Leading the Revival of Individualism & Self Reliance

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Why Is the Cost of College Tuition Becoming So Pricey?

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There have been several articles written, providing alternatives to the traditional college model. But many do not expand on why these alternatives are so badly needed. One of the many reasons the traditional college route may not be for everyone is its high cost.

Over the last decade, college tuition has risen over 40 percent across the board. With such a drastic increase in tuition, many students have turned to the government to subsidize their education costs. However, with the total amount of American student loan debt now surpassing the total amount of American credit card debt, there can be no denying that there is something seriously wrong with our system of higher education.

While many economists, politicians, and pundits tailor the origins of the higher education crisis to meet whatever ends they are endorsing, there have been multiple opinions offered as to why tuition continues to rise and why student loan debt seems almost impossible to pay off.

Refinery29 once even released a video which claims to explain the tuition hike and student loan debt crisis currently impacting a large portion of the population. However, the video fails to tell the entire story, specifically neglecting to place blame on one of the biggest contributors to the rise of college tuition: the federal government.

The video claims that federal and state funding for higher education has steadily decreased since 2008, which has resulted in rising tuition costs. As colleges attempt to financially survive without the additional government subsidies, they are left with no choice but to raise tuition. However, this claim is completely untrue.

Traditionally, states have spent more on higher education than the federal government. In fact, in the years leading up to 2012, states outspent the federal government by 65 percent when it came to higher education. However, in the last decade, this trend has changed dramatically.

Before explaining why state funding has been outspent by federal funding, it is important to understand the difference between state and federal funding. Traditionally, state funds allocated to higher education purposes go towards supporting specific public institutions, like a state or community college. Federal funding, on the other hand, tends to go directly to the student through Pell Grants or student loans.

According to a report released by the Pew Charitable Trusts in June 2015, federal funding surpassed state funding as the main source of public support for higher education in 2010. This was also the same year when the number of Pell Grants awarded to lower-income students reached an all-time high, amounting to $36 billion.

The Pew Charitable Trust report also takes a closer look at Pell Grant funding in the five years leading up to 2013. Though Refinery29 claims that both federal and state funding began decreasing in 2008, this appears to be incorrect. In actuality, Pell Grants, which are funded through federal subsidies, actually increased by 72 percent since 2008.

Despite the claim that government funding has been dramatically reduced over the years, the actual numbers tell a much different story. As government money continues to flow freely into colleges and universities it is also important to understand why increased subsidies have resulted in higher tuition.

In July of 2015, the Federal Reserve released a report entitled, Credit Supply and the Rise in College Tuition: Evidence from the Expansion in Federal Student Aid Programs, which found that government subsidies were responsible for rising tuition costs. The report states that:

“We find that institutions more exposed to changes in the subsidized federal loan program increased their tuition disproportionately around these policy changes, with a sizable pass-through effect on tuition of about 65 percent. We also find that Pell Grant aid and the unsubsidized federal loan program have pass-through effects on tuition.”

To put it simply, as Cato Institute economist Neal McCluskey did in April 2012:

“The basic problem is simple: Give everyone $100 to pay for higher education and colleges will raise their prices by $100, negating the value of the aid.”

In addition to the report released by the Federal Reserve, in September 2015, Grey Gordon and Aaron Hedlund conducted research for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which also sought to explain the rise in college tuition. In Hedlund and Gordon’s white paper, “Accounting for the Rise in College Tuition,” the duo found that government subsidies were causing tuition to rise, just as the Federal Reserve report showed.

“With all factors present, net tuition increases from $6,100 to $12,559. As column 4 demonstrates, the demand shocks — which consist mostly of changes in financial aid — account for the lion’s share of the higher tuition,” the Gordon and Hedlund paper states.

Though these are not the only inaccuracies presented in Refinery29’s video, they are by far the most concerning. In order to properly address the situation facing America’s higher education system, it is vital that we properly identify the causes that led to our current predicament. Without a clear understanding of why tuition costs continue to rise, we are doomed to continue this perpetual cycle of increased government subsidies resulting in increased tuition, and thus, higher loan amounts being borrowed.

