I loved university. Studying physics, universities are about the only places to learn it. I value university for many things. They do a lot of valuable things better than any other institution or alternatives—the hard sciences, for example.

It’s not right for everyone and it does some things terribly.

Places other than universities do some non-academic activities so much better than school.

Experiential learning—how I teach leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, and hustling—is so much more effective at teaching leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, and hustling, than traditional, lecture-based education, that you could consider the latter counterproductive.

Moreover, experiential courses where students create major projects can sometimes lead them to their life’s great passion.

I spoke with such a guy the other day. The first experiential class he took led him to start a project that ended up becoming his career.

Do you know why he took only one class like that?

Because he left university to live his life passionately before he could.

I see students in my courses seeing choices like that, realizing that they can create a life they love based on self-awareness, depth of knowledge, and so forth, while traditional university gives them

• Abstract information instead of personal growth
• Analysis instead of creating meaning, value, importance, and purpose
• Following others instead of taking initiative.

They see overwhelming numbers of college graduates who chose abstract information flailing in careers and struggling to find meaning in working for others, helping them achieve their dreams and conclude that school will take them down the wrong course.

I’d rather see universities deliver more meaning and fewer facts. We’ll see how fast they change. In the meantime, I recommend my courses.

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