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Education Is Not Important For Success
Learning is not education.
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This article was published on March 05, 2011. So far, 14 people have left their thoughts. Share your own thoughts.
Sitting in a hotel lobby in Martinborough, New Zealand after a bike ride, two professors from Vancouver asked me if I thought education was important for success. They hit my hot button. If, like the old saying goes, knowledge is power, then librarians would rule the world. They don’t. Something else is more correlated to success than education.
Millions of higher degree recipients make less during their careers than people who dropped out of high school. And millions who never finished high school make huge impacts and a lot of money.
We miss cause and effect all the time. As an example, people love to say, “College graduates make a million dollars more in their lifetime than non-college graduates.” Is it because they went to school, or because they are motivated to do anything that will make them successful? I think it’s the latter.
If they were told they needed to apprentice with a businessperson they would do that instead of getting an MBA (that would be my advice). They are motivated and committed, and will do whatever they have to in order to be successful.
There is some clear correlation between education in the hard sciences (pharmaceuticals, engineering, plumbing, etc.) and success. If you violate hydrology ($%@* flows downhill), you’ll make a lousy plumber. But there is little correlation in the soft sciences. People build committed communities all the time without ever taking a sociology course. Others help people get past their bad habits without ever taking a psychology course.
Business is one of the soft sciences where education is least correlated with success. Dropouts from college (or people who never went) start hugely successful companies all the time. “Is college necessary?” is becoming a mainstream question.
What makes business owners successful? According to research, education doesn’t show up in the top five. (Entrepreneurial Intuition, an Empirical Approach, La Pira, April 2010), but these do:
- Seeing the big picture – being a visionary is most important. If you can’t see it, you won’t shoot for it.
- Speed of Execution – taking action while others are researching.
- Never giving up; being the bull dog; finding a way to make it work.
- Being a life-long learner.
Learning is massively different than being educated. Education fills our heads with information, while learning transforms our lives and the world around us with grounded and applied intelligence.
If you want to have your head filled with facts, get an education. It you want to learn, change lives and/or make money, you’re better off apprenticing with someone who’s done it. They won’t try to educate you, they’ll just make sure you are effective and becoming something you aren’t, yet.
The Greeks were wrong.
We don’t think our way to a new way of acting; we act our way to a new way of thinking.
Go do something with someone who’s already done it; and learn from their experience.
The Vancouver professor’s responses? “Check, please.”
Add Your Own
Thoughts
Jen Orvis
03/06/11
Well, sounds like you are making a lot of friends on your travels. : )!
I totally agree. Education is terrific for knowledge but not an indicator for ‘success’. Many things must be in place to be successful before knowledge is even tested.
Your list of 4 was right on. Nice.
Ana Carrera
03/06/11
I get what you’re saying Chuck, and completely agree with your list of what makes a business owner successful. But I take issue with the way you use the word Education when you’re actually only referring to most of what is offered in colleges and universities these days. The root of the word “education” comes from two latin words: “ex” which means “from, out of, from within”, and “ducere” which means “to lead, conduct, guide”. Therefore, to educate is really to guide someone in drawing their inherent values from within, helping them reach their potential… (and leading them to take action, perhaps?) Wow, that sounds like a close description of what you are doing through your business, wouldn’t you say? Sorry Chuck, but you’re a great Educator. :)
So maybe a better title would have been “A College Degree is not important for Business Success” – 100% agreement there!
P.S. – By the way, the oldest Universities began in the Middle Ages, and were actually Guilds where much respected Masters would take on apprentices (or “students”) to teach them everything they knew… just thought you’d like that :)
Holly Mais
03/06/11
I couldn’t agree with you more, Chuck. People that inherently know how to conate succeed in life. Those who learn how to conate from other conators also succeed in life. Those who major in “education” in life often spend all their time spinning their wheels figuring out the “best” way to succeed but never DO it. Still like my husband’s motto that “roughly right is OK.” Doing it 85% “right” is better than not doing it at all while trying to figure out how to do it 100% right. This refers to biz and not exact sciences, too, of course!
Craig Jeffery
03/06/11
I always enjoy how you provocatively challenge the sacred cows of business thinking. That is helpful.
A million more dollars earned over a lifetime isn’t too bad. And, while you dismiss the advantage a bit too quickly by attributing it to driven people who would succeed anyway, there are some pretty good stats that seem to result from having a very marketable skill set (amount earned, unemployment numbers vs. high school grad vs. no HS diploma etc.).