Exponential Growth In Entrepreneurship: #1 Repeal Of Scale Economics

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The economic future looks newly promising because the innovation and economic energy that comes from the free initiative of individuals and small groups is casting off the constraints imposed by big-company bureaucracy and government regulation.

Curt Carlson was President and CEO of SRI International in Silicon Valley from 1998 to 2014. During this time, SRI’s revenue tripled and SRI became recognized as one of the world’s most productive innovation enterprises, having helped create Siri, HDTV, Intuitive Surgical, and many other world-changing innovations. Dr. Carlson helped create over two dozen new companies and has advised ministers and prime ministers around the world on innovation practices and innovation policy. He is currently a member of the scientific advisory boards of the governments of Singapore and Taiwan.

Scale Is A Barrier To Innovation.

In a recent interview with Jeff Saperstein1, he talked about the difficulties big companies and big governments face today in encouraging innovation.

Think about the enormous total resources big companies have. They have brilliant people. What encumbers them is not the people, it is not the technology, but it is really their inability to put together nodes within the company—a small community within a bigger community—that can actually behave this way. At SRI, we created an incubator, which was run by Silicon Valley rules, not run by the $500 million part of our business. They had different rules, metrics, and license to do everything. Running by those local, start-up rules, we were able to issue or create one multibillion-dollar business after another. Most big companies find it impossible to do that.

Managing The Signal To Noise Ratio.

He talked about one of his themes, the “signal to noise ratio” within organizations, and the challenge in focusing on the signal (true information that points towards innovation opportunities) versus noise (bureaucratic rules, politics, infighting, HR, planning and all the other corporate and governmental activities that get in the way of innovative activity). His answer is global interconnectedness of agile and nimble teams of the best players.

Let’s assume a government and an organization remove the noise to enhance innovation. Once you get that in a reasonable position, the big problem is how do you identify those opportunities and assemble a team that can actually solve them? Increasingly, the best talent is all over the world, so increasingly the whole idea is the guy who wins is the guy who pulls together the best team wherever they come from, and actually knows what they are doing, and finds the signal in the noise, and gets out there first. And, if you can do that, you can create a billion-dollar business today.

The Repeal Of Scale Economics.

Historically, scale has been a barrier to entry for new companies and a barrier to innovation. Classical economies of scale resulted from increasing the size of a producing business unit so that costs were spread over a larger unit volume, reducing unit costs and creating an entry barrier to new start-ups. Consultants talked about the experience curve: ascend it by making more and more units, and the accumulated experience and learning of doing so will increase expertise and efficiency and create another barrier to entry.

Large scale companies created another form of barrier to entry by clogging up all the established distribution channels and leaving no room for small companies, small brands and new independent entrants. Big manufacturers, for instance, would buy up all the rights to shelf space at big stores like Walmart, both raising the price of retail distribution and leaving no physical room for the innovative start-ups looking for shelf visibility.

Today, small companies can get their scale from the Internet. They can access world class computing power at marginal unit cost from cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, and can find leading edge analytics and algorithms and open A.I. from similar sources. They can have equal computing power to the largest companies. They can find “supply chain as a service” from a set of vendors who set up, automate and monitor supply chains. And they can sell direct to consumers on their own websites, or on amazon.com or on Alibaba. They can contract with manufacturers who will finance their inventory and ship into the supply chain on demand, reducing downstream storage and warehousing costs to a minimum.

Scale is no longer a barrier to innovation. The result is the creation of new opportunities for the small companies and teams that Curt Carlson describes. They are now unleashed to pump ideas-based innovation into the economy at speed.

More Barriers Are Being Removed.

The repeal of the laws of economies of scale is just one of several convergent economic developments that point to an explosion of individual economic freedom and entrepreneurial innovation. The others include:

Augmentation: The use of A.I., networks and global exchange platforms to augment the capacity of individuals and small teams.

