Successful Men: "You Don't Need College"
And What Young Men Should Do Instead
I spent last Friday afternoon with Doug Casey on his farm in Uruguay while he and my father recorded the latest episode of their podcast, Doug Casey’s Take.
If you know Doug, you understand why I feel lucky to spend some time with him. If you don’t know Doug… well, you probably should.
Doug is both well read and widely read. He’s written 9 books. One of them, Crisis Investing, was a huge #1 best seller. He published a newsletter for decades. Doug is the OG International Man. He’s travelled to over 175 countries and lived in 10. And he’s a legend amongst those in the resource investing space.
If you ask my dad, he’ll tell you Doug Casey is a philosopher.
Doug is rich, well connected, and free to do as he pleases. Doug is an impressive man.
Meeting Impressive Men
I’m lucky in many ways, but most importantly, I’ve been exposed to many successful men like Doug Casey so early in life. And being around them, I’ve noticed some common themes. These men are big success in life having won financial freedom, time freedom, and location freedom.
How important was college to their success?
Well, less than half of these impressive men even completed college - My dad included. When you’re 18 and not attending college, some people might look down on you. But, nobody looks down on the men I’m talking about. In fact, they’re admired. In the real world, nobody cares if you went to a good school or didn’t go to college at all. You’ll be judged by what you accomplish in life; how much value you create.
There’s something interesting about the men who did go to college. They ended up finding their success in a completely different field from what they studied in college. What they accomplished in life had little or nothing to do with their college degree.
Doug Casey graduated from Georgetown. Doug says it was a “giant misallocation of time and money.” In Doug’s mind, he’s successful in spite of college and not because of it.
It’s not a scientific survey of the college experience, but when I look around at the impressive men I know it’s clear that:
You can be a big success without going to college.
Among the successful men I know, most found success in areas totally unrelated to their college degree.
Many look back at their high pedigree college education and think it was a waste of time and money.
Not Anti-college, until now
Until recently, Doug Casey was the only one of these men I ever overheard criticizing college. Even though these guys didn’t ascribe their success to college, they had the attitude that college can still be a good idea. That attitude has changed.
Their view of college has gone from “could be good” to “the math doesn’t work” and even “you could lose your kids!”
In my next article I’ll focus on the “You could lose your kids” concern among parents. If you’re looking for a reasons to avoid college, it’s the most important one. But, let’s look at “the math doesn’t work” for now.
Real Cost of College $300,000
A college education is among the largest investments most Americans will make. The total cost of attending a public college is about $36,000 a year, and the average length of time to a degree is nearly five years. Tack on debt service for student loans and the opportunity cost of not working while in school, and the real cost of college can easily pass $300,000—more than the median net worth of most families.
- The Wall Street Journal - Why Americans Have Lost Faith in the Value of College
College costs have gotten so wildly out of control, it’s nearly impossible to justify. I mean, what would you have to get from college to justify an expense equal to the total net worth of your family?
Imagine for a moment there was a repeat of the 1929 stock market crash and great depression. Like scores of millions of Americans, your family had all of its net worth wiped out. Your parents lost their home. Their retirement accounts evaporated. Everything they’d worked for - gone.
If you’re parents have a median American net worth and are financing your college, your degree will be a financial burden to them equal to what they’d experience in the Great Depression 2.0. You better be worth it.
You’re paying for it yourself, you say. Good for you not passing that awful burden along. But, do your realize how behind the eight ball you’ll be?
The dumbest “investment” you could make
Scholarships might help. But, with the real costs being so high, it’s impossible to imagine you won’t have to take on a lot of debt. Taking on debt probably doesn’t sound so bad to you. Everyone calls it an “investment”. And it is. It’s an investment - for the banks who’s profits on the loan are guaranteed by the government. Or, if you’re taking a loan directly from the government it’s an investment by them in a docile and indebted citizenry.
If you enter your most productive years loaded with debt, you’re putting yourself in a losing position from the start. Wiped out before you even begin.
All the while, the life you could have had, the person you could have been, is turned to dust. Those who aspire to emulate the successful men of the world will march on past you to live the life they wish.
Don’t be fooled, when you take on debt
you are not investing in your future, you are selling it.
Another Path
College was painted as the yellow brick road to success. But all the sudden people are realizing that Oz isn’t a wonderful wizard, but just an old trickster.
The math doesn’t work. and people are figuring it out. People my age are looking for different avenues to find the success we desire.
Some are migrating to apprenticeships instead:
A poll published in 2022 asked parents if they would rather their child attended a four-year college or a three-year apprenticeship that would train them for a job and pay them while they learned. Nearly half of parents whose child had graduated from college chose the apprenticeship.
(An Iowa high school student signs papers for an apprenticeship at John Deere, May 2023.)
Learning a trade is an honorable path. And it makes a lot more economic sense than college. Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame has been advocating that path for many years and he’s right. If you’re considering the trades, check out Mike Rowe’s website: https://mikeroweworks.org/
Skill Stack
If you are like me though, you want more than just competency in a valuable trade. I want to build a stack of skills and accomplishments which will put me miles ahead of where a single track might land me. And I want to do it while having fun, doing interesting things, and building a network of competent and impressive friends.
Any one of the successful men I’ve been around would dodge college at this point. The idea of spending that much time and money on college is literally unthinkable to them.
Those men are miles ahead of everyone else. They carved their own path. If we want to win, we ought to do the same.
The Preparation
My approach - I am being used as a beta-tester for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program, designed by Doug Casey and my dad, is designed to be a replacement for the only route advertised to ambitious young men - college.
This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.
I’m more than 24 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.
You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did. To see a recent update, click here.
My objective in sharing this is three fold:
Documenting my progress holds me accountable.
I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.
For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.
Just completed a successful career and now phasing into retirement at seventy-seven. Attended college for a year coming to the conclusion the knowledge to be acquired faild to meet the career path envisioned. Since an early age was working summers and weekends in a manufacturing concern. Entered and completed an apprentice program. Started my own small manufacturing company. Truly enjoyed the ability to witness first hand the evolution of manufacturing. From manual machine tools to today's computer driven machining centers. Had the pleasure of knowing Joe Engleberger. To this day I ponder if he realized the impact Unimate would make on society. The project Doug , your father and you are developing is remarkable. Only criticism is to expand the meaning of "Men" to include the fairer sex. I have worked with some extremely talented machinist of the fairer sex.
A side note in your writing, try to minimize the use of "that".
I never thought, like most people, I suspect, about the lost opportunity costs of simply spending years doing something that won't benefit you, let alone the significant debt it puts young people into right "out of the gate. A lot of these BS degrees are also hired by government agencies to push their agendas, essentially pressing the employee into servitude.
I advise (unsolicited usually) any young people who'll listen not to go to college unless there's a direct path to a marketable job at the end of it that pays enough to recoup that debt.