There are many reasons why college is a waste of time and money. Remember that four years is an eternity amount of time that’s taken out of your life. The opportunity cost with what you could do with all that time, effort, and money is meaningful and can set you back.
The disclosure is that I’m a college graduate. I’ve benefitted from the experience and having a college degree and it’s served me well. However, after going through with the experience, I would make completely different choices if I could. There are better alternative choices out there.
If I had to do it all over again, I would live in my parent’s house, find a $30,000 job, and try to start a business. These days, the opportunities to start a business are endless, with the invention of the internet. I would not only save money on the tuition costs, but on living costs as well for four years.
An estimated $110,000 in tuition and living costs over four years. That’s not an insignificant amount of money. When invested at a 7% interest rate, that is $130,645 that I lost out on over 4 years. Not even including the salary from any jobs I work in the meantime. Add on an additional salary potential of $120,000 over four years.
So now we’re at $250,645. Then that’s not even including starting a business on the side for four years like internet marketing or Youtube. That’s potentially an additional $1,000 a month that I could’ve made by the end of the four years.
That’s why I believe college is a waste of time and money. You’re giving up life-changing money that can be used in more productively. That is why I would not choose college.
Why College is a Waste of Time and Money
One way to know why college is a waste of time and money is to SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media! It may help that one friend who is contemplating whether they should go to college or not.
College can be helpful but there are so much better alternatives out there that it becomes a waste of time and money. These days, the saying “you can do anything you want with your life” rings more true than ever. You have more options than you think.
With the invention of the internet, there’s no telling what you can achieve. People are making money in more creative ways than ever now. Therefore, college isn’t a requirement as much as before. There are an infinite number of ways that you can compete against others in.
1) Information Doesn’t Cost Money
Tuition fees for Harvard undergraduate is $49,653 per year for the 2020-21 school year. Harvard has free online classes on its website. There’s only so many ways you can teach that 2 + 2 = 4. Whether you find that out through a simple Google search or through Harvard, it’s the same thing.
Information is readily available at our fingertips more so than ever for completely free. There’s no need to spend a year’s worth of salary into getting formal education. If anything, you can download the course curriculum online and follow along. Public universities allow you to sit in classes and learn.
I sat in MBA classes as an undergraduate student and no one ever kicked me out. Anyone can walk in and just absorb the information for an hour and leave. That’s why college is a waste of time and money. Information is readily accessible at our fingertips, why are we paying such a premium for it?
2) Colleges Force You to Take Unnecessary Classes
Did you know that the credits that you take throughout school is mandated by law? You don’t take classes based on what you want and your interests. You take classes based on what lawmakers say you have to take classes on. What a waste of time. I took art history when I was in college.
I don’t remember a single thing from the class because it’s not my passion nor do I want to learn about art history. The classes that you take is not based on what you want. It’s based on what others want you to take. That’s why college is a waste of money and time.
Why are you paying money and time for something that you didn’t even want to learn about in the first place? That doesn’t sound right. Whether those classes are easy or not is not the point. What matters is that you’re forced to take those classes even if doesn’t add value to your life.
3) You Should be Getting Paid to Learn
Isn’t it interesting how you’re paying money to learn that ultimately benefits companies in the end? Yes, some companies offer scholarships to lower the burden of school. However, they don’t offer that to everyone. It seems backward to pay money for something that ultimately benefits somebody else.
Governments benefit when you get a college degree and companies benefit when you get a college degree. So why aren’t they footing the bill for the majority of students? Something doesn’t seem right how it’s all up to you and your family to bear the cost of college.
College is a waste of time and money because you should be getting paid to learn, not paying to learn. In our finance classes, we learned what EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was and how to calculate it. I will never personally use that information in my life, only my employer.
It benefits companies when I know that information, not me.
4) It Doesn’t Guarantee a Job
College is a waste of time and money because it’s a risk to go through the agony, pain, and process. Universities don’t guarantee student jobs after they graduate so you could end up with no job at the end. What was the point of paying all that money for then? For a chance at getting a job?
You always have a chance at getting a job down the road. Therefore, a college degree is almost like giving up something for nothing. When you are investing tens of thousands of dollars a year, you deserve some sort of reassurance in return. Otherwise, if the risk is always going to be there anyway, why go through with it?
Why accept that the entirety of the risk is borne by you?
5) College is a Waste of Time Because You Don’t Need to be Taught How to Think
The biggest selling point of college is that it “teaches you how to think”. What? Do you really need to spend money and time to be taught how to think? You don’t know how to think on your own? This selling point sounds more like they’re molding you into a line of thinking others want you to think.
There are actual business leaders and world leaders who publicly tell you what their thinking process is. They leave real life and practical impacts to the world. Therefore, their line of thinking is much more valuable than a professor’s line of thinking. Colleges teach you theoretical stuff, not practical stuff with real world application.
