Did your college major help your startup at all?

[PixelRocket]

I'm always interested in who actually used what they learned from college when starting a company, or if they thought it was useful at all. I think there's a great argument for both sides, but I am interested in the responses from this forum.

Thanks!

[Fulcrum]

Currently, not at all. Down the road possibly as I look to building some custom machinery. I took robotics and automation processes, but all my equipment currently is manual.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Not at all, though I'm probably not a good specimen since I quit college after a semester. I can't point at a person I know personally in my field whose field-related college major has actually helped them. Of course, this is a fast-moving field, and one of the reasons I quit college was because the curriculum was 4-5 years behind what was then-current technology and best practices.

I also know very few successful business people with business degrees. Many of the "rules" taught in business courses don't apply that well in the real-world; the rules are written around idealized scenarios. The foundation of success - the ability to identify what you don't know - is not something that can be taught.

However, I'm the type that learns best on their own, and I actively seek out the resources I need. That sort of personality doesn't do well in a structured-learning environment.

[Harold Mansfield]

Nope. Not one bit. I also didn't take many business classes either.
I was resigned to the fact that I'd be a worker looking for a good job just like everyone else. So I took courses designed to teach me how to be an employee...like most college courses.

[David Hunter]

No college degree here, and I'm proud of it!

[billbenson]

I think college at 18 is a learning process and a maturing process. Military could be as well. The best thing I got from college is learning how to learn. I have an engineering degree but never really worked as an engineer. It did get me my first job though. I'm a career sales guy but it helped me to sell technical stuff.

Knowledge is knowledge. You can get that on your own, through formal education, whatever. And some people do need the structure of a formal education just like some people need the structure of a job and most of us here can work on our own.

So is it necessary - no depending on the person. Is there anything wrong with it (except for the cost), no.

[Wozcreative]

My college major was corporate branding.. so yes it has :), however I needed about 4 - 5 years of work experience after 3 years of college to start a business.

[Paul]

Anything you learn is beneficial even if it’s not directly related to your business. Sometimes you may not even realize the knowledge you use in your business. Basic economics, math and business law courses may not make you an expert BUT they give you a base of knowledge that’s relevant to almost any business.
History and literature may not be as relevant but still can be useful.

The problem for some people with a formal business education is sometimes it can “box in your” brain when it comes to entrepreneurship. Sometimes they can’t grasp the concept of a business unless it fits into a business model they learned in school. They learn how to administer business functions but are clueless on how to develop a business.

Entrepreneurs and business owners have to deal with the reality of every aspect of their business. They have to be creative, motivated and a bit of a rebel. Employees only have to deal with their jobs particular responsibilities. That’s why highly educated people often end up working for less educated business owners.

Part of the plot in the old Rodney Dangerfield comedy “Back to School” was about the conflict between the college professor and his business “theories” and the successful business person’s “realities’. It was funny, but had some truth to it.

[Harold Mansfield]

Back in [my first] college I was a horrible student. It's not that I couldn't do the work, it was just hard to know what the work was when you never went to class. Turns out college is not a vacation. Who knew?

Anyway...one of the few times that I did go to class..some English class, the instructor knew that I was never there (Friday, 8 a.m.) and decided to test me by asking me a question about the reading that I was supposed to do.

I, of course didn't read it and tried to bs my way through it. He looked at me, told me to close my book and look at the cover. He was the author.
If college taught me nothing else, that one day, on a Friday with a hangover, I learned not to open my mouth unless I knew what I was talking about.

That one lesson has helped me my entire life. And it only cost me $20,000.

I did give college another shot and did end up graduating, but I've never been a sound engineer nor have I ever produced, directed or edited any film or video.
But learning those skills before there was even an internet as we know it now, does help me with web development today.
However, none were more important than that first lesson.

My point?

You can't teach drive, determination, sheer will, and hard work. I work hard at it because I never want to be caught talking and not knowing what I'm talking about. And when you know what you're talking about, people will pay you for it.

So I guess college did help me in a way.