It seems like some of your points indicate that
1. College doesn’t help you become an entrepreneur ?
2. Knowing a lot of stuff doesn’t make you successful – it has to be applied.
3. If you want someone to do some research – say something doesn’t show up in the top five list -and then show only four in your blog.
4. Apprenticeship, in some form, is to be highly valued as it pays off.
5. You like to employ the dialectical method in your conversations with professors – and they want to leave quickly….
Thanks for the blog. Keep it up.
Chuck
03/06/11
Ana,
Educators would agree with your definition of “education”, but virtually none of them do that anymore, and haven’t for many decades. Educational institutions at every level are not set up to TRANSFORM, but to INFORM. It’s about information, not about transformation.
Nothing could show this bias against transformation more than education’s bias toward cognition. As Einstein said cognition is supposed to be a “SERVANT of intuition”, but we have “created a society that worships the servant and has forgotten the gift” (of intuition).
Conation (committed movement in a purposeful direction, or Intuition in action), the most powerful form of “doing”, was one of the more well known words in academia in the 1800s. Today it is one of the 1,000 most obscure words in the English language, while Cognition has been lifted to a level of supremacy/worship.
So we need a new narrative to combat this. Education has become “from one head to the other”. Conation is “from one life to another” and is transformative, not informational.
I’m not an educator. That word is no longer available to Conaters. I’m a transformer, or mentor, or Conater, but definitely not an educator by the modern definition.
FYI – I agree that “school” started as guilds/apprenticeships, where people DID what they learned. The Masters were not at all interested in teaching them what they “knew” in the cognitive sense (transfer of information from one head to another). They were interested in whether the student could apply it. And their ability to “graduate” was almost solely based on their ability to DO IT, not to KNOW IT cognitively.
What happened? Why did educators lose promote cognition over Conation? We need to get the relationship correct once again. I’m advocating a return to apprenticeships, what we knew intuitively was the right approach before the Cognaters decided to worship the servant and forget the gift.
So the way we use “education” today is not important for success (filling your head with information). What is important for success is Conation (doing based on intuition), and then using cognition, affection and activation as the faithful servants they are to guide us as we conate. A far different approach then we would find in “educational” institutions today.
RJ
03/06/11
I don’t think I’ve ever read a post that more dramatically expressed my own thoughts on this subject. As mom of four (grown) free thinking, opinionated kids, I watched while the “educational system” nearly destroyed them by requiring them to STOP thinking and simply regurgitate.
My only problem with your take on this (which I applaud) is wondering where the mentors are for those kids who simply do not fit into that “compliant requirement” of school, aren’t an entrepreneur type, and long to learn under a mentor? Especially with my youngest son, I tried for five years to find someone, anyone, to take him in this relationship, and met an absolutele stone wall. Would love to hear your thoughts.
~RJ
Chuck
03/06/11
Craig,
Yes, I do believe that the correlation between education and the million dollars is bogus. If someone has a vision, speed of execution, the will to never give up, and a lifelong learner’s heart, they will get the skill set, with our without sitting with the educators. The money is not a result of the skill set – lots of skilled people are doing nothing with their lives because they lack the other four, and lots of people are successful because they have the other four which drove them to get skilled.
To your other points –
1) College emphatically makes it much harder to become an entrepreneur.
2) Yes
3) I condensed the results of the article because two their research points fell into one of the four categories (nice catch!).
4) Apprenticeship is a much better way to become successful. Pay a successful $30k a year for 2 yrs to follow him around, or pay an academic $60k for an MBA? No question which one will make you more successful (MBA makes it harder, not easier).
5) Professors/academics find the dialectical method (2-way conversation) anathema to their goal of filling our heads with their info. They already know everything they need to know. (see my post on why should never trust a guru or an expert).
People who eat It seems like some of your points indicate that
1. College doesn’t help you become an entrepreneur ?
2. Knowing a lot of stuff doesn’t make you successful – it has to be applied.
3. If you want someone to do some research – say something doesn’t show up in the top five list -and then show only four in your blog.
4. Apprenticeship, in some form, is to be highly valued as it pays off.
5. You like to employ the dialectical method in your conversations with professors – and they want to leave quickly….
Thanks for the blog. Keep it up.
Chuck
03/06/11
RJ,
Great response – thanks. I feel for your youngest son. I was the youngest of four and found the education system completely baffling from early on. And I didn’t get any help with it.