Disintermediation: The elimination of middlemen, institutional bureaucracy and rules, and proprietary infrastructure in order to increase speed, lower cost and reinforce security through peer-to-peer exchange on the blockchain.

Interconnectedness: The connections made possible by the internet and new connection and communication technologies makes every individual smarter and actually creates, in and of itself, an innovation ecosystem of unpredictable yet limitless productivity.

Well be writing about these convergent developments in future posts.

 

1 In The Interconnected Individual: Seizing Opportunity in the Era of AI, Platforms, Apps, and Global Exchanges; Business Expert Press, To be released July 2018

 

On The Road To Individualism, Choose Networks Over Hierarchies.

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Who are we up against? We seek a spontaneous order society in which we each make our own efforts to serve others, and accept and learn from the decisions of the marketplace as to the value of those efforts. We respond to both the negative and positive feedback to refine our service offer and we commit to continuous improvement. Who is against us?

Firstly, government. We have evolved in our society to the point where government exists to repress the efforts of individuals. The reason is that it seeks out large special interest groups it can recruit as support by providing them special privileges and protection from innovation and competition. Innovation comes from individuals with new ideas. Government hates new ideas.

Within the general heading of government, we can include the elected legislators who formulate the code of conduct for the bureaucrats of the executive branch, and the bureaucrats themselves who both expand and act upon the rule-weaponry the legislators give them, and the judiciary who protect the entire structure. We can meet these enemies of individualism at the federal, state and local level.

We also must never forget the military. They have all the guns, and their powers of repression are unlimited.

The special interest groups that the government assembles against are led by the education industry, who run the propaganda mills to embed a spirit of dependency into the young generation before they are mature enough to for their own opinions. Closely following are the other unionized industries who engineer redistributive transfer schemes from the innovative and productive parts of the economic system.

We must also include the crony sectors who utilize proximity to government and integration of purpose to further their own sectional interests at our expense: the financial sector, the media sector, the industrial sectors that supply hardware and services to the government and the military, and, recently becoming more prominent in the crony sector, the data industry.

It’s a daunting array. It’s probably unbeatable. But it’s not inescapable. Individuals can live lives that suffer the least intrusion from enemies and achieve the most through self-reliance and self-efficacy. We’ll still pay taxes and stop at red lights to avoid the penalties for not doing so, but beyond that we can be proactive.

How? By recognizing that all of these organizations are hierarchies designed to exert power, and by choosing instead to adopt networks as our counter-hierarchical organizational tool.

Avoid hierarchy.

Hierarchies are power structures in which you don’t have any power. To join a hierarchy is to abase oneself, according to Neil Ferguson’s latest study. It is better today to be in a network, where you can cultivate your ability to influence, than in a hierarchy which gives you no power.

The most power-consuming hierarchy of all, taking yours to accumulate its own, is government. The basic structure is that the government is at the top and you are at the bottom, powerless. So, to the extent possible, don’t participate.

Network strategically.

In a network, you are a node, with infinite options. You can connect to virtually anyone anywhere in the world today. You can connect to virtually any knowledge, most of it free. You can connect to a vast amount of resources, from education to Open-AI to financing your business. You can choose what organizations you want to belong to, or choose not to belong to an organization. You can be an independent contractor, working on projects, or marketing your services to customers and clients that you find online. You can choose the clients you want to serve, such as small and local firms or creative companies you feel aligned with, or tech startups who need your help. They may have hierarchical organizations, but you are not controlled by the hierarchy.

Your meta-organization will be a set of nested and overlapping interconnected networks that you design and you opt into. Hierarchical power relationships are replaced by quality of connection. How much value are you giving and how much are you getting in return?

You can’t avoid the government. But you can keep a low profile. And you can avoid the compliance department, the HR department, the performance appraisal process and the mandatory company picnics and holiday parties.

If you choose network rather than hierarchy, you can avoid those who seek to block the road to individualism.

 

Road to Individualism: Crowdfunding Is an Entrepreneur’s Best Friend

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One of the largest hurdles standing between would-be entrepreneurs and their ideas is access to capital. Without it, it becomes extremely hard to fund your dreams to fruition.

