> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…
The first bit is too similar to what a typical college kid would go through in India. My assumption was that this would NOT be the case in the USA. You hear about kids dropping out and starting startups, or people just skipping college to work on what they like, or kids joining trade schools to get into welding. Isn't this the norm in the USA / most of the developed world ?? Your comment confirms the same thing.. you…
College is expensive, but it's nowhere near as expensive as the high private university tuitions you read about ($200K+). Most people have access to state universities that are much cheaper. Even at private universities most students are on sliding scale payments with scholarships. It's common for 10-20% or more of a university's students to be paying effectively $0 tuition.
While you definitely can skip college and still have a good career, the trades never really pay as well as internet lore suggests and the number of people who start startups and succeed is very small.