I graduated 515th out of 525 (that’s 10 from the bottom) in high school. On the day we were supposed to walk for graduation, they had me in the office discussing whether I should be allowed to. I went on to be successful, and 19 years later I got a college degree as a gift to my mother who believed so very strongly in education (my sister has a masters from Yale, my other brothers have masters from some other fancy schools).
One of the problems with a schooling system built on the foundation of cognition instead of on intuition/conation is that it leaves children like yours behind, who can be brilliant, but the school will mis-identify them as something quite different. Albert Einstein flunked ninth grade Algebra – he was an intuitive. There is great hope for your kids!
Where do you live? I just read your blog – very inspiring. Someone knows someone who can work with your youngest.
The best thing you can do for them in the meantime is remind them daily that they are not victims, but victors. I’m so grateful for the messed up education process I got in childhood – it has helped me in innumerable ways by forcing me to find ways to learn and grow that the Cognaters left out.
Always remind your kids of this – circumstances don’t make me who I am. How I respond to them does.
I just emailed you via your blog. Keep in touch!
Elise Adams
03/06/11
I completely agree with you! Yet my struggle, as a many-time drop out (sometimes for lack of emotional-intelligence, others because of disinterest or the gut-level belief that an academic program will not teach me what I need to know) is that the world continues to value the alphabet soup after a name as evidence of expertise. I am determined to prove that my intelligence doesn’t need the validation of a degree. I will be a successful business person and am pushing ahead with that. But as RJ shares, finding mentors seems to be next to impossible—at least I don’t know how to find them. So, I cull through pile after pile of bad advice, try to sort out some helpful information and I feel, 99% of the time, completely alone.
Which leads me to understand one reason I think that the educational system continues to ‘thrive’, in some ways. It is a collective, collaborative place where some people find connectedness. I am finding the self-employed world a lot less supportive and connective than I found academics…yet, for me, much more rewarding and promising!
Thanks again for your great essay.
Jen Orvis
03/06/11
Great feedback on the topic but I feel the need to chime in again, in regards to the education vs college degree….
Ana, I feel going to college is an experience that provides profound insight in the areas of personal growth, relating to others, independence…and information.
I feel the purpose of this post is to express the obvious, which is there is a certain amount of data necessary to start and run a business but it has no implication on whether the business will work.
Ana
03/07/11
Chuck & Jen,
I was not arguing at all with the main points of the post. I do understand the value of conation over information, even more so because that is a weak point for me.
My disagreement was more of a semantic/philosophical nature (and meant to be tongue in cheek) on the word Education, which in my opinion shouldn’t be limited to the “formal education” offered in schools – because education by definition means much more than that.
By the way, I rebelled long ago against the notion that everyone needs to be a good student or to have a college degree to be successful in life – even if they’re not entrepreneurs. We’ve all seen plenty of examples that dispel that myth.
Chuck
03/07/11
Elise,
Unfortunately most of the business world still has the antiquated notion that a degree makes someone better at [fill in the blank]. It’s one of the few highly prejudicial litmus tests left in our world, and one that is not likely to go away soon.
But I can tell you this – the employers that are the most married to “must have a degree” are the ones you least want to work for in almost every instance. They are stuck in Industrial Age thinking that permeates their view of the world – and it’s not a place where most people will thrive anymore.
So the good news is there are companies out there that don’t see the world through a ridiculously vapid and meaningless piece of paper. Those are the companies that are magic for people like you and RJ and RJ’s kids. The are not pervasive, but they exist and are growing in number. We 22 people with the Crankset group – full and part time, and I couldn’t tell you what degree any of them have. I’m pretty sure there are some masters degrees and some folks who didn’t sit at the feet of the Cognaters. We don’t hire for education, but for transformational impact.
We also don’t ask for resumes when we hire, because they are just tombstones that tell all about what people did in the past – education is just part of that tombstone.
To your point that education systems continue to thrive because they offer connectedness where the self-employed world does not – - I would say they educational system thrives (especially in the soft sciences) simply because people still actually believe it makes one competent – they Cognitives have themselves set up as the default litmus test. But not for long. As we move away from the Industrial Age, we will also move away from the educational artifacts that were set up solely to support it.
And there is hope for the self-employed and small business community. There are many groups – Vistage, BNI, TAB, and others that provide community for small businesses. We are setting up 3to5 Clubs throughout the world where 24 local small business owners commit to come together bi-weekly to build their businesses on a level a few steps above networking, and meet individually during the other two weeks. It is built around developing the vision, skills, committed, passion, and most importantly, the community needed to succeed.
