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    Drop Out And Get Schooled
    Drop Out And Get Schooled
    Drop Out And Get Schooled
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Drop Out And Get Schooled

    By Patrick Bet-David and Thomas Ellsworth

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Education is broken and most graduates are broke.

    The purpose of this book is to start an important dialogue about college education. I will make the case for why I believe 70% of college students should drop out. The concept of giving our trust to the educational system without accountability has not worked. I believe it’s time to ask serious questions:

    - Why do we go to college in the first place?

    - Who should go to college and who shouldn’t?

    - Can I succeed and do great things without college?

    - Why do tuition and textbooks cost as much as they do?

    - Have colleges simply become a big business (with tax-free status)?

    - Are the subjects taught in college sufficient for life or do we need an upgrade?

    Let me clarify something, this is NOT a book that declares that higher education is a terrible thing. Many professions require it, but I believe education can and does take place in many forms. As a college dropout and an autodidact, I’ve read over 1,200 books in the last 15 years and believe there are many paths we can take to get educated and do great things.

    Fair Warning: You may have passionate feelings about the points in this book. Regardless of how strong you feel one way or another, my desired outcome is to start a broad dialogue so we can process the issues – together.

    Ready?

    Written by Patrick Bet-David with Thomas Ellsworth

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPatrick Bet-David
    Release dateJan 23, 2017
    ISBN9780997441048
    Drop Out And Get Schooled
    Author

    Patrick Bet-David

    Patrick's story starts with his family immigrating to America when he was 10-years old. His parents fled Iran as refugees during the Iranian revolution and were granted U.S.citizenship. After high school Patrick joined the U.S. Army and served in the 101st Airborne before starting a career in financial services. After working with traditional companies, he was inspired to launch PHP Agency Inc., an insurance sales,marketing and distribution company - and did that before he turned 30. Patrick is passionate about shaping the next generation by teaching on entrepreneurship. Patrick's popularity surged when The Life of an Entrepreneur in 90 Seconds, a video he created,accumulated over 27 million views online. This and other videos comprise his library of inspirational content about entrepreneurship available through Valuetainment, a media brand he conceived and founded to teach about the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and inspire people to and achieve their dreams. It has been referred to as "the voice for entrepreneurs." Patrick resides in Dallas TX with his wife and three children. You can see Patrick's books and library of Valuetainment content at: patrickbetdavid.com

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    Reviews for Drop Out And Get Schooled

    4.5/5

    17 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Nothing much dispute of. Pure value and insights. Thank you!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great read, I highly recommend. I wish I would have read this book before I attended college. Thank you Patrick for all your great work, my respect.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I very much wanted to like this book. I agree with the overall premise that not everyone should go to college and even agree with some of the claims made by the authors about who should and shouldn't go to college. Where this book falls short is providing well reasoned supporting arguments to those claims. The author wrote in a conversational tone and dropped off-the-cuff comments about liberal arts being a waste of time and made claims about specific occupations that don't need college degrees without explanation or elaboration. It works if the readers are already in agreement, but fails to enlighten for those who are genuinely considering all sides of the issue.

    Book preview

    Drop Out And Get Schooled - Patrick Bet-David

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    The tradition of including acknowledgments is long and distinguished.  It does seem, however, a bit redundant to continually tip the hat to those who exhibit patience and tolerance on a daily basis, even as new projects, such as this book, come to life.

    I’ll do it this way:  You know who you are and your work and support are appreciated more than you can possibly know.

    I’d also like to acknowledge the people who sent supportive emails and made positive comments on social media about this topic.  Many of you made fantastic points that you may see reflected in some way within this book.  Thank you for stating your case.

    Thank you also to those who wrote me in defense of college and were critical of my position.  More than one of you pointed out that the average salary for Ph.D.’s, MBA’s and bachelor’s degree recipients was several times higher, on average than those who did not attend college.  As you will read in the following chapters, my question is not if college works – it does – but for whom.  I believe the current system is, in many ways, broken, and the concept of education comprises a broader continuum.  I am an autodidact, that is, I am predominantly self-taught. 

    My sincere hope is that this book creates a debate that leads to discussions at kitchen tables and positive encouragement for those who find themselves learning outside of the normal or traditional system.  Too many students drop out of school with overwhelming student loan debt while others find work in a profession that doesn’t utilize their degree. Tell me again, how is that good?

    Lastly a big thank you to all the researchers and reporters who assembled the reports and articles cited in this book.  That should cover everyone.  Thanks to all!

