be in school 15 hours a week. By that argument 13 year olds would not go to school either. Overall not a well thought out argument.

"to deaden it with a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that energy."

Talk about a straw man. I studied english and philosophy in college, and my life will ever be the richer for it. My business chops too. Why? Because college taught me how to think.

College certainly isn't for everyone. But for intelligent, motivated kids, I take precisely the opposite tack from Altucher. I think it's vital.

He misses the whole point of how a good college experience is supposed to work. You start out as a generalist and wind up as a specialist. The whole reason the freshman curriculum is so wide open is so that students don't get boxed in too early. As you move towards your senior year, your interests become more specialized.

The same thing happens from a social perspective. There's a reason why freshmen do better on campus. When you start out, you don't have a set social group, so you want to meet lots of people and do lots of stuff. As you progress, your friendships deepen and your focus shifts to a few key relationships. By senior year, you know who you are and have a sense of who some of your lifelong friends might be.

As for business world experience, Altucher dramatically romanticizes that side of the coin too. I've started and run a successful business. There were parts of it that were great. There were also parts of it that sucked. And the type of business startups that Altucher recommends aren't going to be sexy... the sexiness of the business is inversely proportional to its odds of success, especially when you're talking about an 18 year old at the helm. Most business plans available to a kid with no experience and no clearly developed skills are very mundane.

As an option for a teen who hasn't learned critical thinking skills yet, who hasn't developed deep social bonds on a mature level yet, who hasn't even figured out what they like yet -- which could be anything from engineering to sociobiology to world history -- the advice is just terrible.

Quite frankly, Altucher is talking out of his ass. Skipping college is a great option for genius wunderkinds who already have career arcs fully formed, unmotivated types who have no particular aspiration to be highly skilled in any discipline, and luddite types who don't see the value in a critical thinking experience and social development experience. But the rest of the population is generally smart enough to see the value in recognizing that teens are clueless because they are teens -- not because of IQ -- and that college can help them actually find a clue.

p.s. I won't even go into the travel commentary. Altucher's commentary is so myopically self-referential, it's almost a mental handicap. How could anyone give such a dumb blanket statement without recognizing its utter lack of adequacy as a sweeping generalization? Perhaps he should have spent more time with "boring waste of time" subjects that could have saved him from becoming a narrow-minded bore himself.

I think Altucher is placing far too much reliance on his own personality and personal experience. What worked for him will not and cannot work for everyone.

When I left school I had no interest in starting a business, or in going to build schools in Zambia, or travelling round the beaches of Australia, or, basically, anything that would have made a year of free time in any way enjoyable or valuable. After working for the summer I entered university and had a very good time.

The difference is that I am not writing "Why should people take gap years, swanning around on their parents' money to lie on Australian beaches and assuage their white guilt in some rainforest when they could be learning some marketable skills, bla bla bla" because I know people are different.

The article is extremely Amero-centric and James-Altucher-centric, and I'm actually quite surprised the FT thought it worthy of print.

It's fascinating to read the dumb arguments that people trot out in favor of the college experience, stuff like

"it's when you get socialized" - Why not save a lot of money and spend those years joining local sports teams, community theatres and interest groups, combined with an appropriate amount of boozing of course, rather than spending 100k+ adding the pretense of education?

"Altucher's alternatives suck" - His suggestions seem admittedly offhand but what is surprising is how well-aimed they are given that.

"If you had a bad time at college, you just chose the wrong major" - Wow, talk about falsifiability. You're really digging deep into your denial when you pull this excuse out.

