Is college REALLY that important?

Oh, and if anyone wants to be my personal business and rei teacher for 30k/year, send me a resume…IVY league grads only!

Is there a reason why a college grad is necessary to teach you? you want to live whimsically and luxuriously…and you still have not made a dime investing. For some reason it is odd how people from “wealthy backgrounds” often value their education less than a middle or lower class citizen. Why is this? Why can’t you figure the information out yourself without a mentor while you are studying. Mark Cuban would read the business books inbetween classes for hours a day. Do you want to get the information easily and pay 30k. I have a feeling you are some lazy person who wants to live a "whimisical’ life without any work involved. I am guessing you do not like college because you have to work hard and you think through real estate yoou are magically going to make millions…

I am in school and can kind of relate. Everything in school will not be interesting. My overall philosophy (I atleast hope) is that there is a small range of intellect. It is how you motivate or use your mind to get good grades. Grades arent about how smart you are, they are about how hard you try. If you can succeed academically then you can succeed at anything in business. I learned in 8th grade that all of the people that say they are smart and do not need to study are the ones that secretly go home (dorm in your case), and study their asses off.

Im not going to college. I figure me getting on this message board and learning is kinda like my college.

Knowledge that comes from education is vital. College doesn’t matter except as an avenue to that. More important than knowledge and education is understanding what that stuff means, and more important than understanding is having the wisdom and sometimes the fortitude to apply it in the right way.

I learn much more on the go than I ever did in the college setting. College was more about getting grades and social life than actually learning and applying anything. But then what can you expect from an Ag. Technology major with a Computer Science minor.

DB

Yes I am a big Kennedy fan, although he has some useless products. You just have to pick the good ones.

Actually to be very successful in REI or any business involves building the propert POWER TEAM…

My team has 3 realtors (1 residental, 1 commerical and 1 foreclosure/rehab specialist), a CPA, lawyer, 2 mortgage brokers, 2 Hard Money Lenders (need to call people for money you can trust), 2 title companies, general contractor, excellent tile guy and painter for small jobs, landscaper, insurance agent and much more

So why are they all important. They bring me deals, anyone of them knows if they find me a deal they will get work or commission from the deal. You become successful by having bright successful people around you. People who will earn off you. College will give you contacts to find these people as will REIA meeting and networking.

Do you think Bill Gates knows it all… NOPE>>.he hires people…ADVISORS to help him…

I think it was Henry Ford who once said. (not to be quoting it) I do not need to know anything as I have 9 guys in the room with me and one of them will know the answer.
He had a power team, that is why corp have board members, CEO, CFO,COO, etc… each has to play a vital role in the success of the corp to grow right.

Goto college to learn and network… Go to REIA meeting for the same thing… Find your power team and build it… Once built the deals will come to you from the agents, CPA , title guys, contractors, etc…

Forget the phrase are you working hard or hardly work…Think are working hard or working smart… In the beginning we work FOR OUR MONEY, in the end OUR MONEY works for US… you want to be ONE OF US…

Andrew

If you learn nothing else in college, you more than likely learned accountability and discipline. This in itself is more than most people possess now a days.

I vote for taking a break. Take two or three years off. Join the military. Figure out what you want to do in life, then, if a college degree is important to achieving your goals, you can always go back.

Staying in an expensive school at your mother’s expense when you don’t plan to do anything with the education is a waste your time and a drain on your mother’s resources.

DAve I have to disagree about taking 2 or 3 yrs off. Going to a state school for less is still fine. Plenty of state colleges are just as good or better for certain degrees. Harvard and Yale are not the best for everything. Just best to goto a school that has a recongizable name to others if you plan to go out and work for someone, especially a large corp one day.

Taking so much time off can be damaging. It does get hard to go back. I took off 1 yr when I got hurt badly and it was hard going back., I was so use to not dealing with homework and studying that when I went back my first semester I ended up dropping 2 classes within 1 month.

