Do you like quotes?

Almost every night for the past year, I've read through a few hundred quotes before falling asleep on an iPhone app called "55,000 quotes".  Throughout this time, I've recorded all of my favorite ones  figured I'd share them:


"Confidence is the feeling we have before knowing all the facts." -Unknown

"'Tis wisdom sometimes to seem a fool." -Unknown

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." -Aristotle

"What is life?  A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions." -Letitia Landon

"He who fears death has already lost the life he covets." -Cato The Censor

"Lords and fools speak freely." -Unknown

"Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength." -William Hazlitt

"The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring." -Carl Sandburg

"Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation." -Eugene Debs

"Consistency is the bugbear that frightens little minds." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." -Bernard Berenson

"As soft wax is apt to take the stamp of the seal, so are the minds of young children to receive the instruction imprinted on them." -Plutarch

"A wonderful discovery, psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex." -S. N. Behrman

"An extrovert is someone who is in love with their own reflection. An introvert is someone who is afraid of their own shadow." -Unknown

"A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him." -Elmer G. Letterman

"So long as lust (whether of the world or flesh) smells sweet in our nostrils, so long we are loathesome to God." -Charles Caleb Colton

"For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him." -Thucydides

"Bonaparte asked Mme. de Stael in what manner he could best promote the happiness of France.  Her reply is full of political wisdom.  She said, 'Instruct the mothers of the French people.'." -Daniel Webster

"He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when sentence was about to be pronounced pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan." -Abraham Lincoln

"When you praise someone you call yourself his equal." -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes." -Mary Worley Montagu

"Action is the real measure of intelligence." -Napoleon Hill

"One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life." -Napoleon Hill

"When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve." -Napoleon Hill

"Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing." -Napoleon Hill

"Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel." -Napoleon Hill

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed." -Napoleon Hill

"Men's conversation is like their life. [Lat., Talis hominibus est oratio qualis vita.]." -Seneca

"The articulate voice is more distracting than mere noise." -Seneca

"Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember." -Seneca

"He who begs timidly courts a refusal. [Lat., Qui timide rogat, Docet negare.]." -Seneca

"A warrior feeds his body well; he trains it; works on it. Where he lacks knowledge, he studies. But above all he must believe. He must believe in his strength of will, of purpose, of heart and soul." -David Gemmell

"He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads." -Charles Caleb Colton

"Before complaining that you are a slave to another, be sure that you are not a slave to self. Look within;...You will find there, perchance, slavish thoughts, slavish desires, and in your daily life and conduct slavish habits. Conquer these; cease to be a slave to self, and no man will have the power to enslave you." -James Allen

"Action is the foundational key to all success." -Pablo Picasso

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary." -Pablo Picasso

"Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody." -Eubie Blake

"Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." -Dale Carnegie

"Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself." -Dale Carnegie

"Are you bored with life?  Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours." -Dale Carnegie

"For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life." -Dale Carnegie

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming more interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you." -Dale Carnegie

"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep." -Dale Carnegie

"A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine." -Proverb

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease." -Thomas Alva Edison

"A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree." -Spike Milligan

"A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport." -Pierre De Coubertin

"Baseball hasn't been the national pastime for many years now - no sport is. The national pastime, like it or not, is watching television." -Bob Greene

"I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself." -Connie Mack

"Practice as if you are the worst, perform as if you are the best." -Unknown

"Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing:  no passion is excited and the time is filled up.  I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about." -Samuel Johnson

"Do well the little things now; so shall great things come to thee by and by asking to be done." -Unknown

"No really great man ever thought himself so." -William Hazlitt

"The open mind never acts:  when we have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still. . . must close our minds for the moment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions." -George Bernard Shaw

"A patent ambiguity cannot be cleared up by extrinsic evidence." -Legal Maxim

"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"If thou hast a loitering servant, send him of thy errand just before his dinner." -Thomas Fuller

"By committing foolish acts, one learns wisdom." -Unknown

"When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy." -Salman Rushdie

"With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves." -Eric Hoffer

"The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all." -Edward De Bono

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged." -Thomas Alva Edison

"There is far more opportunity than there is ability." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning." -Thomas Alva Edison

"In your thirst for knowledge, be sure not to drown in all the information." -Anthony J. D'angelo

"A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty." -Seneca

"Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In a just cause it is right to be confident." -Sophocles

"Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The March sunne raises but dissolves not." -George Herbert

"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror." -Ken S. Keyes Jr.

