Education is very important. Going to a good college and doing well is important - or at least useful. As adults, people compete against each other at a higher level than ever before. The edge gained from study and from getting a diploma from a well know and respected school can be the difference between getting a good job - or not. Is that true? I guess it is. It sure makes sense doesn't it?
Hmmm...
I think it actually is true, but it's not as big a deal as you might think. The college educational process teaches you how to learn on your own. It lets you grow up in a sort of half-way house of life. Your activities are shaped for you (mostly) and your living conditions are not entirely your own responsibility, but you do get to decide how you'll prioritize and how you'll govern your own priorities. This is a huge part of learning and education.
Assuming that most colleges provide access to good information and deliver it in an effective way. I think the "big brand" school is overrated relative to the outcome a kid can expect several years into his/her life. That initial job or two might get influenced by the school's brand name, but once in there I think it's entirely up to the young man or woman what they do with it. I have hired people with credentials - including degrees from a brand college - but after that, the sheepskin, the college brand name the whole concept goes out the window, never to be considered again. Never! You keep learning and getting better. You make something happen - or not. It's that simple. The school's influence is / was a factor, but in reality - (in real life) is wildly overrated.
The competition for a spot in a brand school is fierce. Really good smart and dedicated kids; ones that will eventually be winners in a competitive world, are getting freaked out by the admissions process and the pressure to get a highbrow school to accept them. Once in, they feel more pressure to meet their own high expectations. I think a good student will apply her own pressure, regardless of the college brand.
I though this effort (below) by
Seth Godin was pretty well presented.
What if I told you about an industry which:
- Indebts most of its customers, sometimes for twenty or more years a person
- Not only consumes most of four years of its customer's time, but impacts its prospects for years before even interacting with them
- Enjoys extremely strong brand preferences between competitors and has virtually no successful generic substitutes
- Dramatically alters relations within a family, often for generations
- Doesn't do it on purpose
...and according to most of the studies I've seen, there's very little or no difference in the efficacy of one competitor vs. another.
Of course, I'm talking about undergraduate colleges in the US.
The most competitive colleges are as competitive as ever--in most cases, more so. Many admit only one in ten students. According to two senior officials at
Swarthmore, the differences among the 'good enough' applicants is basically zero. Rather than putting tens of thousands of kids through insane anxiety, they wonder, why not just put all the 'good enough' students in a pool and pick the winners randomly?
Here's the amazing part: According to
The Chosen, an exhaustive study of college admissions, there's no measurable difference between the outcomes of education with the most exclusive schools and the next few tiers. Graduates don't end up happier. They don't end up with better paying jobs. They don't end up richer or even healthier. The whole thing is a sham (which costs a quarter of a million dollars a person at the top end).
There's no question that a Harvard degree helps (or is even required) in a few fields. There's also no doubt that spending four years at Yale is a mind-changing experience. The question isn't, "are they wonderful?" The question is, "Is it worth it?"
It's almost as if every single high school student and her parents insisted on having a $200,000 stereo because it was better than the $1,000 stereo. Sure, it might be a bit better, but is it better enough?
Boomer parents have bought in to the marketing hype at a level rarely seen in any other form of marketing. They push school districts, teachers and their kids to perform pointless tasks at extreme levels just to be admitted to the 'right' school, even though there's hardly evidence that the right school does anything but boost their egos.
Schools respond by spending a fortune on facilities that will increase their rankings in various
faux polls, even though there's no evidence at all that a better gym or a bigger library matters one bit to an undergraduate's long-term success in life.
If it weren't so expensive (in terms of time and money) it would make a marvelous marketing case study. Add in the tears and wasted anxiety and it's really a shame. Very few people are pointing out that the emperor is barely clothed, and those that do (like me, I guess) get yelled at.
I'm not criticizing a college education per
se. No, it's clear that that's a smart investment. I'm talking about the incremental cost (and anxiety) separating consumers of the 'top' 500 schools from students of the 'top' 50. It appears to be pure storytelling, a story that so appeals to the worldview of baby boomers with teens that they are absolutely unable to resist the story, despite the facts.
High school students are thrust into a Dip, in some cases the biggest one of their lives.
The Dip extracts significant costs along the way, and then ends with a giant spin of the roulette wheel. I wonder if we're marketing ourselves to a dead end.