To be sure, no one is entitled to money just because they have a great idea. In fact, acquiring funding is one of the primary goals of an entrepreneur. But a lot of these hurdles do not exist simply because of wealth disparity. The real trouble lies in the abundance of government regulation, which limits who is allowed to invest in certain business ventures.

Under the guise of caring about investors being swindled and losing money, the SEC has heavily restricted who is allowed to invest in certain projects based on income and net worth. Equity-based funding, as it is called, allows investors to use “angel investors” and other venture capitalists to make up the funds that young investors cannot come up with themselves. But because of these regulations, less than one percent of these start-ups are legally allowed to be funded by these willing venture capitalists.

And the worst part is, even when these young entrepreneurs are able to gain funding, government licensing provides further hurdles. And while it doesn’t fix the problem of excess government licensing, technology has made investing much easier than ever before thanks to crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding

In a world where government regulations make it increasingly difficult to start companies, young Americans have used technology to get ahead in the business world. One of the means which has allowed Millennials to make use of their entrepreneurial spirit is “crowdfunding.”

Sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, among others, allow young entrepreneurs to fund their projects through small donations given by many investors. While this is similar to GoFundMe, which is often used for charitable efforts as well crowdfunding ideas, these sites are primarily used to fund ideas, rather than cause.

Whether it is an alarm clock floor mat that prevents habitual snoozing by making users get up and stand on it in order to shut off the buzzing, or a documentary film project about obscure wrestlers, interested investors can become backers of whatever projects or products they are drawn to. In many instances, investors get some sort of kickback, whether it be the product itself or some other sort of swag. This helps investors feel personally connected to the project they are funding.

Crowdfunding is also a real-time manifestation of market demand. If you create a great product, people will donate. If your idea isn’t so great, you will most likely fail to earn the money necessary to bring it to market.

No More Debt

Crowdfunding provides funding opportunities for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses that are often overlooked by conventional lenders and have a hard time accessing traditional forms of credit. But through crowdfunding, raising investment capital is possible without having to go into debt in order to do so.

Many young Americans are already bound by massive amounts of student loan debt. To tack on additional debt in order to turn their ideas into sustainable companies would not only be impractical but in many cases, financially unfeasible.

As Forbes mentions:

“Although about 67% of entrepreneurs use funds from their own savings to get their projects off the ground, it is difficult to build a company with personal savings alone. When it comes to outside funding, the most common form is based on debt, as about 52% of all entrepreneurs take out bank loans.”

Going into debt is far from ideal for these young investors. Crowdfunding allows young adults to take control of their own futures while simultaneously creating businesses and products than benefit many Americans.  

But the government has tried relentlessly to regulate crowdfunding, creating further financial burden for young innovators and discouraging innovation that has the potential to positively impact the lives of countless Americans.  

Everyone deserves the freedom to turn their dreams into success stories. It’s time we put opportunity back into the hands of entrepreneurs and allow them to operate freely without the fear of overbearing regulations.

Road to Individualism: Technology is Increasing Career Satisfaction

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The digital era has completely changed the way we interact with one another. For many of us, some of our closest friends are the people we rarely see but communicate with on a daily basis via social media.

Since communication and relationship building are no longer limited to our geographical location, it should come as no surprise that technology is also changing the way the workspace operates. Gone are the days when you must live where you work. In fact, many businesses are now opting to forgo physical workspaces. And this is benefiting both the employer and the employee.

Finding the Right Person for the Job

For most of human history, securing a good job often meant being willing to relocate to wherever your employer was based. Or, if relocation was inconvenient, it meant that qualified job candidates were passing up jobs they are well-suited for in order to take a lesser position closer to home.

For employers looking for ideal candidates for job openings, location also presents a huge problem. If you are restricting your search only to those who already live in proximity to your business, or are willing to relocate, you often won’t be hiring the best of the best. This presents a huge problem when it comes to specialization.