Just take a class or 2 but stay active… If anything look at your degree as an accomplishment of starting something and then finishing it.

Also always remember mistakes are learning tools if we remember what we did wrong and how not to do it again.

Also I recommend reading motivational books. Many successful people read at least 15 pages a day of a motivational book as well as try to listen to at least 1hr of CDs a day while in the car. People do not realize the best time to learn is while commutting to work and places.

I dropped out of college and went into real estate for the following reasons.

While in college, I was working at a credit union for IBM employees and had just passed my real estate exam. It just so happened that one of our biggest clients, this engineer, who had a ton of cash in his account was in the process of quitting his job. When asked why, he said that he was going into real estate because his friend who was a broker made more money than him. That was it for me! I dropped out later that year with no regrets. However, I am different than you in that my main passion in life is music so college didn’t really matter to me much as I already knew what made me happy. Real estate was just a way to pay the bills and it was fun. However, here is the reality (from my perspective) in real estate. You have to be extremely independent, good with people and resourceful. As others have mentioned, you have to continue your education in relevant areas (self development, business, economics) I’ve known some extremely intelligent ppl with college degrees who failed in real estate and have known a bunch of other not so intelligent people who ended up being top producers. Unless you know this is what you want to do for sure, you should consider staying in college just to have that backup. Also, I’ve always been on the sales side so I’m only now learning the investing side. While I’ve heard of many no money down deals, it does help to have money to put down so having a good paying day gig can’t hurt. Why not try and invest while you are in college?

Okay, just my two cents…

I look at a college just like any investment. I ask how much money is it going to make me? I looked at how much the job I would get was going to pay. In general the majors that change your title are the only ones worth majoring in. For example if you major in engineering, you are an engineer, if you major in accounting you are an accountant, etc. If you major in English you are not an englisher and you can see it in the pay difference. I also don’t want to overpay for my degree. We hire engineers out of school and we don’t pay engineers from Cornell any more than the engineers from North Carolina State. So the guys with degrees from Cornell overpaid for their degrees.

I majored in engineering and got an MBA so that I could make a high salary. It has no bearing on how I do real estate. I wanted a six figure salary with stock options, a 401k and pension. These things actually work against real estate investing because you can afford a big house on the lake without the headaches that real estate gives you. It gets really hard to motivate my coworkers to do something like this and not just sit a flip channels after work.

But upper middle class people and rich people live in the same neighborhoods, drive the same cars and eat at the same restaurants, you can’t tell the difference between them by looking at them. The difference between them is that an upper middle class person has to work everyday to maintain that lifestyle while a rich person doesn’t. A doctor that makes a lot of money only rents his lifestyle. If he misses much work he will have to move out of the gated neighborhood. I wanted to be rich. I want to wake up in the morning and wonder what the heck am I going to do today?

I fall into the “some college” category…but I make hundreds of thousands per year with my own business. I decided early on I wanted to work for myself. As CEO of my own company, I don’t need a college degree to “do the job”. However I am very educated…I am self educated. I have taken the time to learn about business, finance and other things that have helped me out greatly. BUT…if I were to do it over again…I would have not left in my 2nd year of college and I would of stayed for the entire 4 years just to get it overwith.

Before leaving college I identified 3 careers that were in demand, which could make me an equivalent salary to if I had a degree. At that time (early/mid 90’s) I identified: computers, middle-management and sales. I chose the computer job path. It paid me very well - even more than my wife whom has a masters degree, until I was self employed and on my own.

Who did OK without a college degree (most self employed though!!)?

  • Ted Turner, founder of Turner Broadcasting
  • Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
  • Michael Dell, founder of Dell
  • Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle
  • Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway
  • Susan Lyne, president of ABC Entertainment
  • David Geffen, founder of Geffen Records / co-founder of Dreamworks

BUT AGAIN…I would encourage you to get your 4-year degree. You will have a lot more job options if you get it. It is ideal if you plan on working for someone else, and most people do work for someone else (so did I) unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

Good luck with whatever option you choose!