These days there’s more debate than ever over the value of a college education. That debate gets even more heated when you ask a college startup founder about the value of their education.
This May I’ll be graduating from University of Michigan after four years of school and a gap year along the way. Having tried, failed, and had some successes building startups throughout my time at college, I have my own unique philosophy on the value of a college degree for a startup founder in 2023. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to maximize the most of your college experience while building innovative startups.
Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room. Should you drop out? A lot of entrepreneurs have decided to preemptively drop out, or not go to college at all.
I think it’s important to understand the context of your dropping out. It’s one thing to drop out once you’ve hit a point where it’s no longer sustainable to scale your startup and go to school. It’s different to say school has little to no value at all, and thus you should inherently drop out.
When I reflect on my college education at arguably the best public school in the country, I certainly have a lot of questions about value delivered. There were classes that I thought were silly, lack of real-world context for things I was learning, and lots of nonsense homework assignments. But what I don’t question is the fact that I met insanely talented people that taught me how to be a better founder, passion pursuer, and leader.
College enabled me to meet some of the most talented young world changers who would in turn become my closest friends. So, is college a really expensive ticket to be surrounded by amazing people? I think at least in part. Even so, I still think college may be worth considering if the school and price align; here’s why.
It is very hard to recreate the serendipitous connectivity with amazing people that college enables. We’ve all been in the awkward networking events and happy hours hosted in major cities across the US. What’s different about college though, is you have instant commonality with everyone on your campus. You’re all studying for those tough midterms, sitting next to each other in class, living in the same buildings, going to the football games together, etc. College enables relationships to be formed in a way that simply is impossible to recreate almost anywhere else.
As long as top colleges continue to attract the best and brightest young talent in the world, I think it will be tough to fully justify founders ignoring our higher ed system. After all, building a killer team with an amazing cofounder is largely the hardest part of building a successful startup. With that being said, where you go to school and how much you spend on it, should certainly be considered.
At the very least, perhaps young founders and entrepreneurs will congregate around and near college campuses, even if they choose to no longer enroll in classes. We’ve already seen this trend play out as of late with founders staying near campus after dropping out.
I recognize my analysis of college’s value prop fails to acknowledge many things. Your financial health certainly plays into it. What kind of business you want to build matters too. Also, all colleges are not equal - some fail to attract top talent entirely.
With top colleges remaining incredible conduits to meet amazing humans striving to change the world, it’s hard to entirely advise aspiring founders to not even consider college. I think it’s worth doing the diligence – worst case scenario you go spend your first year of college living on the campus of your choosing before you enroll and see if you think it’s home to the coolest and most talented people in the world. If it’s not, you either never enroll or look to go elsewhere.
So, let’s assume you do go to college. How do you make the most of your time there? Read our blog post on “Optimizing Your College Founder Experience.”