If there is a highly qualified candidate for a job but who is not in the area, employers are forced to hire someone who may be less than ideal. Likewise, those employees who have a lot to contribute to an organization may miss out on this opportunity and be forced to take a job that they are overqualified for somewhere else.

Without specialization, companies cannot run at optimal capacity and the division of labor cannot operate sufficiently. But technology is changing this. 

Since the internet now allows us to connect with anyone, anywhere, it has given employees the freedom to work remotely. Platforms like Slack and Skype allow free-flowing communication without having to be in the same physical space. This allows business to continue as usual, without anyone having to ever be at the same place, at the same time. Of course, this type of work environment doesn’t apply to all sectors. But for companies where this type of model is possible, it also helps reduce the costs associated with physical locations.

No More Brick and Mortar

More so than ever, companies are choosing to forgo physical spaces. Halo Top ice cream, for example, has been a market phenomenon, breaking records and selling out of stores faster than any other brand of its kind. But many might be shocked to know that Halo Top has no physical office space. Instead, employees work remote from wherever they are located. On occasion, they may come together when it is needed. But forgoing a physical office space has not only saved money, it has allowed employees the freedom to work from wherever they choose.

Likewise, Parse.ly, an analytics platform that offers tools for monitoring website traffic, also maintains no permanent office. Its employees use Slack as a means of communication and come together when necessary, much like Halo Top. But these two companies are far from the only ones. The website INC lists 125 additional companies without permanent office structures. 

In addition to giving employees more freedom in their work, this also helps companies avoid a series of government regulations. When a physical space is acquired, there are a plethora of hoops that must be jumped through in order for that physical office space to legally exist. This is why you will see signage in many office breakrooms displaying the proper permits, licensing, OSHA certifications, and so forth. All these permits, inspections, and certifications cost money. But by foregoing physical space, you also avoid the circus of government regulations that take money away from business owners.

Some worry that the lack of physical office space may present the opportunity for employees to slack off, but the results indicate the opposite. When employees are allowed to work remotely, they are more inclined to get their work done while maintaining a higher quality of life. No longer restricted to a 9-5 workday, employees also enjoy more flexibility.

By allowing employers to hire the best of the best, and employees to go where their skills are most appreciated, we are able to chart our own courses more so than at any other point in history. This has fostered an environment where the road to serfdom is abandoned in favor of the road to individualism. 

Road to Individualism: Charting Our Own Career Course

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Today, more so than at any other point in history, individuals have the ability to pursue their own unique dreams while still earning a living. In earlier times, going to school and finding a profitable career often meant being miserable. But happiness was hardly the ultimate aim of a steady paycheck. This was the sacrifice of adulthood: you did what you needed to do to make money regardless of how your quality of life suffered.

For a majority of people, this did not mean pursuing their passions. It meant pursuing what was sure the make the most money. But young Americans, accustomed to the technological advances and the wondrous internet, have found a way to combine their dreams with a paycheck by using unconventional means.

Etsy

One of the greatest aspects of young people making money from their passions is the degree of specialization that has been given to the world as a result. Looking for a knitted beard warmer, or perhaps a custom-made mermaid costume for your next cosplay event? Look no further than Etsy.

Etsy is an online marketplace that exists especially for one of a kind and handmade items. While prices may be higher on Etsy than in traditional venues, consumers are more than willing to pay more for better quality items that no one else has.

In the era of “Do it Yourself” weddings, many have looked to Etsy to provide specialty, craft-made decorations. Sure, many of these consumers could make these items themselves. But therein lies the beauty of Etsy: It is the division of labor at its finest.

You may not have the time to spend your days painting reclaimed wood, but someone else provides this service for you. Allowing you to focus on whatever area of expertise you choose.

But what is truly amazing about Etsy is that it is allowing artists to make a steady income from their creations. This was much harder to do before the days of the internet. But now young people do not have to settle for career choices that make them unhappy just to pay the bills.

Patreon

If your creations are more abstract than the physical items sold on Etsy and other online markets, than you may find better luck on site like Patreon.