"Do not think of how big the universe is, it will merely hurt your head." -Buddha

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." -H. G. Wells

"In abundance prepare for scarcity." -Mencius

"Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about." -Tori Amos

"Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two." -Oscar Wilde

"Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman." -Ludwig Van Beethoven

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds." -R. D. Laing

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had." -Eric Schmidt

"The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets." -John D. Rockefeller

"When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people." -Mark Twain

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering." -Robert Frost

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -Albert Einstein

"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)." -Bible

"If you don't have a plan for yourself, you'll be part of someone else's." -American Proverb

"Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now." -Alan Lakein

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." -Anatole France

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach." -Aldous Huxley

"Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something." -Aldous Huxley

"The great end of life is not knowledge but action." -Aldous Huxley

"It (LSD) opened my eyes. We only use on-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world if the politicians would take LSD. There wouldn't be any more war or poverty or famine." -Paul Mccartney

"Several excuses are always less convincing than one." -Aldous Huxley

"As a general thing we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." -Edward Gibbon

"Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius." -George Bernard Shaw

"Everybody's a genius, it's just a matter of whether you love yourself enough to admit it to yourself and fly with whatever your area of genius is." -Orlando Mcguire

"Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't." -Rufus Wainwright

"Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It's growth - mental, financial, you name it." -Harold S. Geneen

"Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history." -Dr. Carl Sagan

"Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself." -Louis L'amour

"By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name." -Plato

"Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't." -Pete Seeger

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!." -Thomas Alva Edison

"We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Great ideas originate in the muscles." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on." -Thomas Alva Edison

"The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." -Thomas Alva Edison

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

"Don't confuse the art of the possible with the art of the profitable." -David Tansley

"If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner." -Omar Bradley

"In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness." -Marshall Mcluhan

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." -Albert Einstein

"Technology does not run an enterprise, relationships do." -Patricia Fripp

"Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge." -Daniel J. Boorstin

"Try this. At a dinner party sometime, kick off the conversation with: 'I believe that the most important objective for every human being is to be right.' Then sit back and watch the fireworks." -Robert White

"In life, as in chess, forethought wins." -Charles Buxton

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything." -Win Borden

"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." -Nikola Tesla

"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything." -Nikola Tesla

"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane." -Nikola Tesla

"Knowledge is only potential power." -Napoleon Hill

"He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"History is but a fable agreed upon." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Victory belongs to the most persevering." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -Theodore Roosevelt

"A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks." -Oscar Wilde

"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more." -Mark Twain

"I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness." -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else." -Lyndon B. Johnson

"Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information." -Mark Twain

"Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words." -Bible

"One of the most important ingredients in a recipe for speech-making is plenty of shortening." -Unknown

"It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference." -Paul Bryant

"You are the only person on earth who can use your ability." -Zig Ziglar

"A degree is not an education, and the confusion on this point is perhaps the gravest weakness in American thinking about education." -Unknown

"A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching." -A. Bartlett Giamatti

"An education is what you have left after you have forgotten all of the course content." -Unknown

"Education is a lifelong experience. Experience is a lifelong education. Education plus experience equals expertise." -Michael Bugeja

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." -Oscar Wilde

"Education is going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty." -Unknown

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action." -Anthony Robbins

"Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." -Epicurus

"A writer's problem does not change. It is always how to write truly and having found out what is true to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it." -Ernest Hemingway

"The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People weren't always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself." -Ernest Hemingway

"To write a best-seller, write to scratch your own itch."
-Tim Ferriss

Too Long, Didn't Read. (How to get anyone to listen to you.)

How many times have you seen someone's long-winded post on YouTube or Facebook get shut down by the four letter acronym "TL;DR" (Too Long; Didn't Read), only because they couldn't limit their rant to its most concise version.

