Is College a Waste of Time?

Recently I read an article by Dale J. Stephens is a 19-year-old entrepreneur leading UnCollege, a social movement supporting self-directed higher education and building RadMatter, a platform to demonstrate talent. His opinion about the higher education is that in majority of cases it is not worth it and he strongly believe that higher education is broken and college is a waste of time. (please see link for full article:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-03/opinion/stephens.college_1_student-loan-debt-college-graduates-richard-arum?_s=PM:OPINION )

I do not agree with Dale J. Stephens’s belief that higher education is broken. I would like to compare higher education with a very long highway which has some segments that are broken but other than those segments, the whole road is in good condition and the road (higher education) provides a suitable conduit for fast track movement.

I don’t agree that failure is punished, instead it reminds us a very important real life marketing lesson that in order to remain competitive our product should be of superior quality. Education always provides a learning opportunity, but it is highly dependent on an individual that how would one like to take it.

College equips us with the skills rather than frameworks. College (education) prepares us with skills that we should use to be creative rather than use those skills as framework, try to fit every problem in those frame works and blame the system for its inefficiency.

I disagree that learning by doing is the best way, instead learning by smartly doing is the best way to turn constant iteration into true innovation and education provides one with the skill sets to perform a task smartly.