The Great College Myth

You Don’t Always Need a Formal Education to be a Success

Throughout your primary education, how many times were you told that your success in life, or in business at the very least, was tied to going to college? 10? 50? Lost track? Us too. Looking at unemployment statistics, we see that as of July 2011, the unemployment rate for High School graduates was at 9.5%, while the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher was 4.4%. These figures speak about the importance of a higher education, but don’t necessarily prove that higher education is a prerequisite for great success.

Would you say that Steve Jobs, Rachel Ray, Richard Bronson, Glenn Beck, Mark Zuckerberg, Coco Chanel, Jay Van Andel and Joel Osteen are succesful? Each of the people above has achieved great success in their career without ever graduating from college. And they certainly are not counted in the unemployment rate.

I am not one to put down a formal education. For thirteen years, I taught at San Diego State University in the College of Extended Studies. To this day, I highly recommend a formal education. It is my hope that each of my three children will achieve a higher education. It is important to note that the success stories that are listed above are exceptions and not the norm. There are a lot of professionals who cannot even open a door without the highest grades from a top-rated university. If you want to be a pediatric thoracic surgeon…start studying now and be willing to work hard, be paid little in the beginning of your career and rack up huge student loans for years to come.

But, more than ever today, people can no longer use the excuse they do not have a college degree as their reason for not achieving great success. In fact, many people who hold a college degree today find themselves in the unemployment line.

Whether you have a college degree or not, here is what you need for success:

1. Belief in Yourself: All of these success stories had a compelling positive vision that they not only could make it in this world, but also a vision that they could make a significance difference in this world.

2. Hard Work: To accomplish anything great, it takes hard work. If it was easy, everyone would accomplish the same thing and no one would say, “Wow, that was great.”

3. Time to Think: To accomplish anything great, you need to be able to carve out time to think. I recently interviewed one of the top ten cardiologists in the nation. When I asked him how he receives this great reputation, he replied, “Early in my career, I spent a lot of time writing papers and speaking at conferences to build my reputation. The problem with today’s medical reimbursement system is that I need to spend 70 hours a week in the operating room and I no longer have the time to think.” To create anything great, we need time to think about solutions to problems that others have ignored or deemed unsolvable.

4. Accountability: Successful people don’t blame their place in life on others, but rather take accountability to learn what they need to know and then take the actions to make their success happen. I will never forget a wonderful statistics professor in my MBA program, Dr. Milton Chen, who told me after I failed a test, “If you get an A in this class, you will end up teaching statistics. If you get a B or C in this class, you will end up becoming an entrepreneur and own your own company.” He looked at my test and asked, “What business are you going to start?” It was my first lesson that a formal education does not have to be your reason for not creating great success in this life.

5. Willingness to Outlearn the Competition: In today’s world, anything you need to learn, including an MIT education, can be found for free online: all it takes is just a few keystrokes. As fast as new knowledge is generated in our universe, it is important to note that universities will be behind the learning curve. If you realize this and put this concept into action, you can outlearn universities and your competitors.

6. Ability to Spot New Trends: You can either work in a declining industry like the United States Postal Service or you can align your skills and knowledge to an industry or job that is just beginning to blossom. Which track are you on?

7. Be Highly Motivated by Obstacles: Along the path to accomplishment, successful people will be, and have been, told, “No,” or, “It can’t be done,” many times. For whatever reason, successful people are born with a switch in their brain that makes them go into full gear, watch me mode, when told something is impossible. These are the people who are motivated to do today what others refuse or overlook, and enjoy success tomorrow that the others will not.

8. Associate with the Right People: You can have a great vision and be highly motivated to overcome obstacles, but if you don’t hire the right people for your team, your ability to accomplish great things will be inhibited. Some people feel it is their mission in life to tell others what can’t be done. Don’t put yourself around people like this. You need to surround yourself and listen to the people who will encourage you and help you figure out how to get things done.

9. Produce Significant Results: Degree or no degree, it’s hard to argue with great results. Results speak multiple languages. If you don’t produce results, people can always point to your lack of a degree. When you produce significant results, no one will ever mention your lack of a formal education as the reason you achieve superior results.

These points make it sound so simple, but if it really were that simple, the number of successful entrepreneurs would be infinite. Tenacity is always consistently evident in these self-taught, highly successful people. The lesson they have to teach us is: work hard, tackle big problems, never stop learning and surround yourself with smart people. A college degree is not always a prerequisite for success in today’s world.

Image courtesy Jeff Foust, flickr.

The post The Great College Myth appeared first on Peter Barron Stark Companies.