[Freelancier]

First of all, anyone can start a company, you don't need a degree for that. However, most companies fail in the first five years, so what's your fallback plan? Usually, it's working for someone else for a while until you have the cash to try again. So if you go to interview for a job and you're up against others who have a degree, you're suddenly at a disadvantage. Unless you have a lot more work experience and references. But if you're asking about college, that means you likely don't have much experience at all. So you're starting out making a decision that might disadvantage you.

Did my degrees help me? Sure. I learned a lot of interesting tech things with my first degree way back when, and then I went back 15 years after that and got an MBA to help me learn the business side of things. Of course, the learning never stops if you want to stay ahead of the competition. And some people are just terrible at school and have their own way of learning, but it still counts for something if you can sit in classrooms for 4+ years and come out with a good GPA and some working knowledge of the field you want to work in.

Is it expensive? It certainly can be. In fact, right now you could say that we're in an "education pricing bubble". That just means you have to wisely choose the school and the curriculum you will study to maximize your value.

[Brian Altenhofel]

So if you go to interview for a job and you're up against others who have a degree, you're suddenly at a disadvantage.

Only in some fields.

[Freelancier]

Only in some fields.
Well, sure if you want to teach rock climbing, having a degree doesn't matter so much. If you want to own a coffee shop, it doesn't matter so much. But having one of those types of companies fail... that just leaves you back at square one.

As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer fields where having a degree isn't going to be a "checkbox item" for finding a job. And the OP didn't say what he was planning to do for his company, so I made some assumptions about his trade-off between college and starting his own company. One of the assumptions was that college and then finding a job based on that degree was a reasonable alternative to starting a company that did a similar thing as the job.

[Paul]

Another reason for getting a degree is if you ever need to deal with investors. Unless you can really impress them otherwise they won’t take a young person without some type of education seriously.

Basic business course knowledge is important just to be able to have a discussion with investors. If you don’t know the difference between margin and markup or can’t read or prepare a basic financial statement or do some math on the fly they won’t have much confidence no matter how great your idea is. At least take a few basic courses to be at least minimally versed in some basic business knowledge.

Not every business needs investors to start but knowledge helps.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Basic business course knowledge is important just to be able to have a discussion with investors. If you don’t know the difference between margin and markup or can’t read or prepare a basic financial statement or do some math on the fly they won’t have much confidence no matter how great your idea is. At least take a few basic courses to be at least minimally versed in some basic business knowledge.

None of that requires college courses. All of that is important whether or not you're looking for investors. By and large, investors don't care about educational credentials - they care about probable ROI.

[Paul]

True, you can learn all that without college. You can take courses elsewhere or learn in the workplace.

But, for investors management can be a main consideration. Credentials can matter very much. You can have the greatest idea ever, but if they don't have confidence that you are capable of implementing the plan they will not invest. Depending on the business they will expect different levels of capabilities.

Credentials can be prior business or employment experience, but otherwise all they have to consider is educational credentials. In any case, no matter how you learned it, you need to be reasonably versed in business basics to run almost any business.

[huggytree]

common sense and knowing/reading people is more important than any degree in my opinion....book smarts is nice, but ive known MANY very smart people who graduated college on the Deans list who are miles behind me in life.....they are great at memorizing things from a book, but dont have basic common sense and are not able to think things through

[billbenson]

common sense and knowing/reading people is more important than any degree in my opinion....book smarts is nice, but ive known MANY very smart people who graduated college on the Deans list who are miles behind me in life.....they are great at memorizing things from a book, but dont have basic common sense and are not able to think things through

Huggy, read through the posts above. Of the people with degrees, I don't think anyone said it directly affected their long term career. However, nobody said it had a negative affect on their long term career either.

Different people learn and work in different ways. Take my wife for example. She is very smart. However, she would fail in self employment. She needs the structure of someone managing her. School is the same thing. She needs the structure of someone managing her education.

You also went to higher education, you just don't realize it. I assume when you were working for someone else learning your trade, you had people teaching you how to do stuff that is part of what you do today. You probably had people show you things that were incorrect. You were smart enough to figure out that what you were shown that was incorrect could be better done another way.

Guess what. You were in school. You also walked away with a degree! Master Plumber if I recall correctly.