Before the progressive era, when state funding was the answer to all of life’s problems, the arts were privately funded by wealthy patrons. This is how many artists were able to pursue their passions without living in extreme poverty.

Patreon has brought that same principle into the modern world. Now, independent journalist, writers, vloggers, and other artists are able to produce work while accepting funds from patrons who have a vested interest in the work. This has helped many make lucrative careers while pursuing what they love to do.

This has been huge for the indie media scene. With Facebook’s algorithms constantly changing and established outlets often reaping the benefits, it has been hard for many independent journalists to stay afloat. But Patreon has created an outlet for them to do so.

With so many people dissatisfied with the direction mainstream journalism is heading, many have chosen to vote with their dollars, giving donations only to outlets that they believe are doing a good job at reporting the news.  Through small donations, starting at as little as a dollar, interested patrons can support whatever cause they like. Personally, I make a habit of supporting independent journalists. And the fact that I am able to do this without being exorbitantly wealthy myself is the true beauty of Patreon. With each microdonation I give, I am supporting artists and writers I believe in.And while small donations do not seem like much, several small donations can add up quickly.

There are even some Patreon users who have made over 60 thousand dollars a month in donations. While this may be a rare happening, it shows what is possible when artists crowdsource their salaries. This has allowed young people to pursue their passions without having to risk being penniless. It also gives them instant market feedback. If people like what you are producing, you will get more patrons. If they do not like what you are doing, you will feel it in your wallet and will know to adjust accordingly.

Patreon and Etsy, as well as other options that will be discussed later, have helped contribute to the changing mindset occurring all over the world. Younger people do not want to do what is profitable simply because we can make money. We want to do what we love without sacrificing a paycheck.

The advances that have made this lifestyle possible are allowing more and more people to chart their own course in life, rather than follow what has traditionally been expected. And this is, in itself, leading to a world filled with more individualism.

The Road to Individualism: Coding Boot Camps May Be More Beneficial Than College

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Thanks to the modern technological world that we live in, knowledge has never been more obtainable than it is today. But while information is more accessible than it ever has been, the cost of a college degree has actually skyrocketed, resulting in a rise of individuals needing to take out student loans in order to pay for their education.

As more young Americans are getting degrees, the degrees themselves are actually losing value. When there is an influx of college-educated Millennials all competing in the same sector, that college degree no longer serves to distinguish you from the rest of the pack.

Fortunately, thanks to the technological advances we have seen during our lifetimes there are now alternatives to earning a four-year degree that might actually help you get ahead in the job market while saving time and money.

Before the days of the internet, the study of computer science was something you learned only in an institution of higher knowledge. Today, anyone wanting to learn how to code can do so without ever taking out a cent of student loans.

Coding boot camps, for example, have provided a viable alternative for those interested in pursuing a career in the tech field. Instead of graduating with $50,000 of student loan debt and no real world experience, those opting to attend coding boot camps will pay a small portion of the cost of a college degree while earning actual experience in a fraction of the time.

While the cost of boot camp programs varies from a few thousand dollars to as much as $20,000, the average cost is around $11,450. However, even the most expensive coding boot camps are cheaper than the average out-of-state or private school tuition costs for a traditional four-year degree program.

Another convenient aspect to these coding boot camps is the amount of time it takes to complete the course. Most of these courses last about eight weeks and after completion, many students transition directly into their careers. In fact, some of these programs operate on an apprenticeship model where students are actually earning money while they learn to code.

The demand for coding skills is not likely to decrease at any time in the near future. In fact, it is only expected to grow in the coming years. According to code.org, there are currently 523,222 job openings in the computing field and only 42,969 computer science students graduated into the job market last year. Colleges are not turning out enough computer science graduates to fill these jobs and coding boot camps are helping to fill these gaps.

There was a time when a college degree was essential to building a lucrative career, but thanks to the technological advancements of our time, a four-year degree is no longer the only option. For those looking for alternative ways to break into the tech world, coding boot camps offer financially feasible alternatives to the traditional college experience.

