 Stop wasting your time and money in universities. So is it worth it? A college degree, I mean is it actually worth it? Well, I gotta tell you for some people yes, and other people definitely not. Some people are totally wasting their time and money, but some people need to go to college and it's really important that they do it. And I'm gonna tell you about those two groups of people in this video and I'll also share with you my story about going to college and we're starting right now. Everybody, JR Fisher here. I've been selling online since 2009, so millions of dollars are both digital and physical products and on this channel, I share with you the ups and downs and how you can start, run, and grow your online business. I also have a $97 course that I'm giving away absolutely free, it's down in the description, click the link and learn, no credit card required. Do me a favor, hit that subscription button before we get started. Don't forget, hit the bell, turn on all notifications. If you turn on all notifications, I can let you know each time I do a new video. Okay, check it out, let's look at college. Matter of fact, let me share with you my story first and then I'll tell you if you should or shouldn't go to college based on your situation. Okay, so let me kinda explain to you, I'll start you off in high school when I was in high school. And fortunately in the 10th grade, I think I was in there two months and they tested me and they said we can take you from 10th grade and put you in 11th grade if you want and you can skip going through 10th grade and I thought wow, that's a great idea. I don't like school. I think it'd be awesome to be able to get out of this school and it was not a great school, it's not a great neighborhood. So the earlier I could get out of there, the better off I thought I had it. So they let me do that. At the age of 16, I graduated high school and my dad said hey, I'll let you go to college, I'll pay for you to go to college and I was like, I wasn't really keen on the idea. I didn't like school at all, it wasn't my thing and I agreed to do it and I think I went one day and never went back and he never did pay for college because I didn't go. Fast forward a few years, he passed away and I told myself that when I got out of high school that I didn't need college and I said but college takes about four years. So what I'll do is I'll give myself four years and at the end of four years, if I don't have a great job and I'm not independently wealthy or something like that, then I'll go to college but I just knew I would be, right? Four years is plenty of time to retire, right? And so I worked and I tried and I got nowhere over the next four years. He passed away when I was I think 19 years old and at 20 I decided I needed to go to college and guess what? If I'm gonna go to college at 20, I get to pay for it now. So I decided I was gonna go to college but I really just thought I would kind of test it out. I got a job bartending at a restaurant and because of my experience bartending which was nothing but I let them think that I had bartending experience and I kind of learned on the job and I would use that money to actually pay for my college degree. I rented a, it wasn't even an apartment really, it was a ladies house and there was a garage and above the garage there was this A-frame room and it had a bed and a love seat and when you got out of bed, you would bump your head on the ceiling because the frame went down and the bed went up to it like that. And I had a bathroom and the bathroom had the red curtain. I remember that, I had a shower to get in and out of the bathroom, there's a toilet and a shower there and it was just one room and it was not the most comfortable surroundings in the world. So I had motivation. I said, well, when I get out of college, I've been told that all you gotta do is gonna get a college degree. When you get out, you get this great job and the rest of your life is set. And I bet some of you have been told the same thing. So I thought that's what I need to do but I need to see if I can even get through a semester yet because I didn't know anything about college, I didn't know anything about SATs. I did have to go take an SAT and when I took the SAT, I guess I did okay but I didn't know the importance of it but that really determined if you got into college or not and I didn't know that, I just took the test. So anyhow, I got into college and after going almost two years and keep in mind, my college the way it worked was full time was 12 credit hours and that cost you a flat amount of money. Anything over that, you could take it and it was still the same amount of money. It was just that flat amount. So you could take 12, 15, 18, 21 credit hours or you could go crazy if you wanted and it was still the same amount. So what I would do oftentimes is take more than the 12 hours thinking I'm getting a better deal that way, right? I'm only paying for 12 hours when I'm getting 15 or 18. My last semester actually was 21 credit hours. That was difficult. I will tell you that was a very difficult semester. So bottom line is after about two years they require that you pick your major and I thought to myself, well, I don't really have a major. I just want to get a degree so I can get a job. I don't even know what majors, I didn't know anything about anything, right? And I knew there were people that were becoming doctors and lawyers and engineers and all that was way above my pay grade. I didn't think I could do any of that. So the day we actually had to pick our major I actually had to go to work that day and the lines were really long and I was going to be late for work and I couldn't be late for work. I had to have this job bartending. So I looked down all