Also, guess what. You really don't know squat when you come out of college. It does show that you were smart enough to make it through college though, which employers like. A college degree is a license to learn in most cases.

[Brian Altenhofel]

ive known MANY very smart people who graduated college on the Deans list who are miles behind me in life.....they are great at memorizing things from a book, but dont have basic common sense and are not able to think things through

This.

College is about handing out sheets of paper for cash. It's not about education.

One place where that is very evident is traditional news media. The only reason I read or pay attention to traditional news media any more is for entertainment. The entertainment comes from reading the bios of reporters that have Journalism (or related English/Writing degrees) and graduated at the top of their class, yet can't seem to demonstrate a third grader's grasp on sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary in their writing.

With current tuition and fee structures designed to force you into student loans (if you don't have the means available upfront to pay in cash), it is even less worthwhile except in fields where the degree is required by law. If someone is going into a field where average pay is ~$50K/yr and they spend $10K/semester on a degree, that looks more like a sign that someone lacks the ability to plan ahead and think critically.

Of course, I'm making some assumptions about context based on the OP signature.

[Millettech]

If you are looking for learning something exactly or practical, like how to drive a piledriver or to be a waitress, then I don't think schools will be as good as practical hands-on. But what college education can offer is a comprehensive knowledge in a field and changing your the way you see and think. It would be more potential rather than being practically efficient.

[KristineS]

The first time I went to college (and didn't graduate) college wasn't very useful at all. I was young and didn't know what I wanted and mostly went to college because it was expected of me. I did take some good classes and learned some things, but mostly it was fairly useless. The second time I went to college (and got my degrees) it was while working a full time job. I took classes at night and on weekends. The University Center in my town offered degree programs from several of the universities in my state, so I was able to find degree programs that worked for me and made sense. I know having my degrees was instrumental in getting me considered for my Director of Marketing position, so in that sense it helped. What I did after I got the job was up to me.

[Fulcrum]

If you are looking for learning something exactly or practical, like how to drive a piledriver or to be a waitress, then I don't think schools will be as good as practical hands-on. But what college education can offer is a comprehensive knowledge in a field and changing your the way you see and think. It would be more potential rather than being practically efficient.

I do believe that one has to go to a heavy equipment school to be qualified on a pile driver. The same goes for any heavy equipment, forklifts, scissor lifts, etc.

[Brian Altenhofel]

I do believe that one has to go to a heavy equipment school to be qualified on a pile driver. The same goes for any heavy equipment, forklifts, scissor lifts, etc.

Not in all jurisdictions.

[Fulcrum]

Not in all jurisdictions.

That's surprising.

[samfisher]

It has helped but that depends on how well you can relate real life situations and apply learned theories to solve them.
It is more about the ability of a person to choose the right trick from the basket of learning to a particular problem.
This is a skill and not many can do that.:)

[billbenson]

It's when someone comes along and says education has zero value that I strongly disagree with. In many cases, your time may be better spent learning a trade. But that is education. Education is never bad. As I said in a post above, college may assist in the maturing process of some kids. It also teaches you how to learn. It may not be the best choice in many situations, but it is never a bad choice (unless you do something stupid like put yourself in incredible college debt, but you don't have to go to Yale to learn).

[Harold Mansfield]

It's when someone comes along and says education has zero value that I strongly disagree with. In many cases, your time may be better spent learning a trade. But that is education. Education is never bad. As I said in a post above, college may assist in the maturing process of some kids. It also teaches you how to learn. It may not be the best choice in many situations, but it is never a bad choice (unless you do something stupid like put yourself in incredible college debt, but you don't have to go to Yale to learn).

Exactly. People who don't have a formal education and tout that you don't need one to be successful, always neglect to take into consideration all of the books, and blog posts that they have read. Seminars they have listened to. Mentors who taught and helped along the way. Lawyers and Accountants that have guided them. Employees that they've learned from and so on.

They may not have had the education when they started, but they got it along the way or else they would have failed quickly. You can't be an idiot who knows nothing about your craft, marketing, taxes, legalities, customer service, the web, finances, and everything else that you need to know and just wing it with street smarts.