TLDR, is a great comeback in online chatrooms and threads. 

"Too long; didn't read?!?! But.. I put so much time and thought into this!! I must be heard!"

No, you won't.

The reason is because the writer, in this case, created a product that had too much cognitive overhead (how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at) for the reader to consume.

Conversely, the person that posted "TLDR" is so effective because he neutralizes the potency of the raving writer by remaining 100% ignorant to their efforts- he also stays aligned with his own critique by delivering his message succinctly.  TLDR is a stinging rebuttal that delivers with minimal effort and maximum effectiveness.

Parenthetically, TLDR might be a sign of our diminished leisure time, massive amounts of information continuously thrown our way, or maybe just our attention spans simply getting shorter. 

In any case, Too Long; Didn't Read is a feeling we all get.

 Its the recipe that calls for 2 hours of cooking and 25 ingredients, the iTunes contract that no one reads, the LinkedIn request from someone you don't know asking for something, the website with 100 buttons and links. 

It is all too much a hassle. It is unwanted work. It is a barrier. So we skip or skim - and for good reason! 

Your time is valuable. 

The gains from saving our precious time very much outweighs the likelihood that something negatively affects us as a result of skimming or ignoring. 

We are likely to skip or skim something, even when its important, because the task has too much cognitive overhead.

If the process of understanding becomes too difficult or complex, we are likely to reject it. Its the difference between Yahoo and Google. Microsoft and Apple. 

Less is more.

 Being too thoroughly informative from the start can create a mountain-like barrier between the information and its reader...Not only will they not read the whole thing, they won't want to. This applies to anything that displays some kind of cognitive overhead.

The problem with trying to explain EVERYTHING or showing too much of the work-to-be-done is that it discourages folks, and puts space between them and the tremendous value they could capture. 

So the idea is that in communication, complexity = bad, and simplicity = good. So how do you make that oh-so-simple truth work for you? 

In delivering a message the quicker you can make a meaningful connection, the better off you'll be. And for some reason, people over-complicate the process, making it look like WORK for the person they're reaching out to. So how do you make this EASY for them to want to help you?

Here are some tricks to capturing attention:

1) Leading with Value.

Often times there is a chasm between you or your idea the person whose attention you require. You need to fill that chasm so that the person can cross it to you, and vice versa.  Trust is one way to bridge that gap, and a great way to engender trust is to lead with value. I learned this valuable lesson from my friend and self proclaimed life-long learner Scott Britton, who says,

"Leading with value is a signal that you are going to provide value to their life. It becomes an interchange vs. pure take interaction." 

Offer them something, or even introduce them to someone or something that would interest them first, before offering what you want to convey.

I saw first hand that leading with value is incredibly effective and is something you can be very creative with. Just imagine handing someone a gift, and then asking them a question. Unless you are leading with value, you are probably as off-putting as one of those people with clipboards on the sidewalk asking for your pledge. Always lead with value if you can in any communicative scenerio - its the reason this posting's title is "how to get anyone to listen to you", not "cognitive overhead and their effect on jobs-to-be-done". 

2) Eliminate barriers.

Barriers = friction. A few small things can be enough for someone to not listen to your message. A barrier can be something as simple as a person having to dial your number, or even them having a thought that this will be work, or worse, a waste of time. Eliminate those. Anything that is a pain, get rid of it.

When someone sends me the name of a song I should look up, there is a 10% chnace I'll look it up...but if they send me the link to the youtube page with that song, I'll likely listen. 

3) Keep your message simple, but meaningful.

It's much easier to say "software is eating the world", as Marc Andreessen famously put it, than to elaborate on every nuance of a coming technological singularity. We are often tempted to over-explain so that people understand.

 If there are 5 important things you have to say, pick just one. Although YOU know that they are all very important, the listener doesn't care. Think of your ideas like meals, you can't serve the person your 5 best meals at once. Hook them with just one, and they'll be coming back for more.

If you absolutely must explain everything, make sure you take time after each major point to get their thoughts. This is like a drink of water during a marathon...people are dying to state their opinions (look at Twitter)...if you suppress that natural urge, they will likely shut off to what you have to say.