Everyone needs a place where they can say these three magic words – “I don’t know.” The Industrial Age supported the lie of the “John Wayne Rugged Individualist” – work for the man or be a “maverick” who goes out crazily on their own like an adventurer. But that’s not how we function.
We function best in Committed Communities like 3to5 Clubs and the others, where people genuinely care for each other well beyond just trading clients.
Don’t go it alone. Get into one of these groups. We only have 3to5 Clubs in a few states and in the UK, but we’ll have them everywhere in the coming years. If you’re not near one, get into one of the others. Community is also more important than education for success. Find a place you can say “I don’t know.”, and let me know how it goes.
Chuck
03/07/11
Ana,
I know you well enough to know you’re a bit of a rebel and the Cognitives/Academics didn’t hamper your learning. :)
I would just say it’s not semantics because, as my other recent post stated “Words matter.” Their is a GIANT difference between how the Cognitives view education and the historical definition. We need to expose that Cognitive bias that works to stifle a Conative life.
Elise Adams
03/07/11
Everyone needs a place where they can say these three magic words – “I don’t know.” YES!
I’ll be looking for more connection with other small business folks…and I absolutely love your concept of connection on a higher level than networking. The ‘networking’ concept still leaves everyone competing for business instead of collaborating. I’ll be staying tuned to your mission to spread more deeply connected, supportive groups. I’ve experienced this in the 12-step recovery arena and long to bring this productive, functioning, collaborative spirit into the business world!
RJ
03/07/11
Chuck, I’m feeling rather overwhelmingly that I’ve just met the one sane person out there that understands! Not to be overly dramatic, but, well, its incredible to me that I’ve lived nearly half a century without hearing one other human being (outside of family) communicate about the way I think.
I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of reminding my kids how incredibly unique and wonderful they are, and how they have the privilege of choosing how to respond to what often feels like the eternal misunderstanding of others. My youngest son is gifted, sensitive, huge-hearted, frequently negatively labeled, and completely unwilling to “do the school thing”. Slowly he is finding his own voice and his own way, though I continue hoping for some sort of a mentoring relationship.
I am intrigued by the 3to5 Clubs you were describing to Elise. I understand that you don’t have such set up currently in WA, where she and I both live. But I’m wondering… what is the possibility of a collaboration of sorts, to perhaps create something here? What does it take?
I’m in a rather strange-feeling position of being a current graduate student, while also being a wild freethinking entrepreneur myself. Oh how the worlds collide! I do not experience my collegial relationships as personally supportive of my extra-collegial mighty high dreams; academics are great at what they do, but I find my dreams rather outside of the box, and I positively long for a place to be able to say “I don’t know”, to set aside the face of optimism just for a moment and accept some support. I’m a firm believer in creating a resource when one isn’t found. Would love to explore this with you.
~RJ
Chuck
03/08/11
RJ/Elise,
I’m only on the grid here in New Zealand for a quick look today – definitely want to respond more to you tomorrow or the next day – stay tuned!
Chuck
03/10/11
RJ/Elise,
I’m back for a moment. :) Heading out of Nelson today to Kaikoura to watch whales.
I’m going to write a quick post on the three magic word in business (“I don’t know”) in the next few days. It’s so important for us to be disoriented from what we “know”. Formal education also makes this harder – the more we’re anointed as “experts” the less we learn.
3to5 Clubs are indeed at a whole different level than networking. Each 3t5o Club of 24 business owners do some powerful connecting together for sure (we don’t do networking, we build a small network of strategic alliances – huge difference). We call them Committed Communities and the major focus is on the Four Building Blocks of a successful business – The Big Why, a very simple 2pg. Strategic Plan, simple Process Mapping (to get off the treadmill), and Outside Eyes.
In 3to5 Club we provide tools to help business owners get off the treadmill and get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place. And “3to5” refers to how long it should take from the printing of a business card to when you can regularly go on vacation and have the business make money while you’re gone. We call that a “Business Maturity Date”, or BMD. We started this particular business (#5 in the last 25 years) four years ago, and our BMD was just last month – Feb 20 – we’re in New Zealand celebrating now while the business goes on without us for 3 1/2 weeks.
3to5 Club is about USING your business to build your Ideal Lifestyle, and doing it in community with others.
We have them now in other states and in Europe (maybe soon here in New Zealand), but not in WA. Glad to talk more about the possibilities in WA as well.
