University education is dying out- 3 skills 3 ways to prepare your children for the Future
30 years ago the advice was to go to college, get a degree and find a good company to work for 25+ years and secure a pension.
As a millennial my generation, like Gen Xer were told get a Bsc, graduate with high scores and life would be great and for boomers who told that to their kids, it was good advice based on their experience.
Today a Master’s Degree is what a Bachelor’s degree used to be and even at that jobs are still uncertain and many people find themselves in careers unrelate to their degree due to desperation for a job, pivoting or the choice to pursue a passion instead.
With the way the world is going, a parent should aim that their child before they turn 18 should have three income-generating skills; Cerebral, Vocational, creative.
Now depending on their interests and strength, it may vary between:
Amateur: They are ok, good enough for Hobby Level, volunteer work.
Professional: Can do it at a good competent commercially viable manner.
Mastery: Michelin Star level, the person who can charge 7 figures for a few hours of their service/craft
Regardless of what they’ll study in Uni, it can be a side business after graduation or a source of income while studying.
Many graduates are “useless” and have a form of learned helplessness, if not put in a 9–5 and unemployment is becoming rampant as layoffs are becoming the norm and WFH is changing business models.
Many O levels subjects can be learned from a series of podcast episodes or several seasons of a documentary series and many of those topics are of no use in everyday or work life.
How often do you apply learning the anatomy of a grasshopper or yardangs in your daily life?
Even if they never use it to generate income they’ll be interesting hobbies to have, use around the home, bond with their kids as they pass it on, use for charitable donations and service to organisations and causes they support, plus a lot of relationships can be cultivated while learning these skills.
The world is changing and the old ways of learning or what we are supposed to learn to earn a living and be a productive member of society are done.
There are YouTubers in their 20s, teaching, instructing and holding the attention of millions of subscribers globally in a way many tenured professors don’t (asides maybe Jordan Peterson). Just 20 years ago this wasn’t conceivable.
Let’s prepare our sons, daughters, nieces and nephews for the future.