This last part is probably the hardest thing to do, but remember that you will have time only if you are willing to take time.

Hopefully you enjoyed this post on cognitive overhead and it wasn't so long that you didn't read it. 

Quotes relating to this entry:

"Simplicity is the ultimate elegance" -Steve Jobs, Minimalist pioneer

"Several Excuses are always less convincing than one." -Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and Doors of Perception

"Software is eating the world." -statement of simplicity by Marc Andreessen 

"Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler" -Albert Einstein

Excuse any typos, as this was done in a rush and on my phone.

Get to Career/Market like a Tech Startup

It is pretty discouraging how few jobs are available for today's promising college grads. So why is it that employers view graduates as liabilities before assets? And more importantly, why didn't those graduates learn what they needed in order to be placed in these open and available jobs?

I believe the problem boils down to the difficulty of "validating your career-assumptions", aka discovering what you are both good at and interested in, that also has value...while in college.

After graduation, many students find out that they want to get involved in a field that has no relation to their major. This is a tricky problem because although college offers you time to think about what you want to do, it is not designed for you to test out what that thing may be. There are only so many times you can change your major before it becomes impossible to graduate on time, resulting in an added cost that is hard to swallow. Typically, students don't switch majors more than once - because of this cost associated with being indecisive.

Under the current educational model, a student must go out of their way to determine what practical career path is fitting for them, and then align their education to that, if that is even possible.

However, there is hope! One way to make your career decision much easier is to view yourself as the eventual product of a tech startup.

Just as startups have to design a product that will have the highest likelihood of customer fit, scalability, and value, you can do the same for yourself. For indecisive students that want to achieve career-fit right out of college, they should consider the following:

What industry is valuable?: For the sake of your future self, try to be aware of which industries create and capture a lot of value. This is a good starting point for both picking a major or, more importantly, what to be active in outside of your college curriculum. Aligning your interests with something valuable is a great thing to do, especially if you're able to discover what you are passionate about within these parameters.

Netscape founder and Venture Capital icon, Marc Andreessen, has this to say about finding the right market:

"I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure.
In a great market -- a market with lots of real potential customers -- the market pulls product out of the startup. The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along. The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product.
In short, customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is to actually answer the phone and respond to all the emails from people who want to buy."


Life sounds pretty good for the product of that market, huh? Wouldn't it be nice for employers and others to be knocking down your doors because you are in the right market, and able to do a job that is in high demand and limited supply? The first step to being a valuable product is to choose the right market.


Understanding what others are not doing: When it comes to becoming educated and presenting a unique value proposition to employers (which should eventually be one in the same), this seems to be vitally important. Note: You will probably not be valued simply by being a unique candidate. More likely, the skills you acquire will ideally be in alignment with the needs of firm you are applying to - since you have sought after these skills out of your own interest and passion. This makes you unique because you have become specifically valuable for that position. Firms want to know how you will add value to their firm in the short and long-term, and if you have been acquiring skills that translate well, it makes their hiring decision much easier.
So for example: Students may find that being a sociology major might be a hurdle to get over if your  newly-desired field of interest is tech. However, you can discover or create a role where you will add a hard skill (programming) to the soft skill (sociology) you have learned in college that can create and capture value beyond learning just the hard or soft skill. In this case you may have found an intersection that makes you both unique and highly valuable.

Facebook-backer, Peter Thiel, has this to say about competition and differentiating yourself:

"Too often, we seem to forget that it’s genuine accomplishment we’re after, and we just train people to compete forever. But that does everyone a great disservice if what’s theoretically optimal is to manage to stop competing, i.e. to become a monopoly and enjoy success."



What can you do (to get closer to career/market fit)?: The reason this question is so powerful is because it doesn't ask a probabilistically, like, "What are my chances of getting a job after college?".
That is limiting for obvious reasons.

Asking what you can do now puts the power in your hands with the information you currently have. The question also requires reverse-engineering steps to bring fitting employment closer to you:

You want to work at one of the few successful tech-based venture capital firms in the United States? Well ask yourself - will an undergrad degree in economics suffice, or will it take some additional skills and expertise? If so, what will it take to get that? And then what will it take to get THAT? Always assume graduating college alone will not suffice.

