I could get banished from higher education forever because I’m revealing these lies, but helping you to know the truth is worth the risk. Like most people, I sadly believed these lies while I was going to school. Now that I’m a professor and have learned the truth, I reveal them to all of my college students (usually at the top of my lungs), and now to the world with this article.
Lie #1 – “Get good grades so that you can get a good job and be successful someday.”
This lie starts in kindergarten. We are led to believe that there really is a correlation between our grades in school and how financially successful we will be in the future. In reality, there is no such correlation.
Did you know the average college grade point average (GPA) of millionaires is about a 2.9? That’s right, it’s a C+ average. And that includes the 20% of millionaires who are doctors and lawyers who were required to get amazing grades to be a part of their program. They help bring the average up to the C+.
Some people think it’s sad that millionaires’ GPA’s are so…average. It’s not sad. It’s reality. Would you cry about an average college GPA if you had millions of dollars? Who cares about this anyway? Knowing this truth brings hope to a lot of people, not only to the students who don’t have amazing grades and think they’re doomed to fail, but to everyone desiring financial success.
I’m not advocating that people should stop caring about their college grades. I strongly believe that everyone should strive to do their absolute best. I just hope teachers will stop perpetuating the myth that a student’s GPA is a predictor of their future financial success, because it’s not.
Lie #2 – “High-stakes test scores (GRE, ACT, SAT, etc.) will determine your future success.”
The answer to this myth is similar to the previous one. There is no correlation between the grades received on high-stakes tests and future financial success in life. Anyone can become financially successful regardless of their test scores. Becoming wealthy has less to do with academic intelligence than we are led to believe. Which bring me to the next lie.
Lie #3 – “The only intelligence is academic intelligence, which is essential to becoming wealthy.”
This lie makes me angry because a lot of people believe that being smart in school is the only way to be intelligent or successful. When I was in high school, I didn’t give a rip about my grades. I was too involved in what I was really passionate about (writing songs) that I became the king of ignoring teachers during class while I used my gift of creativity, vision, and imagination.
When you look at what it takes to become successful in life, it does take some intelligence. However, there are different types of intelligence. Academic intelligence in required for people to excel in certain careers such as becoming a Doctor, Professor, Lawyer, or other scholarly professional. However, most people will not become scholarly professionals.
So what intelligence does it take to succeed in the other 90+ percent of careers that don’t require academic honors in order to succeed? Creative intelligence is almost ignored in school, but is far more important in a world of business and real-life problems than being able to spout off answers to certain questions correctly in school.
Being able to brainstorm and work creatively with other people to develop new approaches to solve problems and take advantage of possible opportunities is far more valuable in business than a robot who knows a meaningless fact that they learned in school. Being able to creatively negotiate for win/win outcomes is worth more to me than a person with good memorization skills and can point to Bangladesh on a map (no offense if you’re a Bangladeshi).
Creative intelligence should get more credit than it does. For all of us who hated school or who were bored out of our minds in the classroom, for those of us with imaginations and creative visions of our future, it just might be that type of creative intelligence that will get you there.
Lie #4 – “To succeed, you should learn to think like everyone else.”
If you think like everyone else then won’t you do what everyone else does and therefore turn out like everyone else? And who wants to be like everyone else? We should encourage students to think outside the box, to challenge the norm, to follow the road less traveled, the road that requires a lifestyle based on principles that ultimately produces greater success.
If we do things and see things like everyone else, then we will always get the same results as everyone else. We should live differently if we want more rewarding results than the average.
Lie #5 – “You can get a stable career by working for a stable company.”
The only thing that makes us “stable” is being marketable. Being marketable means that we can produce in a way that other people want us around because of what we can produce. If we produce on our own and people pay us directly, we are self employed. If someone else hires us to produce, then we are employees. Employees are fired every day for a host of good and bad reasons.
We should learn in school that people who develop highly desired skills and knowledge can always make money no matter where they go. They can produce in a way that many people desire them for what they can do. Being highly marketable because of what you can do/produce is the only stability anyone has.
Lie #6 – “Going to a top ranking school is the silver bullet to future success.”
Going to an expensive ivy league school will not cause anyone to become successful. Although many gifted and talented people end up going to top ranking schools, there is no silver bullet to success other than living a lifestyle based on success principles.
There is an astronomically higher probability of becoming financially successful for people who live by principles like integrity, discipline, good social skills, hard work, seeing opportunities that others don’t see (and being prepared to take advantage of them) than the likelihood that you will be financially successful based solely on which school you attended.
The average millionaire never attended a top ranking school, but the research shows that they do live by success principles.
Lie #7 – “Don’t worry about the cost of college. You can easily pay it back when you graduate.”