    INTRODUCTION

    The purpose of this book is NOT to declare that higher education is a terrible thing.  It’s absolutely not.  BUT, learning can and does take place in many forms.  I've read 1,200 books in the last 15 years and understand firsthand that you CAN educate yourself.  Many entrepreneurs do so and go on to make a very real impact in their part of an industry sector, or a massive impact that changes the world itself.

    There are important professions that require a formal education – such as medicine.  I praise God for the skilled cardiologists that attended whatever university that would have them and studied under whichever faculty that trained them to perform miraculous heart procedures such as the one that saved my dad’s life. There is no debate that a college education is vital to certain specialized professions, particularly those in science and medicine.  Also, I join my fellow Americans who certainly don’t want a self-taught nuclear physicist building a new bomb for the military, especially if the lab is in our town.  Those professions require not only a college education but sufficient time to sober-up following the college experience itself.

    But is a trip to college vital to ALL professions? No way!

    Before I go any further, I am compelled to step back and make an important point about high school.  Never, never, never, never, never drop out of high school or take the GED (General Equivalency Diploma).  Did I say NEVER? A high school is a place for young people to develop core skills intellectually and relationally.  It’s also an accomplishment to be celebrated. High school dropouts are four times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed. Thus, stopping the formal educational process, even at a horrible public school in some troubled downtown area, is something I am against with every bit of emphasis that I can muster. 

    Those first 18 years are a time of critical personal development, and the maturing process doesn’t stop at 18.  For example, our government (run by a drunken legislature if recent newspaper headlines are any indication) believes young people should not be permitted to drink until they are 21 – that’s three more years after graduating high school at 18.  But the same legislature thinks that an 18-year-old is old enough to go to war and use multi-million-dollar machinery to kill people you don’t know but apparently not old enough to sit around and have a beer afterward and talk about the people you just killed.  Think about that one for a moment.  On second thought, don’t.  Where was I? 

    I am compelled to initiate a dialogue about college and the uniquely personal decision-making process that each person must undertake before they make a final decision.  So, let’s talk about WHO should go to college and WHO should think twice about it as well as WHY dropping out is the right choice for some people.  Most importantly, we will examine HOW to process all of those questions in the first place. As you will see, I am going to pull in articles, blogs and opinions as well as present my point of view in an attempt to start an honest dialogue.

    Sound processing leads to a good decision and that, my friends, IS the purpose of this book.

    Let’s begin the journey.

    PBD

    PROLOGUE

    Thomas N. Ellsworth

    Monday, October 15, 1984

    It often takes a perfectly avoidable human tragedy to get our attention.  That was the case for me on what started out as a typical day in Los Angeles in the fall of 1984.

    It was the fall semester of my junior year at California State University Northridge, and I (Tom) was grinding through elective courses which seemed absolutely pointless.  I mean, why on Earth do they force a business major to take Astronomy (pun intended) while pursuing a marketing and business degree?  The goal was to get a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and secure a job in sales or marketing.  The paradigm that drove that goal was one that I lived under since attending high school in Boca Raton, Florida: without a college degree, your future would have a very low ceiling.

    During high school, I worked at a restaurant as a chef’s assistant.  Somehow I avoided being a busboy and secured a job working with the lead chefs in the kitchen of a prominent local steakhouse.  This job also afforded me the opportunity to enjoy the Florida sunshine during the day. 

    My passion wasn’t surfing, but some of my friends surfed, and I would go to the beach from time to time to enjoy the sand and waves just the same.  Surfers inevitably damaged their surfboards thanks to rocks, coral or the occasional bump into a fellow surfer.  These are called dings, and dings in a fiberglass surfboard would need to be patched so that saltwater would not rot the foam inside the board and, importantly, fiberglass slivers did not cut your hands or feet.  Local surf shops sold repair kits containing putty or epoxy that did little more than simply cover the ding.  The material was typically yellowish and turned an ugly brown after exposure to the sun.  The alternative was silver duct tape which was effective but ugly.  Surfers carefully selected their boards, and many had elaborate color or artwork.  The original beauty of the surfboard was lost as the dings and patches multiplied over time. 

    I wondered why surfboards could not be restored in a high- quality way, the same way professional body shops repair cars.  The answer was that, yes, they could be – but it required locating a professional surfboard builder and shipping or driving the board to that location.  Typically, only badly damaged boards were repaired this way – because it wasn’t cheap and it took a lot of time which meant you could

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