You may discover that the field that you originally thought was great actually offers a terrible lifestyle. This is something that you want to uncover repeatedly by "validatating your assumptions". The key to that is to quickly gather as much real-world data and experience as possible to allow for pivoting your career track.

Remember, even if you don't end up doing something you set out for, it will probably be because you found something better along the way. A majority of start-ups drastically change their original business model or product,  so why wouldn't it be normal if you went through a few iterative stages yourself. It's always better to find this out when you are 22 than when you're 32.


To anyone concerned about their future: please put education in your own hands, because the only person that can truly help you, is yourself. Be curiosity-driven, be passionate, and blaze your own trail.

Trust that you are smart enough to figure it out for yourself.

LinkedIn Profilelinkedin.com/pub/patrick-stanley/12/548/363

My TED Talk: http://tedxgramercy.jit.su/speakers

     

The New Higher Education Paradox

I’d like you, for a moment, to take yourself back to your high school days. Recreate in your mind what it was like, even down to the smell. Okay, maybe not the smell... but picture this:

You are sifting through university pamphlets, or maybe even perusing college websites in the guidance counselor’s office. Your excitement builds as you happily daydream about being free from mom and dad, meeting new people, and even learning a thing or two.

While meeting with your guidance counselor, you may recall being advised on selecting which colleges to apply. It is likely that the one major piece of advice that they extolled was “apply to a few matches, a reach, and a safety school”.



Easy enough, right?


Well, not anymore. 
Not often is it considered how you plan on paying for this education after you’ve graduated or whether you should even attend a physical college at all. Had your guidance counselor done specific research tailored for you on the job market or whether there will even be jobs that even exist for intended major after graduation? Unlikely. 


So to begin, here are a few statistics about typical four-year colleges and student loan debt:

• National student loan debt has reached one Trillion dollars.
• College tuition has increased at double the rate of inflation for the past 30 years. (Education is 4x more expensive than in 1980)
• There are 30% more graduates living at home after college than there were only four years ago.
• If you have a child now, the future cost of just ONE year of attending a private university will be roughly $130k.

The essence of this point is that it is time to get off this train and build a new vehicle for education.
We are living at a time where technology & information intersect education & value, what some are calling the “education bubble”. Most bubbles in history occur when something is overvalued and intensely believed in (i.e. real estate, tech in late 90s, etc.). However, the only difference between real estate in 2006 and higher education today is that instead of subprime mortgage lenders, we have college administrators touting the solid investment to be had. The jobs most students enrolling in college are expecting out of college simply do not exist, especially if that student is not pursuing degrees in engineering or pre-medical routes.

What does this mean?

Currently, there is an arbitrage that is simply waiting for a massive breakdown in the system, as we are witnessing just at this moment with skyrocketing student loan debt, unemployment, and future cost of attending university.
What will happen next?

There will soon be a disruption in university education for the benefit of not just our youth, but everyone globally, and it will not be solved by our government .

The present belief that learning at a physical university is the only way to be successful in life will soon become the new paradox:




If we were to continue our path, student loan debt would have a negative multiplier effect on families for generations to come. As college tuition increases and new parents must save up for their children’s education while trying to pay off their own.

As we are living in the information age, where vast knowledge can readily be obtained through simple WiFi access, it doesn’t make much sense to shell out $200k for lectures and a college “experience”. Give me $200k and I will throw you some unforgettable parties.

The only issue there is with internet education is that it does not have, essentially, the snob appeal that going to a private four year institution has given many generations (I’ll admit I remain proud of my Johns Hopkins education, but mainly because it is so difficult to get in, not because I learned $200k worth of knowledge).

So the question is, how do we change this and fix almost every current and future issue we have with the college system?

