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I had a four-year college graduate who comes out with a philosophy degree,

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and I've got somebody who's been in sales for four years and didn't have a degree in the same age.

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Who do you think I'm picking for the sales job? The guy who's been in sales for four years.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and

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build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion-dollar thing with acquisition.com.

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I always wished pesos, muskenbuffet had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us.

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Please share and enjoy. To go to college or not go to college, that is the question in the game

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of life. I'm going to show you the data so that you can make your own decision, and at the very end,

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I'll give you my honest advice. 1.76 trillion is more GDP than every country in the world besides

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maybe the top 10. That means that our college day's kids, young adults, are taking on more debt

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than entire nations produce. At some point you have to think, are they going to be able to make that

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up? If you're a parent or loving relative that a young person who's making this decision is sent to,

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I want to talk to you specifically. I went to Vanderbilt. It's a very good school. I think it's ranked

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13 that's tied with Brown as a pseudo Ivy League school. I graduated in three years,

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Magna Cum Laude. I was president of my fraternity. I was vice president of the powerlifting team,

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and I did it in three. Then I went into a white collar job, managed to be consulting for two years,

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and then while I was at that job, I studied very hard and got above Harvard Business School's GMAT

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midscore. That was my plan until I started thinking a little bit more for myself about, wait,

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does the math really make sense here? Fast forward a decade. I now want to portfolio of companies

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that does over $200 million a year, and I make these so that hopefully younger people or just

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people at different stages in their career can make better picks. That's my formal education side.

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My informal education side is that I quit my white collar job, started a minimum wage at a gym,

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where I paid a guy to let me work for him and follow him around all day. Then I got into the gym

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business, scaled that to 5,000 locations in the US and our company called gym lunch, and I sold that

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to private equity group for $46.2 million. I now own a portfolio of companies that has over a thousand

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employees. I know what businesses today are actually looking for, and it's not what I used to think,

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and maybe what you used to think years ago, which is no one even looks at where you went to school,

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or what you majored in, or even what your GPA was. All we care about is your experience and the

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likely that you can do the job well. Many of the jobs that are available today, there is no school for.

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Because the school degrees and the things that they taught have nothing to do with how much

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the economy has changed, and I know you care a lot about whoever you're helping make this decision.

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I want you to know I care just as much, and I don't benefit from either of these decisions that

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they choose to make, except for maybe if they do something that adds benefit to the workforce,

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they might eventually work out of my companies, but that's really it. And so I make this as

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even handily as I can because I've benefited from both sides. And here's one of the worst parts

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about this debt. Number one is that the interest rates are high, and number two is that you literally

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can't bankrupt out of it, meaning once you do this, you're stuck paying it for the rest of your life.

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I think that's one point for not going to college. Now what do you actually get when you pay for

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college? If you don't graduate high school, you make less than a million dollars for the rest of your

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life. Now if you do finish with a high school diploma, about 30% better, 1.3 million. If you have

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some college, so you go and maybe you drop out, 1.5, a little better. Bachelor's degree, 2.2 million.

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All right, now we're more than double our high school diploma. Master's degree, 2.6,

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doctoral, 3.2, and then professional degree, 3.6 million. Now that's how much you make over the

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rest of your life. I would say that that's a strong point for education. Now we see this really high

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increase in income, but it's not free. The debt that you take on for student loans, you cannot

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bankrupt out of, which means that until you die, you have to pay it back. And they force you to

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make that decision when you're 18 years old and you've never made a dollar in your life, nor can

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you comprehend the scope of what $250,000 of after tax income is. And the interest rates that you're

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paying, when you make a $250,000 loan out, you're not paying back $250,000. You're paying back $400,

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$500,000 in post-tax money over the span of your career. And so that leads naturally to like,

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okay, well, how is that going to affect the rest of your life? Well, look at how earnings actually

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increase over time. And so this is important. When you look at your actual life, you're going to be

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saddled with relatively large payments for a long period of time and so you can actually start

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catching up in your late 30s and early 40s where earnings begin to spike. When are you starting a

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family? When are you getting married? When are you buying your first home if that's what you want to

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do? And yet, you're still saddled with that debt that you cannot get out of and you have very

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high interest on. To me, that's a very strong point for not going. Now, the median incomes that's

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over your lifetime, but those don't all happen at once. And oftentimes, earning power and income

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happen later on in your career and the higher your degree, the longer it takes to actually get there.