College is a waste of time and money because you can think just fine on your own. You don’t need someone else to tell you that their way of thinking is better than yours. Yours is just fine. When every student learns the exact same thing, they are molding themselves to conform to others.
Make your own decisions and opinions instead of relying on others’ opinions.
6) It Takes Time to Break Even
In my example above, I would have had an additional $250,645 by the time the four years were up if I didn’t go to college. Let’s be fair and subtract the $36,000 I earned throughout the four years in college. Then that’s still an additional $214,645 that I would have been ahead by had I not gone to college.
When I graduated college, the company offered a salary of $52,500. It was the lowest offer I ever received but I took it anyway. Counting the salary raises, it took me three years to break even versus my hypothetical non-college counterpart. Three years is a VERY long time.
That is assuming that I don’t invest the remaining $214,645 of my non-college counterpart. Also assuming that I don’t make any other money on top of the $30,000 per year that I would be making without a college degree. Nor any raises or side hustles.
Let’s keep it simple that I don’t invest the remaining money and that I don’t make any other money. Then that means that it took a whopping 7 years just to break even (4 years of college plus 3 years to catch up). That’s even in the best case scenario. That is astonishing. That sounds like a huge waste of time and money.
7) Opportunity Cost of Learning Real Life Skills
They say life is short but I disagree. Life is long. Four years is a ridiculously giant amount of time to give up for somebody else. Think about your last four years. Maybe it felt like it went by quickly but measure it in terms of progress. Did you progress forward on your goals by a wide margin?
I bet you did. So then think about how you could have spent four years that you would have spent in college. Instead of just reading, thinking, and memorizing information, you actually applied it into something tangible. To a side hustle that people can actually enjoy value out of.
When you learn theoretical stuff for four years, It takes time to get adjusted out into the real world. You find out that none of the information you learned is standardized. Some companies use the same words to mean different things and definitions you learned in college were only theoretical.
That makes sense that college is a waste of time and money, it doesn’t even apply to real life situations.
8) You Forget Most of the Information Anyway
I can’t remember a lot of meaningful information that I learned in college. I forgot most of those things and couldn’t even tell you what I learned even if I wanted to. One person told me “I take classes based on how much of a life changing impact it has on me”. Five years later, he can’t remember a single life changing thing from his classes.
While there were some classes that was absolutely phenomenal and life changing, I don’t even remember those moments anymore. It’s one of those information that you makes a huge temporary impact. You’re too busy with what’s going on today that the past information you learned in college is not as useful or meaningful.
Therefore, college is a waste of time and money. If you’re going to forget most of the information anyway, can you honestly say that it was worth it? We care about information that is the most relevant to us in the present. The past doesn’t make as much impact to us.
9) Your Goals May be Different From the People You Meet
There’s high school peer pressure and then there’s college peer pressure. Social influence is real. Your friends influence your line of thinking in more ways that you realize. Remember that your goals may be different from your friends. Some people attend college only because their parents told them to.
Not because they had a specific goal in mind of what they want to achieve. There’s a chance that your college friends can drag you down to levels that you don’t want to get to. I’m lucky that my friends weren’t like that. I met motivated friends who wanted to achieve something with their lives.
College is a waste of time and money because it can actually drag you down to a lower position. It depends on your friend group and who you meet. It can be a risk. I usually didn’t have time to vet and consider whether a friend would be good for me or not. I just took what I got and focused on my studies as much as I could.
I’m lucky that I didn’t end up in a worse position with my friend group but it can still be a risk.
College is a Waste of Time and Money
Above are nine reasons why college is a waste of time and money. Can college be beneficial? Yes. That’s also like asking is water wet? There are few investments that won’t let you come out ahead by spending $100 – $200k+ after four years. The question is was it a waste or was it actually worth it?
Knowing what I know now, I regret going to college. I wish I spent my time doing other more productive things. Now I feel stuck at a desk job because I didn’t look for other income sources. I am completely dependent on my job until I reach financial independence. Which takes a very long time to achieve.
While I started side hustles, those take a long time before it starts making a good amount of money. Therefore, I regret that I didn’t start side hustles sooner or research how to start side hustles in my free time. Some side hustles are just bad. They are just another way to earn active income.
The best side hustles are the ones that only take up a fixed amount of time that can potentially pay dividends forever. When you’re trying to focus on being smart by learning information, you miss out on how to make passive income. The opportunity cost can’t be ignored and it’s very high.
College is a waste of time and money. There are many alternative choices you can take that can actually be better for you in the long run. However, everyone is different so it’s all based on your choices and circumstances by the end. Just consider that it might not have been the best choice for you.
Why College is a Waste of Time and Money List:
- Information doesn’t cost money
- Colleges force you to take unnecessary classes
- You should be getting paid to learn
- It doesn’t guarantee a job
- College is a waste of time because you don’t need to be taught how to think
- It takes time to break even
- Opportunity cost of learning real life skills
- You forget most of the information anyway
- Your goals may be different from the people you meet