Lifelong Learning as a Substitute for School
Continuing the thoughts about how schooling interplays with starting companies, I share a story of an awesome entrepreneur, Josh James. This is a story of successfully substituting lifelong learning for school. It’s not something everyone can do, but it’s interesting to see.
Josh James, a college dropout, sold his company Omniture to Adobe for $1.8B. He explains how he uses binge reading to learn new things and to rock other more-degree’d professionals! The segment from 20:50 to 22:20 is the part about reading. The whole lecture is awesome.
In addition to reading books, high-quality resources are available online, such as MIT’s Open Courseware. There are also numerous innovations in the area of disrupting the university teaching model (e.g. see Clayton Christensen’s book).
For those similar to Josh, formal schooling can be over-valued. “Degree-envy” is a silly reason to burn money (often borrowed money) and time.
The point is not to discount an education from an excellent university. Rather, it’s to say that lifelong learning as a substitute for school is more viable than many may think.
What do you do to learn outside of school? How do you see disruption occurring in the university teaching model?