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Some of these bottom rungs more or less stay flat that whole time, where some of these other

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ones that you have to pay for takes longer in order to earn back. So by the time your late 30s

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early 40, you might be making more money, but you also have the drag of the debt and the payments

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and the interest that you have to carry with you in the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars

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extra. Does this differential after tax after lifestyle and family and house does it make up the

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difference? Now, you might think, wow, then I should not go to college. Well, the odds are against

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you in terms of earning income. Let's dive in. You have a 7.3% chance of making more than somebody

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with a bachelor's degree if you don't graduate high school. The odds aren't in your favor. Not to

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say that you choose investing in yourself, trying to get educated. You're not that 7.3% because

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you very well might be, but statistically, you've got a one in 12 shot of just beating someone

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who went to college. Now, if you do graduate, you double your likelihood of beating that person.

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You go to one in six. If you get some college, one in four, if you get an associates, one in four

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ish. Now, let's go to masters. You have a six out of 10 shot of making more money than somebody who

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just has a bachelor's. If you get a doctoral seven out of 10 and then finally a professional

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83% or 8 out of 10 shot of actually making more money. When you do have more skills, you do make

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more money. The question still remains, is it worth it? But in my mind, this is a clear argument

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for more formal education, one point college. All the while you're thinking through this decision,

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you need to use Warren Buffett's investment question, which is the difference between what you pay

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and what you get. So if someone says, hey, I want to give you this Ferrari. You might think, well,

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obviously, I want to do that. Well, for what price? Now, if they say for $10,000, that's a great deal.

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If they say for a million dollars, you might be like, that's a terrible deal. And so it's not about

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necessarily whether getting more education makes more money or not. It's just, is it worth what it costs?

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If I said, hey, I can get you to make $200,000 a year. You might say, of course, I'm in. But if I

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said, in order to make that $200,000 a year, you need to pay me $7,000 for the rest of your life.

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Okay, well, all of a sudden, the amount of making is significantly less than that. And so you

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can't take how much you make without considering how much it costs. I think an important point to

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make here is that these are percentages, but it also shows that 27% of people who have a doctoral

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degree still don't make more than people with a bachelor's degree. All that to say, these aren't

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guarantees the way that they are purported to be. And a lot of college money goes into advertising

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that this is the guaranteed way of moving forward in life. But looking at these stats, if you're

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that one of those five people or one of those three people that's below, you literally got none of

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the upside and all of the downside. So why is there such a disparity between these earning levels?

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Well, it also depends what industry you want to get into. So for example, if you want to get into

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personal services, blue collar, health support, sales and office, the higher education doesn't make

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nearly as much of a difference. On the flip side, if you want to get into science technology,

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you want to get into health professionals who are talking doctors, managerial and professional,

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then it does make a bigger difference. And so part of making this decision is, well, what do I

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want to do when I grow up? So if you think that you want to go into a very formal career path,

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you want to be an accountant, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a doctor, then it might

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make a lot more sense for you. But if you want to be a salesperson, you want to be a marketer,

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do you want to do any blue collar job, any kind of home services, things like that? Then it probably

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doesn't make sense for you. And so in my mind, that's one point for both sides. So one of the questions

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I would be asking you is, okay, well, if one out of eight people who has a high school degree

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can be somebody who has a college degree over their median earnings, then I'd be like,

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what makes that one person special? We actually pulled up a great research study that looked at

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that exact question, which is how many of these people would have been successful who went to college