The Road to Individualism: College Isn’t Always the Answer

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In previous essays, I discussed how the concept of primary education and the wide acceptance of the concept of “adolescence” have worked against the individual. While elementary education has belittled the concept of the individual, adolescence has kept students in a permanent state of childhood. And unfortunately, both have inhibited the sense of personal responsibility and individualism needed to gain a truly beneficial education.

But there is another aspect of our current education system that is stifling individualism: higher education.

Is College the Answer?

College has been the traditional route to success for decades. In order to be successful, one must get a four year degree in something “practical” so that they may be able to provide for themselves and their families. And while this might have made sense in the past, the situation has changed in our modern world.

As tuition rates continue to rise and the student loan bubble continues to inflate, many young Americans are looking for alternative solutions that will help them prepare for the future without going into massive amounts of debt before they have even begun their careers.

Certainly, a college education is still necessary for many looking to become doctors, lawyers, or academics, it is not the only solution when it comes to building a prosperous career.

In many cases, going into hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt for a degree can actually be detrimental to both your financial future and your professional career. For example, those spending their early 20s in classrooms and lecture halls earning a degree are missing out on years of experience in the workforce.

For those who do not wish to accumulate debt, and whose desired career fields do not require a degree, college is not the end all be all. In fact, before there was such a huge emphasis placed on earning a college degree, many Americans began their professional life the old fashioned way; through apprenticeships.

There Is Another Way

Currently, there are over 400,000 apprentices in the United States alone. For those who choose an apprenticeship over college, there can be many benefits, which include avoiding student loan debt altogether.

For trades and other vocational careers which utilize apprenticeships, there is also the advantage of being able to earn a decent living soon after you complete your training. For example, someone learning the trade of sheet metal may be able to make $50,000-$60,000 immediately after their apprenticeship ends.

Even with a college degree, many graduates must start at the bottom of the barrel earning low salaries while they work their way up the ladder. Combining the low salaries with monthly student loan payments can present many financial issues for those fresh out of college.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to gaining the skills and education needed to build a successful professional career, but for those who are looking for alternatives to the traditional collegiate system, apprenticeships can help you fast track your career without all the financial strings attached.

In the past, college used to the key ingredient for success. But the world is a very different place than it used to be. Now, skills can be obtained based on personal preference and what works best for the individual in question.

The world will always need doctors and lawyers, but it also needs a wide array of other specialized skills that make the market unique and prosperous. In order for individuals to achieve full and prosperous lives, they have to be able to pursue whatever makes them happy.

When college serves as a barrier to entry, rather than a vessel of education or workforce training, it does not help the individual grow. Education, like the market must be full of individualized options that allow individuals to create value and achieve a sense of purpose.

The Road to Individualism: Treating Teens Like Adults Brings Success

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If we want children to be prepared for adulthood, why do we keep treating them as adults? Just as elementary education needs to be completely rethought, so do we also need to rethink how our society treats teenagers.

It wasn’t so long ago when teens were making their own way in life and even starting families. While medical advancements have increased life expectancy, allowing us to have higher time preferences for things like marriage and families, being able to provide for yourself while also creating value will always be of the utmost importance.

But instead of preparing today’s youth for the world that awaits them, we treat them like children until they reach the magical age of 18. Then suddenly, after years of coddling and under exposure to real-world issues, we push them out into the world and expect them to fend for themselves.

True, for many people this is the rude awakening they need to get their adult lives going, but what if there was a different way to prepare children for adulthood. The truth of the matter is there is a very simple solution to this problem: stop treating teens like children.

Teenagers are wasting the most curious and ambitious years of their lives trapped behind desks. While there may have been some rational reason for forcing children to congregate in large buildings to study core academic subjects, the internet has made this almost completely irrelevant. There are now learning options available to anyone. And unlike public education, these online resources are individualized and allow students to go at their own pace.