I guess I'd do two things. First, I'd figure out how to teach parents to understand what really matters and what doesn't about time spent in high school and the choice of a college. Second, I'd push for every selective college to share one application and do a draft similar to the one they do for medical residencies. Every applicant ranks the schools they'd like to attend, in order. Every school considers all the applications, grabs the students they'd love to have in priority order, puts the rest into the "good enough" pile and lets a computer sort em all out as
pareto optimally as possible. At least kids will go into their twenties correctly blaming a computer instead of mistakenly blaming themselves.
afraid? In one case I have a rational fear (logic), but in the other I have an irrational fear (phobia). The difference between logic and phobia isn't always as clear as it is in this example.
anything that makes someone feel like they are not worthy of your confidence, we'll call "pain". I could call it anything, but pain seems appropriate. Pain and especially individually addressed personal pain has no upside.
The reason why someone is selling seems like an extremely important thing to understand. We would guess that there are circumstances where someone needs to sell a piece of real estate. Maybe their job moved etc. There are also folks who would like to sell their house because they want to downsize or upsize - they want a different house. Maybe they bought that house to sell it (flip). Hmmm...?
given substance, to the density of water (H2O). Substances with a specific gravity greater than 1 are heavier than water, and those with a specific gravity of less than 1 are lighter than water.
Let's consider two business situations. One where the business is looking for growth in order to become profitable. In need of "more" to survive, we have to accept more unknowns and take more risk. It's part of what we do. Another situation is where the business has done some healthy growing, is now profitable, seems sustainable at these levels, and looks to take some risk off the table by managing "what is" more effectively. 
A reasonable point of entry might be when the future looks like crap. Q4 and Q1 are indexed lower, but the slowdown adds to the gloomy atmosphere. This tid from Automotive news is an example of the noise that helps everyone see pain. The perfect point of entry (buying in) would be when good businesses (sadly) have suffered (lowered their expectations / selling price) and the weakest have given up (only working capital is needed). I'm not sure exactly when the time will be right, but it could be soon.
equipment, flaps, hums and chatters. If I listen to it on decent gear it's noticeable, almost tolerable (still not enjoyable) but not quite as annoying. In the car or something less worthy, it's nasty (bad nasty, not good nasty).
Cover everything in chocolate and see what happens
It has plenty of restaurants, museums and theatre ~ and if you're a shopper and you need some "stuff", Michigan Avenue will be more fun than you can stand (or afford). If you stay and play downtown, you can spend a lot of money in short period of time.Traffic is no worse than Boston or New York (so it's bad, but it works - sort of). Yup - Chicago is a real city - bigger than you think. I like Chicago.
old ball park (fixed up) and most of all, its brand. Pink Haters are great supporters and the newest fans. They are women (girls) and kids and new fans who don't know jack about subtle positioning issues or what changes when the pitcher gets ahead 2 and 0. These people watch the games, buy the souvenirs and get excited to see Jacoby Ellsbury. The get excited about Ellsbury because he's young, good looking and not at all a pretentious big money athlete. He is a big hit with all the fans, but in particular these pink hats are dizzy about him.
A spirit of unshakable calm and determination, 
I like the smell of skunk. Not fresh right here live oh my stink-bag skunk. I like skunk-lite. Perhaps one has been run over up the road a piece. That kind of skunk smell isn't really bad at all. It's kinda nice. Maybe that's just me.
I was considering starting my own religion. You know, make up the rules, decide what the rituals would be, determine what things were taboo, and stuff like that. I would of course be the Chief. Actually, "Chief" isn't a good title. I'd have to do better than that. I think I would need a very clever hat to get any respect from the competition. The problem is that it would probably take a couple of hundred years to get many millions of people signed up. That's too long. In spite of my status as Chief (to be changed to something better), I will probably be dead; unless I come up with some very special stuff.
Creativity, commitment and the willingness to do it - show up and do it.
Often (almost always) people incorrectly see the future as very similar to the present. The tendency is to significantly underestimate what will be different. This is a useful piece of information because it's true. However, changing the way you think is difficult if not impossible. One way this information can be used to our advantage is to see how others stumble over this cognitive flaw, and recognize when the error can be exploited for profit.
Don't look for a competitive edge by cutting the margins. Instead of assuming that your customers will correctly weigh your price and recognize "a better deal" (they probably won't - crazy huh?), create a policy where at the slightest hint of any failure to meet expectations, you leap to the rescue without hesitation to deliver a remedy and an extra something (bonus with value).
markets: a combination of matching deals are struck that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, a risk-free profit. A person who engages in arbitrage is called an arbitrageur. The term is mainly applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.
