A Key Ingredient Our Colleges Are Leaving Out Of Our Youths' Educations

I graduated from a well-known, respected University in New York City. Promptly after graduation, I started my business and I've done quite well. Not many people are able to start their own business nearly right out of college. I am proud of this fact and felt that, through teaching my experiences and my business methodologies and techniques, I could help these youngsters. Therefore, this prompted me to contact an old professor to inform him how well I was doing and to ask him if I could speak to his class. He said sure, and emailed me asking what I knew. This was a little troubling as I knew how to start a business; I thought that should be enough. However, in the same email, I informed him of my other skills which centered around my business. These included marketing, employee management, hiring, the ability to be self reliant, resume writing and interviewing (after all I run a recruitment firm), how to pick the right company to work for and various presentation and selling tactics.

To my surprise, he said that the students don't need to learn entrepreneurship. He asked me if I knew anything else. Anything else? I wondered why he would not want to expose his students to starting a business. As a business major, we would take such classes as Managerial Accounting which is no longer used in 99% of companies, however we gave 3 months of our time to studying it. Though, it seemed as if entrepreneurship was a bad word. Here is the main problem with most colleges: they teach their students how to be employees. Upon graduation, there are many corporations which are just licking their lips to hire cheap, educated labor. If students are taught how to be employees, they will most likely be employees the rest of their lives. It is an end-less cycle with little to no way out. Also, when working for a company, you don't learn as much. Typically you have one job and that is it. What I wanted to teach these students was a different way of viewing the business world and the options which exist for those who don't want a boss for the rest of their life and who, instead of punching numbers at a big financial firm, want to attempt to make their mark on the business world. When it comes to owning a business, it is not always whether you win or lose, it's whether you play the game.

The last thing I told my old professor was about how I would teach the students how drugs and alcohol will ruin a career with the blink of an eye. Again, he was not impressed. This is despite the fact that there are a dozen bars within walking distance of campus and one can get away with drinking too much and getting by in college. Though, the real-world is an entirely different ballgame. Alcohol and drugs are the two biggest deterrents to success.

Eventually, I was put on a list to speak on an entrepreneurial panel sometime next month as they host these two times a year. I could be wrong, but paying $120,000 for an education should have some freethinking and diversity to it. Regarding the panel, I'm not enthused.

FYI - the number one way colleges make students into employees as they will get paid by Visa for the credit card company to set up a booth at the University. There is no better way to ensure that a student will not go off on his or her own when they are in debt at 17% APR.