What cuts right to the point is that nobody even defends the reason you're ostensibly paying the money in the first place, the education (except for those who hand-wave with "Well, my profs were good"). As for that old statistical trope about college graduates making more money, it's easily explained away by the fact that the more capable and disciplined kids go to college in the first place. Remember, if you learn nothing else about the use of statistics, correlation is not causation. What's notable about the pro-collegers is the amount of vitriol they fling at those who would question college- we're all mentally handicapped, socially rejected bores, how is Altucher a bore again?- and the accompanying dumb arguments they throw out. It smacks precisely of people who have been socialized to believe college is a worthwhile experience, who when challenged on that fact get queasy and spew bile because they have no cogent arguments and "College must be good, everybody's doing it!" Here we see the effects of socialization at its worst. I will note that Altucher and I have not specified precisely what is wrong with the educational experience and what would be the best alternative (perhaps in another forum?) but what's funny is that we don't need to because nobody defends the education!

"a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that energy." I'll take that as a fair description of Altucher's alma mater, Cornell. I wouldn't send my kid to Cornell either.

I'm one of those that finds college to be largely a waste of time. My beef, though, is mostly how its structured and run than anything. It still irritates me that I had to take classes I'd already taken in High School. It seemed like a total scam. Most degrees could be done in two years. A few, like engineering, would take longer, but if you dumped many of the useless credits, you could still get done in three years.

(My master plan would actually be to end public schooling after ninth or tenth grade, and then have students go to two year trade schools and then to university, which would concentrate on specific fields.)

So basically, college is a waste of time and money for some but not others. Wanting to be there is pretty obviously a prerequisite for getting something out of it. As is the willingness to evaluate the potential benefits from a non-monetary perspective.

For those who have no desire to be there, college is obviously a waste, as their lack of motivation will preclude an effective return on investment -- socially, mentally or otherwise.

But this bit of logic is practically a tautology: an investment you are determined to get nothing out of is a lousy investment by definition.

I don't think this is the sentiment Altucher meant to express. He was denigrating the college experience for all; otherwise, his piece doesn't really make a point of any substance.

Unless, of course, you read the with an explicit Altucher-centric viewpoint, as someone else suggested -- which indeed makes him a bore. At least on this particular subject. The dictionary defines "bore" as a dull, uncongenial person. What better description for someone who sneers at price without estimating value and is only interested in making a buck at age 18.

We have colleges for a reason: they work. Not for everyone, but for most people. This is especially true if you want to enter into a technical field (like engineering), where training at the college level is REQUIRED.

Some people are very successful high school drop outs. Some never go to school at all. Neither of those minorities make schooling any less useful for most people.

I went to college and recouped my $160k investment in 5 years. The core of my business network arises from people I met in college or are fellow alums. For me, college was a booster rocket that allowed me to become successful much faster.

The most important thing I learned in college was the name of the guy I would subsequently go into business with. Just about everything else was a waste of time for me. Like many commenting here, I also have no degree and out-earn 98% of the population.

Matt, I couldn't agree with you more.

As someone who had startups in grad school, I quickly realized that while not going to school and starting a startup was awesome, I enjoyed school just as much. Because the one thing that I enjoy more than anything else is learning, and there is something about school that is irreplaceable. Could I have learnt stuff outside of school? Sure, but that is not the point - while learning is part of the process, you go for the experience that teaches you a lot of things. Meeting similar minded people, meeting great folks, personal resposibility, teamwork, ethics, choices and of course the intellectual challenge in itself.

And some day, I would love to go back to school and get my PhD in either mathematics or physics - something not quite related to what I work on, but interesting to me nevertheless.

College actually saved me, I think.

I had a really, really hard time in high school... it was miserable. Few friends, no interest in learning, depressed that I'd never find a peer group I could relate to.

I decided to go far away to a small college and within the first week I was able to totally reinvent myself -- away from family and history, finally 18 and free but in a structured environment with some direction, I discovered just how much I loved learning and how many possibilities the world of ideas had to offer.

My closest friend never went to college and we worked together for nearly a decade building some truly, wickedly cool technology. We're each pretty happy with the way things worked out.

The moral of this story is that I don't think anyone can say college is a good thing or a bad thing -- it's all about who you are and what you need. I'm not sure that my life would have been nearly as rewarding as it has been without the college experience, and I'm not sure I would have been able to force myself to go had my family not expected it.

Every kid is unique, and college was a fantastic and transformative experience for many of us.