You Should Self-Educate
Have you ever thought about going back to get a degree in your topic here?
I have. Many times.
Yet, I have never been able to personally justify spending tens of thousands of dollars to get a formal degree that may or may not provide a return on that investment. I signed up to do an MBA program several years ago with the University of Illinois, but ended up never taking a single class when I found out that most graduates with that degree don’t make significantly more than their non-MBA degree holding peers.
I simply could not justify spending the money on a degree that wouldn’t necessarily net me any financial gain. Now, I am well aware that I would learn a lot - no doubt about it. But, here’s the thing… that same information is available to me, practically for free.
How, you might ask?
Well, first, you can certainly find syllabi online that outline the books MBA students are reading in their classes, then go buy the books yourself and gain the information for a much smaller investment. For that matter, you can borrow them from your local library or find a university library nearby and use their copies - 100% free of charge.
The main loss in doing so is the classroom discussion - but you can get some of that for free too, if you simply talk to others about the things you are reading and get their feedback and perspective. Combine those conversations with writing about what you’re learning and share it on the internet. Learning in public is a powerful thing.
At the end of the day, as much as I love post-secondary education and support anyone who wants to pursue a degree, I don’t believe it’s the only way we can grow and advance our careers (assuming you aren’t wanting to go into a very specialized field, like medicine, in which you most definitely need the degrees).
I’m living proof of that. I have been able to both change careers and advance within my career in a relatively short amount of time by self-educating and applying what I learn.
We are so blessed to live in a world that allows for knowledge to be so close. We are surrounded by it. All we have to do is look.
And we don’t have to spend a fortune doing so. Education can be affordable (even free) if you put forth the effort to self-educate.
There are so many free resources for gaining knowledge on practically any topic you could want to study. Public libraries alone offer nearly infinite knowledge. If they don’t have a specific book you are looking for on a topic, they can likely do an interlibrary loan and borrow it from another library on your behalf. They can point you to other resources on the topic as well. Often they’ll host career workshops and help you get connected with experts in the field you wish to study. All you have to do is ask.
In addition to libraries there are tools like YouTube that host videos on any topic you can imagine - again, for free. Depending on what your desired topic is, there’s a chance that you can receive training from the experts who teach at the universities you might want to attend… free of charge!
For instance, if you want to become a software engineer, no matter what your career is today, you can get the training via Free Code Camp, a non-profit educational resource that has been completely free since day one. It provides the very same training you can get from a computer science degree and many of the teachers are university professors and/or software engineers with decades of experience, working for the top companies in the world.
So, I encourage you to adopt a growth mindset and embrace self-education. Learning a new skill. Become a little better today than you were yesterday.
But most of all, enjoy the process of owning what content you are consuming by making it tailored to your personal goals.