But regardless, start looking for one or two other people who you can get together with regularly and learn. We have tools I’d be glad to provide you to walk through as well that were developed on the ground, not in an Ivory Tower.
Email me at Grow@CranksetGroup.com – Krista will pick it up and we can keep our conversation going.
Kevin Johansen
03/14/11
Hi Chuck,
I’ve forwarded this on to my son – who picked up his GED when he was a junior in H.S.
He’s now 20 and making a pretty decent living w/ his own business – likely more than a 20 y/o should!
Best,
Kevin
Balika Vadhu
03/15/11
So true about money and what it really is and that is a tool. My question is how do we convey to our children the importance of an education but at the same time telling them it is not the key to success? As adults we can bring the thinking or mentality together of having an education can open doors but it is not the end all. Kids will only think of the part of being a success without still seeing how important an education is and how doors can be opened.
Chuck
03/18/11
Balika,
You said: “how do we convey to our children the importance of an education…”
That’s my whole point. Education isn’t important, learning is. They are vastly different.
I believe the key would be to instill in your children the desire to be lifelong learner. If you are a lifelong learner, you’ll make sure you seek out the environments that will provide growth. College might be one of those for one person and following a business person around might be better for the next person.
Instill in your kids the desire to be curious as a lifestyle and you won’t have to worry about how they are going to turn out. But if you simply instill in them the idea that they need to punch their education ticket, they could end up doing something well below their abilities the rest of their life, with a lot of fancy letters behind their names.
Dayo Owoyemi
03/31/11
Hi, my name is Dayo Owoyemi, and i am a Junior at Classical High school in Providence, Rhode Island. this sememster i am doin a research topic on why Education Is Not the Sole Determining Factor of a person’s Financial Success or economic self-sufficiency. im a 100% in agreement with you on this topic and it would be really helpful if i could speak to you about this as an outside contact in the course of my research and to further enlighten me on this topic.. my email address is ddaayyooo@yahoo.com thank you!
montazze
04/21/11
Just suggestion, I think it’s better to change the title into “Degree Is Not Important For Success”. I believe all successful entrepreneurs have a good education, but not always get it from a school. Also for me, education is important to reach success, but not with the degree.
Librarians would not rule the world as long as they only keep their knowledge as theory. Without skills and attitude, knowledge is just a knowledge. They need to act.
Overall, I love reading your blog page by page; it’s inspired me much. Thanks.
Chuck
04/21/11
Montazze,
Great point and Ana Carrera made the same suggestion. But I think when 98% of people see the word “education”, they have the formal degree process in their heads – the word has been usurped by that degree mill industry.
So I feel I have to differentiate. I used “learning” as a replacement for education (formal degree process). Learning is important for success – a degree (traditional education) is not.
Daniel Nilavu
05/25/11
I have just read this article and for me it is so obvious that any normal person can learn anything which has a real life application. Sometimes I think of a college degrees and Phd like some kind of slave mentality preparatory schools.
You learn the most useful things when you start working and you are happy if you manage to see how things are really functioning. Also, “education” has become something like a secret curtain which you have to pass by in order to excel in the real life situations.
Chuck
05/26/11
Daniel,
Thanks for your comments on the “secret curtain” of education. I think it’s become a lot like the little man behind the green curtain. And the question of its value is becoming more mainstream. I saw reports on three different news networks in the last month asking whether formal higher education is worth the cost. I think they were reading my blog. :)
Chuck
05/28/11
Take a look at this – early Facebook investor Paul Thiel is paying 24 kids $100,000 each to drop out of college to get mentoring and in-the-trenches training instead. http://bit.ly/kOUkiG
The only thing wrong with this is that they should be paying him $100k for the training.
Adewole Olufemi (NG)
09/30/11
Well its true dat experience is more useful than textbook (theories) policies cos most of the things we were thought n school motly dont apply to d real world and after all you have read in school if you re to start a new job you will need to be trained n d companies policy which u wunt get in any text book
Zubair
03/16/12
Great thinking! you are right,Switching ‘on’ is meaningless if it does’nt light the bulb on any account-say being fused or due to some wiring disconnection. Formal education too is meaningless if it doesn’t enlighten you .Receptive hearts benefit lot more from the least of formal education while the tarnished ones benefit the least even from the highest formal education
Chuck
03/17/12
Good thoughts, Zubair. A receptive heart is more likely to be a life-long learner.