I've had this article in the moderation queue for a long time without publishing it.  Despite the headline, it's something I've thought a lot about and it's very close to heart.  I was finally motivated to finish it upon watching the speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford. In his speech, he cites dropping out of college as one of the best decisions he ever made.  Obviously, that's not the right decision for everyone and probably 90% of all college dropouts would look back on their dropping out with regret, but I do think there's an important lesson there.



To me, the lesson is not that you should drop out of college, but that you should use the unprecendented freedom and access to resources that you have in college to really experiment and move yourself forward in a more independent and freeform way that your formal classes would ever allow. 



I have long felt that College was a golden opportunity to hatch a business that for many people will be hard to duplicate for years or decades.  For many, the piling on of responsibilities and obligations begins quickly after graduating and there's little or no time for life's experimentation once that begins.  The idea of experimentation and entrepreneurship becomes a lot less viable once you have a car payment, mortgage and family. 



In the nearly 15 years since I graduated, globalization has made that  experimentation even more important.  Most of the jobs that your classes most directly prepare you for are the ones that are more rapidly being outsourced overseas.  The best opportunities today are the ones that rely most heavily on the skills they don't teach:  creativity, entreprenuership, risk taking, friendship and networking.... listening.

These skills are the skills, particuliarly when combined with a strong technical understanding, that are the future for today's graduates. 



Invent, experiment, go out for beers with your fellow students from Bangalore and Beijing.  Ten years from now, you'll give that stuff a lot more credit for your sucess than your knowledge of the material properties of Pig Iron.