First, let’s take a look at the current system that is in place:
Employers, and in turn, parents and students deem that a four-year college education is necessary for be considered for most decent to high paying jobs. Equally as important -  the government believes this as well. US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is quoted saying “We have to educate our way to a better economy. The only way we’ll get to there from here is through many more students not just graduating high school but going to college.” he is also quoted saying “Please apply for our financial aid. We want to give you money. There’s lots of money out there for you” . He seems to mean well in his intentions to get everyone educated, but is limiting the solution to traditional routes, and leaving out an opportunity for education innovation. The answer is not saddling our youth with a life-long debt right out of the gates, nor is it to promote everyone to attend an institution which may not provide value to them. To me, this is like trying to open a new door lock with your old keys over and over, when really a change of keys is really what is needed.

Ok, moving on. So essentially, the bachelor’s degree and the school one attended serves potential employers as a risk barometer. The better the college, the lower supposed risk one is taking in hiring the candidate. Currently, the majority of well respected schools are private as well as unjustifiably expensive, while the top public schools usually carry a similar price tag. 

To help poor and middle class students attend many colleges, the government may issue grants or loans to help ease the burden, which in turn signals to those colleges to increase tuition. If the government stops issuing grants and loans, those colleges may decide to keep tuition at this level, as they will still retain the wealthy students that apply every year, leaving the rest to attend a lower costing and subsequently less desirable institution. However, if schools lower tuition, that could risk them losing the prestige by becoming fiscally devalued compared to other top schools.

A Solution to the Madness: A Mass Shift in Perspective 

The reason most Americans will not stop going to college, no matter the price is because this system is in place and the snob value of attending is still relevant. We as music listeners didn’t go straight from CDs to MP3s, did we? The same transition and weaning will occur in education. The change will be gradual, and we needed it a decade ago.

This change will be achieved steadily by offering accredited and comprehensive online classes on a platform taught by world-class professors while giving students the option of pro-rating the rest of the credits. The professor teaching the online class can receive royalties from the larger amount of people signing up for the online class than would attend the class in person. Also, depending on the design of class, like Stanford’s online Computer Programming and Artificial Intelligence courses, the institution can make a tremendous amount of money on the back-end by placing the top students in jobs once they finish. Not to mention many of these courses could be tracked by analytics and even be optionally transparent in displaying students progress and performance. By lowering the cost and providing to many, we will have solved one major issue of scarcity and price barrier, when educating our youth. This serves as a real leveled playing field.


It is also very important to initiate this trend starting with the top institutions. Once you’ve enabled the world’s best professors with an accredited global teaching platform that is recognized by other top institutions, others will have no choice but to follow suit.

In order to make a systemic change in the university system, we also must be able to recognize where universities have a right to charge a premium. This would be in the use of labs, dorms, and proctoring of tests, all of which contribute and facilitate the notion of online learning. Beyond these amenities and environments, there must be the option for students to take as many as half of their college courses online, which could initially cut down student loan borrowing by 30%. Eventually, this could lead to 80-100% of courses to be digital, leaving college campuses to serve as a place for auxiliary & physical learning, an incubator for an academic environment, and a physical place to proctor tests.



After this initial quantum leap, when the idea of taking college credits online from top institutions (Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.) becomes more naturally accepted, we will see more of a transition from classroom to web. But I guarantee you this, it all won’t happen in one fell swoop. The technology of world-class online learning must be structured so that the universities can see that it will be beneficial for them in showcasing their talent as well as padding their bottom lines. The top universities are perfect place to start this movement, because they will see the most benefit, all the while lowering their tuition to attend, thus attracting the best and brightest because of it. Colleges all across the country will see this trend and have to adapt to this “elite” new way of learning. To break this down simply: You tend to feel stupid standing up at a sporting event or concert, when the people in front of you are sitting comfortably with an equally good view, but if they are to stand, then you too must stand as well. This is how I view colleges in America. Once we show the top schools, who are “sitting courtside”, that the view is pretty damn good and even more comfortable when seated, it allows for other bloated institutions to do the same thing.




I believe the time is now to adapt by using technology to fix some of our most pressing issues in America. Rather than sending our youth into a lifetime of indentured servitude, let’s start by developing effective and affordable ways of getting a college degree.


Check out this NYTimes article for some more info on the current student loan debt crisis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html?pagewanted=all