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already on their own without going to college? One of the big skews of colleges that people who go

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to college in general have more money come from higher socioeconomic families, etc. Well, if those

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people had just gone out on their own and gone into the professional world, would they have just

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made the same amount of money? The results might interest you. If you are a white person or an

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Asian person, you have no value ad from college. If you control for SAT scores, socioeconomic status,

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and other factors that would differentiate people on the flip side, if you are Latino or you are

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black, college does have a significant 30% to 40% increase in median earnings. The results

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like life are a little bit nuanced. It depends on who you are. Now, I could make an argument,

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or you might say, hey, Alex was going to win either way, but what some of you guys don't know is

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I went to Vanderbilt and I graduated Magna Cum Laude. That being said, everything that I do in my

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life today, I didn't learn in college. And so the question is, was it worth the money? The other

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question is, if I had started four years earlier, would I be further than I am today? So one of the

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most interesting statistics I've come across is that there's one metric above all others that

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predicts your earning income better than anything. You want to know what it is? It's not your race,

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it's not your gender, not your IQ. Think how crazy that is. It's not even your IQ. It's the zip code

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you were born in. My theory on the reason why that is and the differential between races is that

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when you go to college, you can figuratively change your zip code because you change your

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environment and the people you know. And more importantly, the people you compare yourself to.

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Poor people can feel rich if they compare themselves to other poor people. But as soon as you get into

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a room where everyone makes 10 times more money than you, all of a sudden you feel like the poor

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person. And what do you do? You change your behavior. College may add value to people who didn't

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already get that value given to them. Interesting, which makes a strong argument for being the first

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person in your family to go to college because then it actually changes the trajectory of your

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offspring and your prodigy and your family tree. If you're not the first person, it makes a lot

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less of a difference. And so the thing that gets a lot of people to win at college is the same thing

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that gets you to win at business and life. And so the question is, is the college really necessary

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if you have those characteristics already in order to get in? Like if you got a high enough SAT

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score to get into an Ivy League school like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, then you probably are smart

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enough to do the other things without going to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and still make money.

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As a side note, personally, I got above Harvard's GMAT score for business school. I haven't gone

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to Harvard Business School, but I've done pretty good in business. Kind of interesting. If I were to go

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to Harvard Business School and then make money afterwards, was it Harvard or was it me? And I

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actually faced this decision when I was thinking about going to Harvard and I thought to myself, well,

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do I want to not make money for two years and incur $250,000 of debt? And when I did the dollars

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and cents for me going to business school, I thought, man, why don't I take the $250,000 and just

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start a business and I'll bet that by the end of those two years, I'll have learned more than I

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did in business school and I'll graduate the game of life two years ahead and making more

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than the median income of somebody who went to business school and that ended up being true.

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And so if you want to get into anything that doesn't have a formal degree required in order to

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make that money, then it doesn't make sense. And that's one point for the career. So one of the

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big things that pro college advocates talk about is the network that you meet when you're in college

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and how much that alumni network can benefit you getting a job, doing a deal or whatever it may be

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in the future. And I will put two strong caveats on that claim. Number one is, do I think that for

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$50,000 a year, I could buy into whatever network I want to be if people making significantly more

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money than me with skills that I'd like to learn for $50,000 every single year for four straight

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years. To me, that answer is moot or even more in favor of just going the career. And if you

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want to buy a network, then buy a network. To me, that's an argument for not going to college

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if we're trying to control for the same money. Now, one of the other points that's pro college

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that is often made is what about the social experiences you have? The once in a lifetime

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opportunity to be around all people only your age, potentially meet the love of your life, party,

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have lots of fun, get dressed up in Togas, learn how to beer pong and all of that stuff. For $50,000

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a year, $1000 a week, you could party your absolute face off and make friends with all of these people

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in that same period of time. Now, I would say though, it is more difficult to meet that many people

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your age in a professional career than it is to do it at college. And I would say that if you're

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looking purely from a fund basis, I'm not going to say real world's going to be college. Now,

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can you get close with $1000 a week, you go to Vegas, they'll show you hell of a time,

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but I would still argue that from a social perspective, those four years would be more fun.