First of all, when anyone tells you not to worry about the cost of something, they are selling you something. If you don’t worry about the cost of college, then you either have rich parents, or you are financially insane.
For those who say that it doesn’t matter the cost of school because it is an investment, they don’t understand the difference between a good investment and a good salesman. Cost is ALWAYS part of the investment equation. A good investment includes low risk and a high probability of a valuable future return. Some college degrees can provide a significant future return because they provide you with skills that make you marketable, others are effectively worthless.
I can’t tell you how many students have told me that they are taking out massive loans to get virtually worthless degrees. I think most parents fail to tell their children that not everyone finishes college once they start. Student loans don’t just disappear if you drop out of school. If you do finish, there is no guarantee that you are going to make any money to pay back loans. It’s easy to sign up for student loans, but it’s a long battle of blood, sweat, and tears to get out of debt.
Everyone should care about the cost of a degree because that is part of the equation. Is the future value of this (marketable) degree worth the price the school is asking? Can I increase the future return on my educational investment by reducing the price I pay for school? Can I obtain this degree without any financial bondage (loans) once I graduate?
The price we pay for everything does matter. Those who are financially successful have learned the art of finding screaming deals on all of their investments. Education is in the same boat.
I don’t believe that college is for everyone, but one truth you may be interested in; 90% of millionaires are college graduates. When 90% of the wealthiest group of people engage in similar behavior, people should pay attention if they want the same results.
How many of these lies were you taught? Which one do you feel causes the most damage? Please feel free to leave your comments.
Originally published on Likedin, reposted with permission from the author.
Jeffrey Scott Wallace is an Investor, and Professor of personal finance and personal development at Snow College. Feel free to contact him at [email protected].
Yes! While in grade-high school, I felt like the dumb person of the class. My grades were usually A’s & B’s, but not because I actually learned something. As long as we could memorize things for a certain amount of time, pass the test, & forget (for the most part) what we memorized so we could take in the next bit of info to go in one ear & out the other, until we passed the next test & so on, it was “easy” to fake smart & get good grades, though most of my notes are covered in doodles while I was being bored out of my mind. I didn’t truly learn things because they weren’t taught in a way that made me WANT to learn. Similar to you, I spent my time on writing songs. Other times, I was drawing on my “notes.” I was the “band geek,” dragging 5 instruments to & from school by 8th grade, singing in choir & being in 3-4 other music classes, having 10 musical instruments, most of which I picked up & learned to play on my own time, & my voice by my senior year of high school. However, no one really cared about that success because I was so focused on art & music classes that I barely graduated with the required credits.
It wasn’t until I went to Snow College & took Jeff Wallace’s Human Development & Personal & Consumer Management classes, that I actually had a desire to learn something other than art styles & music theory. It wasn’t until a professor with fake glasses & a sense of humor came in & told it like it was, that school & knowledge finally mattered to me.
As for student loans, that one really bugs me. I had a roommate who wasn’t shy about getting student loans & then, when a class was “too difficult” (rather, too much work for laziness), she would give up & couldn’t care less because the class was paid for & she could just re-take it later (until those loans continued to build up).
On the other hand, my sister determined, when she went to college, that she would not have debt from school. There were times that my parents helped her out & she paid them back later, but she now has a master’s in accounting & is debt-free, helping to put my brother-in-law through med school to become a physician’s assistant. I saw her accomplishments, compared them to my roommate, & decided that if I could help it, I wasn’t going to get stuck with student loans. How grateful I am for that decision because after my second semester of college, chronic illness I hadn’t known about specifically made me physically unable to work or go to school. My parents were great to help me pay through my second semester so that while unable to work, I wouldn’t have to worry about debt.
Basically, among all my blabbering, I totally agree with all that was pointed out. Jeff Wallace is a wise person & good on him for telling it like it is! And I can attest to the fact that he would “reveal them to all of [his] college students (usually at the top of [his] lungs)!
I don’t teach any of these to my students and haven’t at any time during my 13 years as a teacher. I make a point of telling them that grades aren’t an indicator of learning. So many of them are just concerned about their G.P.A. and not about learning. One of my biggest pushes is fort students to find out how they best learn for themselves. Metacognition is what will lead them to any success in life.
There is much truth to this. However, as a professor of nursing, I have to say that numbers 1 and 2 are not true for nursing majors. It may also be true for other highly competetive programs. I cannot speak for all, but most programs will not even accept an application from a student with a GPA less than 3.0. As for the testing, all nurses must pass NCLEX exam to be able to have a license in the USA. It is a very difficult test with a failure rate of about 20%. Considering the average GPA of a nurse graduate is about 3.75, poor testing skill is not an option.