of the different majors there and I looked over at marketing and that marketing line was so long, so, so long. And I guess it was a cool major because you got involved in advertising and be an advertising exacter or something like that. And I couldn't wait in that line. There was no way I could wait in that line. Sounded interesting, couldn't wait in that line too long. So I looked for the shortest line and I got in it, not even knowing what the line was. When I got up to the front it turned out it was the finance one. And the reason the line was so short is because it was tons of math of which I was not good at and I had to sign up for that because that was the shortest line. And that's how I got my major. And I gotta tell you I had to start taking my first math classes and was not doing well. Didn't feel like I could even get through the first math class. And I had a professor pull me aside and he says, what's the problem? I said, I'm not good at math. Math is hard, I can't do math. And he says, oh no, no, you've got it all wrong. Math is easy. I said, no, math is hard. I've been told that my whole life. Math is really difficult. He says, no, it's not. He says, here's how math works. You don't have to study, you don't have to learn anything. I said, well, how's that? He says, all you do is memorize a formula and then I'll give you some numbers and then you apply that formula to the numbers and whatever it comes out at, you'll get it right every time. He says, you don't have to study, it's super easy. And I thought, well, I've never thought of it that way. And I gotta tell you, from that point forward, math was not a problem because of that one guy, that one guy pulled me aside and said, it's not a problem. I believed him, did what he said and ended up being really good at math. And I also remember another professor, Bernie Grablowski, and that guy was awesome. We kind of became friends and I used to write some papers that he needed written and he would actually pay me to write some of these papers. He would pay me to go out and do surveys in neighborhoods and ask people questions door to door because he was building apartment complexes. He was actually a businessman. He shouldn't have been a professor and actually years later he quit the university and just did developments of apartment houses and complexes and all that because that's really what he was there for. But that's what also made him an awesome professor. So three years and three months after I started college, I graduated. And I got my degree and I went outside and I'm like, where are all these companies that are gonna give me a great job because that's what I've been told my entire life is I get a great job because I went through this. I did this thing and they weren't there. I mean, I interviewed with companies. There was a bank in New York City that offered me a job but the pay was less than what the rent was in New York City. I interviewed with a trucking company and didn't get that job. And I was bartending and ended up just bartending. Now as the years went on, I started to figure stuff out. I figured out how to wage to make money. I actually ended up becoming a finance manager at a car dealership at one point. And I worked my way through all these different jobs and learning different things and that all brought me here to today. So I gotta answer that burning question. Is college a waste of time and money? And once again, I'm gonna go back to the beginning of this video where I told you yes for some people and no for other people. If you are gonna be a surgeon, if you are gonna be an attorney, go to college seriously. Don't go out and do brain surgery without medical school. It's just not good to do that. Don't go into court and defend somebody if you haven't been to law school, okay? Those people need to go to college to do that thing because they need certain skills and talents. But if you're going to college and you're just gonna get a degree in philosophy or sociology or something and you have no career path, you don't have a job picked out that's gonna pay you for that degree. You probably shouldn't be in college with the exception of the fact that I didn't either. I didn't have that job picked out. So if you asked me today, did you waste your time? Did you waste your money? I would actually say no. Now for me, what I gained out of it was discipline. I was not real disciplined before I went to college. But when I went to college, I didn't like to watch my money. I didn't wanna lose money. And that's why I would pick more credit hours because I didn't have enough money to actually finish. So I knew if I got more credit hours, I'd get out. But it also made that college class that I was taking much more important to me. I was spending my money on it. I learned the discipline of even though I didn't wanna study, even though I didn't wanna go to class, I would go because I had paid for it. And that amount of discipline that I learned in that three years and three months by forcing myself to do stuff I didn't want to do really helped a lot. And it helped me in a lot of areas. Every day before I went to work, after classes, I would go to the gym and I would run and I would do weights and I'd work out. So I was getting in shape and I was getting my education and I was making money on my bartending job. And I would say it was good for me. It was good for me. Now, is that true for everybody? No, it's not true for everybody. Some people go to college, they technically waste their time and money. They come out owing 40, 50, $100,000. And then they go into a job that doesn't pay any more than a job they could've got if they didn't go to college. So the question is, was it worth it to them? And I think it's an individual answer. Some people will say they totally wasted their time. I don't think knowledge is ever really wasted. If you learn some stuff and you got some life skills, I don't think it's a waste. But obviously, if you're saddled with 80 or $100,000 for the debt when you get out and your job position is no better off than before you went in, you've probably wasted your time and money. So the first thing I'm gonna tell you is whatever you're going to school for, don't go in there if you don't have a goal of what you wanna learn. Don't do that. That's what I did. I wouldn't recommend doing that. It worked out okay for me. But if you go in there and you say, well, I wanna be a social worker and you find out that social workers pay you 40,000 a year and I'm not saying don't be a social worker. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with social workers but they don't make any money. And if you're looking to make a lot of money, if you're looking to go to college to make more money and you find out that that 40,000 a year is no more than what you could make if you didn't go to college, maybe you ought to reconsider, okay? I know people who are in their 20s making millions of dollars a year who have never been to college who market stuff online. That's what they do. They sell stuff online. I think that's a great occupation. I wish they had a college that taught people entrepreneurship, that taught people how to build a business, how to grow a business, what to do in a business. That would be a cool college. The problem with that is you can't find anybody to teach it and you can't find anybody to teach it because the people who know that information are not gonna work for 50 grand a year teaching people million dollar ideas. It doesn't work that way. The closest you'll ever come is to buy a course. I sell courses. I sell courses on how to start businesses online, on e-commerce, on Facebook ads, on Shopify and you could get one of those courses. I'm not selling one to you now but I'm just saying that's where you'd wanna get that training is from somebody like me who actually made some money, who still makes money online because those people can teach you. Those people can give you that information but you're not gonna go to a standard university and learn that stuff. A standard university is gonna give you a piece of paper and say good luck. I don't know what the percentage of people who have a job when they come out or the people who even get a job if it's any better than when they went in. I don't know, I don't know that. You even look at a position nowadays when they come out, they make okay money. They don't make great money and their debt is unbelievable. So I don't even know if that's a good profession. You've got to decide all that. So to answer the question who should go and who shouldn't go, if you're gonna be practicing a profession that requires college to go, hands down. Don't do brain surgery without a medical degree. Now, the other group is if you're just going to college, you have no goal and then you just think I'm gonna get a college degree and get a job, you need to think again. You need to think about what kind of job you wanna get and see if there's a degree that'll help you get that job. Is it gonna be enough money? Will you make enough money when you get out to make up for all the years of loss that you were in college and all the debt that you're gonna incur? Will you ever make that up again? So those are things I think I would put on my plate. I don't think universities are dead, but I think the business model of going to school and getting a good job has long since died. I graduated in the 80s from college and there wasn't any great jobs then when you got out unless you had a profession. And I know in 2020 for a fact, most of the people that work at Starbucks, I go to have a college degree and one guy's got a master's degree and there's nothing wrong with Starbucks, but it doesn't take a college degree to work in Starbucks. It just doesn't. That's the point. Not that there's anything wrong with that job. Not that we don't need people in those jobs because we certainly do, but you've gotta consider all of these factors. Now, I also told you, I do have a course. It's a $97 course, which you can get it absolutely free for a limited time. It's in the description below there. Click and learn, freebie, right? No tuition for that. You don't even have to put in a credit card or anything, just click the link and you can learn from that. In addition to that, I want to remind you to subscribe and get that bell down there, turn on all notifications so that every time I do this video, you'll be part of the VIP Club Fisher Family. It gets notified as soon as I do a video. Make sure you do that. Super, super important. I also want to hear your comments. Are you in college? You thinking about college? Did you go to college? When you got out, what happened? What do you think's gonna happen? What kind of income do you think you're gonna earn? How much money do you owe? Put that below. I would love to see a whole stream of what people owe down here. That would be super interesting to me. What do you owe now that you got out of college? Or maybe you're halfway through and you already owe 50 grand. I would love to hear that. Not saying it's bad, not saying it's good. I'm saying take a strong look at it. Don't do what I did. Mine worked out okay. But don't do what I did and go into college with no clear path. It's just not the way to go about it. I really appreciate you watching this video. If you liked it, if you liked something about it, put your comments below. Give me a thumbs up and I will see you in the next video. I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there. Keep watching on my channel.