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The question is what you're optimizing for. Now, if you want to say I just want to go to a resort

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for four years, I totally understand, but understand that that's what you're choosing to buy.

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But if that is what you want, then I would say that the social aspect is a pro for college.

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We'll go guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything.

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And so the only ask that I can ever have are you guys that you help me spread the word so we

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can have more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have

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better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can

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rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I have to do is you can just leave

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review, let's take 10 seconds or one type of the thumb, it means the absolute will have to be

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and more importantly, it may change the world for someone else.

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Now, one of the things worse discussing is can you get the upside for free?

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Now, if you have FAFSA and you qualify for it, I mean, you can get financial aid or you can get

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grants or you get a merit-based scholarship for sports or for scholarship, that makes a real

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difference because now you're getting all the upside without having the downside. And if you can

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go to college for a bargain, then that might be a great deal. And that would be one point for college.

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I do think that there are some full price colleges that even if you had to take loans, it would

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make sense to go to. If you get into Harvard or you get into Princeton or you get into Stanford or

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Yale or one of the Ivy League schools, a top 20 school in the United States that everyone

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recognizes the name, I would say that for how much that will impact your personal brand,

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that is worth it. Because one, every single time you walk to a room, people would be like,

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oh yeah, you went to Harvard or you went to Yale. And that will immediately shift their

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perception of you and the types of jobs and how quickly you can progress in your career.

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The second factor is that the people who go from those colleges become the ruling class.

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They rule the world. They go to the highest paying jobs. The people who graduate from those schools,

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their meeting income, I don't know what it is, but many of them are in the tens to 20s to 50s of

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millions of dollars per year. And so in those instances, if you can get in there, then the arbitrage

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of what you pay versus what you get is still a great deal. Now let's look at the lifetime

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earnings a little bit more nuanced. Because this is across all degrees in all schools, but I think

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we can both agree that all degrees are not created equal. If somebody says, hey, I have a PhD from

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State U versus I have a PhD from Harvard, you can probably bet that that Harvard PhD is going to

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be going to top firms, move faster, and ultimately just make more money over the long term. They can

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also network with other Harvard PhDs who get into those great places, whereas that might not be

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as prevalent. And so the 75th percentile at Harvard for a bachelor's degree might be not 3 million,

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but it might be 6 or 10 or 15 million. And so in that instance, it does make sense. And as much

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as you're like, man, this is a more complex decision. Yeah, many variables exist and many variables

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must be studied. Welcome to the real world. Because the ruling class are so scrutinized for having

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advantages, there are such generous endowments for those Ivy League schools that most people who

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don't come from the ruling class can get significant financial aid for going there, making the trade

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even more worth it. So I'm looking down at my life four years in the future and I see college

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and I see career me. Which one do I choose? So if I started going down the college path,

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if I come from a wealthier family, then I don't get the benefits of college and I incur the debt.

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So that might not make sense. On the flip side, if I am less fortunate or coming from a less

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fortunate family socioeconomically, then I do get a better benefit from college. And I will likely

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get some sort of financial aid increasing the differences between what I pay and what I get. And I

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have a new network. So my zip code improves. That might make a lot of sense for me.

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If I'm super well off, then I already have the benefits of going to college and I might as well

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start my career with those benefits already, not incur debt and make four years more income and

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before years further my career path provided. I don't want to do science technology, doctor,

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lawyer, accountant stuff. If I'm lower socioeconomic status, then I might not have the same benefit

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and I might find myself in the bottom part of that circle that represents the statistics. Not to

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say that you're not the one of eight people who can earn more is just less likely. So given those

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variables, where do we go from here? If I came from a lower educated, lower socioeconomic family

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and get financial aid significantly, I would say 50% or more of that tuition, I would say go to college.