By having more freedom over their studies, teens now have more time to devote to finding out what they want to do with their lives. So many adults spend years in school mastering a particular topic only to discover that their area of specialty no longer interests them. Instead of subjecting today’s youth to that type of displeasure, what if we allow them to try a few things out while there is still time.

As more unconventional private schools pop up around the country, many have focused their junior high and high school curriculum on apprenticeships and internships. At Acton Academy, for example, students get the chance to go out into the workforce for a preview of what a given field would be like. They learn and observe the day to day and ultimately get to decide if it is something they want to do.

Often times, the most rewarding of these types of experiences occurs when a student realizes that their dream job is not what they thought it would be. But, by having this preview, teens are able to reroute their charted course and find what makes them happy. And by having the freedom to do what makes them happy, these individuals will create value in the marketplace.

This is just one example of how we can change the way we approach education for today’s youth, but ultimately what we need are options that break the cycle of perpetual childhood.

Teenagers are individuals just like adults, and unless they are treated as such, we cannot expect them to magically transform into responsible humans on their eighteenth birthdays. This belief in adolescence along with forced schooling until the age of 18 inhibits teenagers from getting ahead in life and keeps them in a permanent state of arrested development.

If we want a world robust with choice and diversity in the market, we need individuals who have the freedom to innovate by going after their passions.

The Road to Individualism: Personalized Education Not One-Size-Fits-All

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In 1944, economist philosopher F.A. Hayek published his book The Road to Serfdom. The pages of this classic work warn of the dangers our civilization is sure to meet if we continued to subscribe to collectivist ideologies, both in economics and politics.

And while the book issues an ominous warning to its readers, it also ensures that they are not too late to choose a different path. If we can learn from history then we are not doomed to repeat it.

Sometimes the greatest advice lies in failure. And by recognizing how something has gone wrong, we can avoid making the same mistake in the future. This is, perhaps, one of the most useful ways to look at Hayek’s book. By using the book as a warning, we can alter the course of history.

So let us pretend for a moment that we find ourselves at a fork in the road and instead of choosing the path of servitude, we followed the road to individualism. And on this path, individualized education is of the utmost importance.

Against the Individual

In Road to Serfdom, Hayek touches a great deal on how compulsory education has contributed to the destruction of liberty. Today’s public schools are not designed for the individual to thrive. Instead, individuality is stripped in favor of the collective and children are routinely taught that their value is derived from how they benefit the group.

Instead of individualized learning methods, public schools offer a one-size-fits-all model. If your child does not thrive under the state-sanctioned methods, that is too bad. Public schools do not have to cater to market demand because taxpayers are forced to fund them regardless quality.

But what if instead of herding children into large buildings like livestock, chaperoning them from one task to another, we tried a different approach to education. What if instead of one-size-fits-all education there were open-sourced resources available. What if instead of teaching children what to think, we focused instead on teaching them how to think.

As hard as it is to imagine this is possible given the current state of our education system, the free market is already providing what education consumers are looking for, because unlike the government, the market responds to demand, rather than state mandates.

The Internet

Knowledge has never been as readily accessible as it is today. While education used to be reserved only to those who held a certain status or wealth, that is no longer the case. Sites like Khan Academy exist to teach you anything you want to learn from math and science to coding and blockchain basics.

“Google Courses” is another platform that allows education to be open-sourced and available to those who are interested. There are even Ivy League schools that are now uploading course syllabi and making it available to all.

But even aside from traditional education subjects like math or science, Youtube is providing other types of education as well. Whether you want to learn how to play the guitar, dance, or sew there are hundreds of options waiting for you on YouTube.

The overall goal of education is supposed to help children prepare for their future. But the free market is filled with opportunities for all sorts of different skills. It seems silly to limit children’s exposure only to math, reading, and science when music or other trade skills may be how they choose to create value in the market in the future.

However, Youtube also has many traditional educational resources. Some professors have even opted to record and upload course lectures online, giving the public the same access to these as those paying to take the college course.

Access to all these different educational opportunities is enabling individuals to find the model that best suits them. And when students are put in an environment where they are free to thrive, they usually do.

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