Do you need college to learn anything??

It you ask me i didn't benefit from a college degree anytime. Infact a study says staggering no. Of 87% people don't benefit from education.

87% is a huge no. That can't be ignored but when it comes to employment education plays a major role in terms of identification of skills.

Many corporates in my opinion put up a board saying minimum degree qualifications required for hiring, but at the end in an given entry level interview in my view only 2% qualify out of any given no.

Hiring managers go through a tough time to find skills relevance based on education.

Elon Musk the CEO who is a self taught rocket engineer says college degrees are worthless, nobody gains any benefit from colleges, most of the things are available almost got free and online. Musk also complaints about having too many MBAs in the market who tend to lower the value of any work.

It's such a strange thing to hear from someone like Elon Musk who started companies like Tesla, SpaceX , Boring Company, OpenAI to name a few. In my opinion what Musk says is that education bounds your thought process and it limits your workability.

For example, A doctor who is a surgeon specialised in orthopedics is only limited to orthopedics related to problems but will.not be able to work on problems related to other ailments. Having a specialization is a good thing but the deeper you go in a subject that much supreme one would become but at the same time having information on other subjects can also make a difference, not only you gain new customers but also provide innovative solutions and gain more knowledge over various things which may ultimately enhance your level of thought process and to achieve that a person should be a self starter, self motivated and passionate about his vision about his life/career.

And vision, self motivation, passion are all skills which rank highest in terms of hiring in many companies like Musk says. 

A passionate person may go upto any extent to realize his passion all he has to do it have a vision and start working.

In my own personal experience this helped me get better, prepare for future, get skilled just in time, enhance my quality of work, thought process and become futuristic about the work, industry and ideas.

In today's world education has been almost free or for lowest cost possible. I'm not talking about the hefty fees that colleges levy but the same education is available online with same quality online.

Let's say, in engineering the average fee of 4 year course is upto 6-8 lakhs. And the skills candidates learn is almost nil to zero based on the comments made by many research companies. It's said that only top 4% of the candidates in engineering are fit for employment post education completion.

At the same time, tech training institutes are able to provide same education for lowest cost, quality content, placements opportunities and fee flexibility to be paid after placements is done.

It's a win win for both the company which is hiring, the training institute, and the candidates.

Not only engineering but the issue is with almost all the education courses at various levels. Be it Bcomz Bpharm, BA and what not.

The issue is with the candidates too and more importantly of parents who just go with the flow and entrust their children with the success they have seen with other people.

I believe every person is uniquez has unique skill set, unique abilities too which can be put to work once realised. Candidates do not work on realising their abilities or interests but get influenced by the market.

If porter's 5 forces model is to be believed they have to be a way out to create a strategy of creating an USP, and this more concerned with products. When a product can have a USP why not us, why not you??

Skill can be learnt through many ways, apprenticeship, practical working, trial and error methods, following the shadow of your successful people in your network, or online courses and even upskilling though major top institutes who offer high quality opportunities.

I've come across very many interesting people who have learnt their skills though exceptional ways, once I came across a candidate who was basically an electrician but he used to do engineering projects of students they had to complete their assignments. I wonder a candidate who is not even 12th pass, is able to complete an assignment of an engineering grade. I asked him how did he learnt it. He said he used to visit a shop nearby his home and requested the repairer that he'd just come and observe whatever he was doing from morning to evening. He did that for 5-6 months consecutively, and then he was able to learn through observations, his sheer passion, curiosity, learning agility had him earn his livelihood. 

There is another candidate I came across, while I was working on a new project in office which had been working on providing a platform for gym enthusiasts through enough support financially, imparting skills and with job opportunities too. One person who happens to be a son of a clerk and mother a home maker working in other people home washing utensils, he used to train people to become fit for getting selected through government police and army exams in physical fitness. He built up on his own and this freelancing effort helped him to create a livelihood which used to pay him very low but he was very happy with what he was doing co it's his passion that he is providing for others to enlighten them for getting on track for their careers.

That's the value of passion and enthusiasm, it's until 3-4 years that people realise their passions and work on them. Once you're in the right place where your mind wants to work, it doesn't make any difference for you whether you earn more or less or how manu hours you work how much ever you grow or not.

Growth and money in q job is important but the relevance of the skills you e got should be.more important with respect to the industry which you're in. Just like an mobile app which doesn't work upto the mark of not updated, how can a person with irrelevant skills learn. 

And our education doesn't work on updating its courses. After a span of 15-20 years education courses are being updated now whereas online institutes or independent colleges and even corporate companies have more relevant courses which is trusted by government companies that hire those candidates with optimum trust.

When you're passionate about your job you don't need a boss. Ogilvy in his book confessions of a advertising man said, "learn about your boss, learn about your boss's boss, meet your clients, meet the competitors, meet your customers, study your industry and understand how the work flows across industries do this for upto 1 year then congrats you're ready to take your boss position."

See such simple tasks help you gain superior quality content and knowledge when compared to your boss. It's with this issue many bosses show angriness on some set of employees. That's normal yet unacceptable.

For many people's interest I'm sharing a few names of the online website where you can learn skills and courses for almost free or lowest cost.... From websites like future learn, Coursera, Upstart, platforms based academies who teach their own platforms like Salesforce trailhead, Open SAP by SAP, Cloud Academy by Google cloud and AWS, are some of the many examples which provide such courses and training.

Although the skills are free to learn but are in requirement of practice to gain expertise in that area. Atleast a candidate can prepare to attend an exam to get certified too who knows he/she can land up a job too as there are too many case stories.

Remember that whenever a skill is new in demand or just sprouting up it's always available for free so that many people can gain access to it. Within no span of time the same skills becomes so deep that a new industry product is born initiating a fierce competition in that industry to impart learning.

It's said that 10,000 hours are required for learning a new thing but psychologically it takes 30 days to form a habit and it requires 30 days to learn a new skills too. If you're spending 45 minutes of 30 days every day you'll learn that skills within 30 days. Likewise you can learn 12 things in 12 months this way.

Reading a book is always impactful not because it's rich with information and experience of a person but because finishing reading a 250 page book requires 20-30 days minimum. This activity enhances the mindset and change develops and we tend to start thinking in a way as we read in the book. That's why reading a book is considered so much precious.

It's now obvious that it doesn't require a college to study anything or learn a new thing but still colleges are necessary to provide a stamp of approval for getting into a company. Few companies are breaking barriers of accepting certification less skilled candidates based in interview performance but the majority is tend to be increasing.

Companies find a way to itemise candidates in the basis of ciritical thinking, discipline, project work z clarity of thought, communication, and conceptual clarity with vision of the person as to why the person has learnt such a skills which will be aligned to the company's vision and goals for hiring.

Hope this helps you in deciding how to approach studies and skills. In my view learn as many skills as possible as innovation is important for future, and a mixture of multiple skills create innovation.

Learning never stops, one who stops learning it's like the end.