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You pay less for what you get and you get more than anyone else does on the flip side. And this

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is counterintuitive. If you already come from a highly educated family and you have higher socioeconomic

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status and you're not going to get favorable financial terms for paying for school, it makes less

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sense for you to go. The counterintuitive thing here is that the rich families, the better off families

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are the ones that encourage their kids to go to college the most. I don't even say they

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encourage them. They expect it. They demand it. It's assumed. It's the default choice. This box is

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already checked for them at birth. If you get no benefit from college and it costs you money

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and four years of otherwise career development, then you shouldn't do it. The big caveat off the

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top is if you want to go into one of those careers that requires a degree, it requires a degree.

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It is what it is. But I will say this, if you don't have a plan for what you want to do with your

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life, don't expect that $200,000 in four years is somehow going to give you a plan. You just need

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to confront the fact that right when you graduate, you're still going to be looking at life with all

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the directions coming from your feet and being like, well, what should I do now? Because I can

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promise you, even if you fell in love with a class, there's no career path that's the class. And so

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it doesn't even mean anything to get good at that. And so once you get into the real world,

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you're like, well, I love biology. Well, unless you're going to be a scientist or you're going to

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be a physician, you're probably going to go into HR. It makes way more sense to actually learn what

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the departments of a business are and what those roles entail on a day-to-day basis and think, well,

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these are the types of things I like. If I like talking to people, I could be a recruiter for a

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company. If I like talking to people, I could be in sales as somebody who employees almost

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a thousand people now between our portfolio companies. We don't care at all what someone's

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degree is. You know what we do care about? Experience. So if I had a four-year college graduate

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who comes out with a philosophy degree and I've got somebody who's been in sales for four years

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and didn't have a degree and they're the same age, who do you think I'm picking for the sales job?

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The guy who's been in sales for four years. Now, if you're not going to college and you've made

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that decision, let's talk about how to actually maximize that path. Number one is that you are

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still prioritizing education. You're just not prioritizing formal education. So you should

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absolutely take money, take time and spend the majority of your day trying to learn. If you play

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video games all day and you just watch Netflix and you smoke weed in your parents' basement,

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you're going to be the seven out of eight who lose. But if you are the type of person who can work all

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day and work on themselves and get experience in the real world, then you can learn at your job all day,

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get paid to learn, take that money, spend it on learning more in the evenings and four years

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from now, you will be so much better equipped than anybody who has graduated four years in a formal

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degree who just knows how to shock and to be a really fast. I will tell you how I've learned

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everything outside of school. I pay people who already have the skill by the hour to learn.

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Now, if I can't afford them, I will see if I can buy a course or a book or watch their videos

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or whatever it is. But if they don't have any of that stuff and you're just saying,

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man, I really want to learn how to do storage units from this guy. Well, then you can ask to pay

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for one hour a week to learn what to do. And I can promise you entrepreneurs and people who have

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skills are always happy to help people who take initiative. There's nothing that fills someone's

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heart more speaking from personal experience of somebody who asks you for advice and then executes

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on it. And as long as you do that, you will have more help than you know what to do with.

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Start one or two steps ahead of where you're at, pay to learn the skills and then take one or

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two steps. Whether you're taking this path or you're taking this path, you have to choose to invest

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in your ability to learn so that you can earn in the future more than you are. Everything that you

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make in the first four years of your career is not what you're trying to get rich on. It's what

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you're trying to get smart on. And the fact that you get paid for it is just bonus. So don't get your

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ego caught up in the fact that you're making $30,000 a year, $40,000 a year or minimum wage.

