7 ms·
I don't know. Basically this means more or less that on the day your son (or daughter) becomes 18 you put on the table 2,000x100 US$ bills in a few neat stacks
by jaclaz 9y ago
I don't know.
Basically this means more or less that on the day your son (or daughter) becomes 18 you put on the table 2,000x100 US$ bills in a few neat stacks and ask him/her whether he/she likes it better to:
1) Study (hard) for the next 5 years (possibly in a remote city), living with one or more co-students in a tiny apartment and receive - say - some 500-600 bucks each month for petty expenses
OR:
2) get - here and now - all the 200,000 US$ as long as they are used ONLY in expenses related to the building of a new company, but of course with no particular form of control on expenses, as I trust you and you are big enough to make your own decisions.
With rigorously invented numbers (i.e. pure speculation or guessing), I would expect that out of 100 choosing option #1 70 would get after 5 or 6 years studying and a degree (without student debt to hunt them for the rest of their life) a decent, qualified job (and income), 20 a somewhat underpaid job, 5 no stable job/income and 5 (for one reason or the other) something else.
Of those that chose option #2, I would expect that 5 manage to build a "successful" company, 15 a more or less good company (anyway providing enough income to have bills paid and raise a family) and 80 either building a company soon going to Chapter 11/bankrupcy or building no company at all.
The good question would be how many of 18 years old would choose option #1 over #2?
- finolex1 9y agoI daresay the experience of hustling and trying to build a company is a valuable form of education even for the 80 who fail
- jaclaz 9y agoSure, it is a form of education, but - being probably much more pessimist than you are - my invented 80 was including BOTH those that tried (with smart ideas and hard work) but failed AND those that wouldn't even try or try without ideas nor working too much hard for it. I suspect that for the latter ones (how many? maybe 20-30) that wouldn't even be educative at all.
- jccooper 9y agoSure, but what's important from college is not education, but credentials. The credit given for having a failed company on your resume is significantly less than for a BA of any sort.
- nopzor 9y agoI thought the credentials showed that you had completed the (purportedly valuable) education?
- weirdstuff 9y agoThis is less and less the case, as weird as that sounds. I'm finishing my degree not because I'm learning anything, but too many managers (and academics) have point-blank told me they just want to see that I've been "initiated".
- Retra 9y agoIf you're not learning anything, that's your own decision. Paying for education is paying for access. If you're paying for access to people that you choose not to interact with, then that's it's own brand of stupid.
- concede_pluto 9y agoI never met any of our professors of journalism or dance. Everyone at college is paying for a bundle of credentials and access to experts in many unrelated fields, and nobody uses all of it.
- dikdik 9y agoso signals. If you're talented enough you don't need signals, you just provide value. So for many people, acquiring signals is a complete waste of time and money.
- hashkb 9y agoCompared to a rigorous comprehensive education, social development, and near total lack of responsibility, starting a company at 18 is not "good" experience. 18 year olds are idiots (source: was one) and are simply not capable of managing organizations of adult humans.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago> Study (hard) for the next 5 years I don't think colleges in US can be as hard as universities in some european counties. Especially where universities are free. I would be curious to hear if there are some exceptions.
- emodendroket 9y agoI only attended one university but it was quite a lot more rigorous than anything I'd done up to that point in my life.
- vonkale 9y agoIn my country (Finland), government actually pays for studying and universities are free. My experience studying abroad is that actually the curriculum and studying is mostly the same all over the world. I think there might some outliers in the TOP10 universities in the world, but the major differences are in the student population, connections and reputation. I think only maybe 10-20% study really hard anyways. At that point in life most people would have more than 100 usable hours easily, but most of the students do minimal work necessary and do something else.
- sotojuan 9y agoWhat's the point of this comment? It's off topic at best and an excuse to debate about European vs US colleges at worst.
- wyager 9y agoLook up international college rankings. The US is vastly overrepresented in terms of quality of higher education.
- caseysoftware 9y agoQuite often investment is delivered in tranches where a chunk of the funds are delivered at different stages as milestones are met. Just like you don't get all the entire student loans at once, you get them year by year assuming your grades/extracurriculars meet the criteria.
- solatic 9y agoBut it's not like the children of rich parents end up less spoiled just because their inheritances are released to them over time in a trust fund. And would you really want your parents to be your venture capitalists? Your parents may not be focused on getting to a quick exit like most traditional VC investors, but if the whole point of them releasing the money in tranches is because they don't trust your inexperienced judgement, that's just a recipe for your parents second-guessing your every move as a founder. Children need to be able to fail, and quickly and safely recover from that failure - college, with poor freshman year grades and learning to live with less-than-perfect roommates and all the rest, is a much better way to impart that than letting your kids blow through a quarter million dollars with little more to show than a high school diploma at the end of it.
- caseysoftware 9y agoIf you're waiting until they're ~18 to teach them how to fail, YOU have failed. There are hundreds of cheaper, safer, and more responsible ways of doing that long before then.