The case against college.

Quote from indahook:

If my desk were taking on new traders I would advise they hire a battle hardened soldier or Marine over a college grad. Grads want 6 figs++, company car and free lunch straight away. Honorably discharged veterans want a chair and fair shot to prove themselves.
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That was the point made by myself and others here, viz., trading ability and college haven't much to do with each other..
 
Hey, let's not criticize higher education too much now - it supplies real traders with plenty of fodder-

Dentists, Doctors, LTCM fund managers.... efficient Markets theorists....
 
Quote from Thermactor:

Hamburger University is no joke. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_University
I bet a McDegree from Hamburger University is worth many times more than Lethn's community college certificate of games design. :)
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It's not like you can just apply to Hambuger University. One has to complete quite a few corporate trainings (which earn college credits) in addition to being an on the job manager for quite a few years. It would seem after the commitment one would logically end up owning a store. Don't quote me but I am quite sure that MCD has created more millionaires than any other co.
 
On average, college grads earn more (and also live about 5 years longer). There is no point to cherry pick examples that show otherwise, the numbers don't lie. No one in their right mind would argue that you can't be successful if you don't have a college education (or that you can't live to be 100 :) ), but on average you will earn less than someone that went to college. And more than to offset whatever debt you'll get yourself into. Really, what is so hard to understand about that?

Also, isn't it logical? All things being equal (one's intelligence, background etc), wouldn't a person improve his skills, the ability to think etc by 4 additional years of studying? I've never heard of anyone coming out of college knowing less than they did going in. End of story.

While not true of all people, most that talk down higher education are the ones that don't have it. For those, think about this: if you're just as competent as someone with an MBA or college degree (entirely possible), would you not be further ahead than that person if you had the extra education?
 
On college...

If you are only gifted in academics, get your PhD. If not, go to trade school. Either way, you will make a living.

If you are gifted in academics and trading, get your PhD and then trade. Why? The markets may not last your life through, but your degree will.

If you are only gifted in trading, that's not secure. Strive to finish your PhD or trade school, before you embark on spreadsheet fantasies of compounding returns. Relying solely on trading for your living wreaks of emotional decision-making, and should be avoided at all costs.

If you cannot decipher anything your are gifted in, seek counsel at any cost to make your gift known to you. If your gifts are unknown by the time you are 12, shame on your parents for being lazy in their duty to train you up as a realistic man instead of an idealistic teenager. The burden is then on you as an adult to make this happen, as your parents have failed in this aspect.

Caveat: The first paragraph is written with the assumption that a man can still work hard and make a living (a living wage to support a family) in the West, without special friends in high places, and without working 80 hours per week. Such an assumption is not logical to project onto the future, as the ability of the West to provide such opportunity for its citizens (the pursuit of happiness) has been removed as an option for the average man holding a four-year college degree.
 
Quote from jack hershey:

Its always fun to look back on things and surmise how the many forks in the road could have turned out.

I didn't apply to college but my high school chemistry teacher willed me to take a test to become a Navy ROTC participant which included the money for schooling. The navy applied to college for me.

I ultimately was exceused for going ot college because I was physically unfit. My dad suggested getting a job at a large company and working in many departments and then working my way up. He wasn't interested in paying for college.

So I wrote to the colllege and said I wasn't coming. they wrote back and said I could have a job in the freshmen mess hall. I arrived and wasn't on the list.

For majors and two dgrees later, I took the only professional job I ever had. It lasted 5 years. The college I went to said my education would be obsolet in five years anyway. the company I worke for put me through another collection of courses that got me through theoretical physicis for the most part.

My commissions three years out of school were equal to or less than my retail commissions.

LOL.....

What little decisions that I made were neat to recall?

1. Merit badges.

2. Working my way through college and not acquiring debt while in college.

3. Putting 300 bucks into a trading account and adding half my salary for a couple of years.

4. Trading stocks using their natural cycle (P, V relationship) from the beginning.

5. Doing anything I wanted all my life.

So college was important. All I did most of my life was apply deductive reasoning to problem solving.

I subscribe to Time Magazine but I admit they publish pretty run of the mill reasoning stuff.

I learned that a medical doctor's average income is 12 hours of trading ES with 40 contracts.

By reading a few books, I found out how the mind works and how a person can get equipped to do anything he wants for his whole life. The best out of the ordinary book is Doidge's book. The briefest is: A Compendium of Ways of Knowing (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives).

A person simply grows up and adds a series of strips of knowldge, skills and experience. Each strip is a differentiated usable resource that gives you the inference needed to match with the sensory input of the moment.

One of my strips allows me to trade as if driving a car (driving a car is a strip I have too).

My editroial on the Time article by the Bird lady is that each middle school student should be allowed to learn to trade in First Form (Seventh Grade). Then each child gets a trading account. Soon school and money are divorced and school can be used to build strips of desired knowledge, skills and experience.

Education would become the catalyst for change in the future. Without poorness, a lot of unnecceasry other things dissapear borders, castes, class, have nots, competition, politicing, etc.. More golf, tennis, sailing, travel and entertainment appears. So do families, homes, nice life styles, etc.

95% percent of adults fail at trading. I do not believe that 95% of seventh graders would fail. There is nothing that 95% of seventh graders fail at, as best we know.

I only spent ten years watching students in the 4th and 5th forms learn to trade over 6 or 7 months. I don't know why but they all learned about how the stock market works. They also averaged a 1.23 sigma pre/post shift (on a 6 sigma Gaussian curve) in math aptitude.

Why don't students learn about money and making it? None of your teachers or parents could teach you about money and making it. where you are that is not going to change; there is no way it can be changed in your part of the world. Read the Talon thread as a living proof of how minds do not work when they are not differentiated.

Figure out why you did not use the time you had to differentiate your mind in trading and the many other things your mind prsently does not handle. Search "mindfulness" to find out why you got left out of the intellectual growing up process.

Chicks and cars and watches....LOL.....
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You forgot number six :

6. Move in to my girlfriend's modest house and pretend to trade while she continues to earn a living from productive work.
 
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