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I started a minimum wage after having a white collar job for two years and getting above Harvard's

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min score. And so you have to take a slice of humble pie to realize that I might have been really

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good as management consultant, but I didn't know shit about running a gym. And so not coming in

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pretending like you know something that you don't and being willing to accept the fact that someone

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who might be less educated or less polished than you still knows more. Now if you get into the

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Ivy League school, then by all means, like I said, go. But if you don't get into one of those

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schools and you're just into the the middle of the pack that costs too much and doesn't give you

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anything extra, then I think that you need to pull up to the table, put the napkin in your collar

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and take a slice of humble pie and realize that you don't know everything and you have to be

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willing to suck and you also have to be willing to be doubted by your family because they probably

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won't agree with this decision because they're going to think, well this worked for me. My life

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is great and I want the same for you. But remember, they're doing this out of love for you because

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they want you to win. But you just have to explain to them, I want me to win too and I think times

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have changed. When they came out hierarchy and tenure mattered a ton and pedigree whereas today

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because everyone has equal access to information for free on the internet and you can learn more on

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YouTube than you can for most colleges, you don't need what once was required. So big picture,

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you don't need to stress, you're going to win either way if you're a winner. This will probably

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just get you there faster with less debt. On the flip side, if you are born in a bad zip code,

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you have a family that the majority of them has not gone to school or any kind of formal education

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and you don't saddle your family or yourself with debt in order to go to school, it almost always

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makes sense to go to school because all you're doing is you're getting a different network of people,

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you will then change the trajectory of your progeny, your family tree that comes after you

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and all you do is you start four years later and again, you have all the earning potential

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benefits of going and getting a bachelor's degree but without all the costs and you've got a real

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value at from college where somebody who started with an advantage doesn't and so in that sense,

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it absolutely does make sense to do that. I'm going to as many credits as I can and I'm doing that

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so I can meet as many people as humanly possible. All right, so that's where you sign for the social

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clubs, sign for the stories and fraternities, go to all the things that you can, your luck surface

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area will increase with the amount of people that you expose yourself to and will also introduce

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you to a lot of diversity of opinion and if you're going to college because we want to change

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your environment and change what you compare yourself to, then the best thing to do is get exposed

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to a lot of different things and if you find yourself in a position where you have a hard time

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not partying as much, not to say that you can't party, have fun but if you're slacking at school,

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you're paying to go to school, it is your job to learn and you need to treat it like that.

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You're paying, not even getting paid, you're paying $1,000 a week to get educated and you're

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going to have to make up that $1,000 later on with interest and so you better fucking learn

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something while you're there and so the idea of the fifth year senior and taking 12 credits

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a semester, the bare minimum required to be a full-time student, what a joke. Take 18, take 21

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credits and do it in four years, you can graduate with a double degree, I just graduated in three,

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I cut a year off, right? If you can go to summer school you can also save money and you can still

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get the same benefits and so you can graduate in two years or three years if you absolutely hustle

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your ass off because you are a professional student, act like one. The TLDR is in either of these paths

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you are choosing to learn, not earn. The money goes in different directions but that is the objective

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and in both of these career paths objective number one is being a professional and you're either

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being a professional student or you're being a professional student that just happens to get paid for

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but in either situation learning comes above everything else. The side benefits are that you'll

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meet a few more people in your party a little harder. The side benefits here that you're not going to

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go in debt and you're going to get paid to do it. I want you to know that I am more impartial than

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probably anyone else in your life and I say that because I don't know and I don't know you and I

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don't know anyone else in your life. Now they will get status based on their friend group who are

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older or might not understand stuff like this and so they want you to do that because one it probably

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comes from a good place but two because they're afraid of their downside of what if you become a

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failure but by the way you can become a failure if you go to college too. So the one thing that you

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can do to guarantee this is that you have to decide for yourself number one and number two is that

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either of these paths is education and you have to understand that you're not getting into the

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workforce to go make money. You're getting in the workforce to learn better more relevant skills

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and just happen to get paid for it as long as you keep that clear and that you're going to stay

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disciplined about it because you're not going to be more necessarily disciplined when there's

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tons of naked girls and parties around you and some of you are like I'm sold on college by that

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alone I get it but I promise there's plenty of time for buff.