It’s no secret, to get a decent job, you need a 4-year-degree. If it were 1983 you would be right, but in 2019, that could not be further from the truth.

I graduated from Old Dominion University in 2005. I was devoted to my studies and it earned me a Magna Cum Laude on my diploma. Old Dominion was fun. I made some great lifelong connections and enjoyed myself. However, the purpose of going to college is to learn skills that could be used to get a job. In that regard, it failed on many levels.

The reason for my opinion?

We live in a society that is becoming increasingly trade oriented. The job market of today requires highly specialized skills that takes less than a year to master. Yet, modern universities still operate on an outdated model. The first two years of a students college life is spent learning General Education subjects. Most students graduate after 4 years with mortgage size debt only to realize they do not possess the skills they need to get the job they want.

Some of these names might ring a bell:

• Steve Jobs.
• Julian Assange.
• Bill Gates.
• Evan Williams.
• Mark Zuckerberg.
• Larry Ellison.
• Jan Koum.

If you don’t know what they all have in common, let me tell you. They are all billionaires or millionaires who dropped out of college to pursue their passions. These people realized early on what many of us fail to see

if I can sum up college in one short sentence, it would be “An incredibly dragged out curriculum”.

A great example

I recently graduated from a coding Bootcamp in Miami. The Bootcamp was a 10-week Full Stack Web Development Program. 90% of the students who completed the course will get jobs within 6 months of graduating. They will go on to earn an average salary of $65k in their first year of employment. In my graduating class, one of my classmates was 17 years old. You did not read that wrong. A 17-year-old completed a 10-week program and is now on his way to earning more than the median salary in the United States. In fact, he sent me a message a few days ago, that he completed his first job interview and it went great. To put this into perspective, at 17, I was flipping burgers at Mcdonalds. President Clinton had just raised the minimum wage from $4.75 to $5.15.

I have nothing against Colleges and Universities. As previously stated, I really enjoyed the time I spent there. However, there is less of a need for tradition 4-year-degrees in today’s society.  I think it’s time we start addressing the elephant in the room.