The Value of Practical Education vs. Traditional College Degrees (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I believe in education. I believe in knowing more tomorrow than I knew today. You get education, of course, a lot of different ways, and a good way to get a good education, as we call it, is to get a good college degree. We've lost our minds, though, on this college stuff, and people go out and spend $150,000 in student loan debt to get a PhD in German polka history or some such crap, right? And so people get these degrees that are useless, they study these mundane, obtuse things that don't have anything to do with anything, and it's giving a college education a bad name. So I don't have anything against a college education. I did get a funny, funny, funny thing in from Dan Miller a few minutes ago. Dan Miller of 48 Days to the Work You Love, he said, Dave, in my continued research into how education is changing, it became clear this is not exactly a new idea. In 1744, when George Washington was just a 12-year-old boy, the collected chiefs of the Indian nations met to discuss a letter from the College of William and Mary, suggesting they send 12 of their young men to college that they might be taught to read and write. The chiefs sent, the Indian chiefs, sent the following reply, we know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you meant to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things, and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen to not be the same with yours. We have some experience of it. Several of our young men were formally brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces. They were instructed in all your sciences, but when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our languages imperfectly, and therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors. They were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged to your kind offer, though we decline accepting it. And to show our grateful sense of it, the gentlemen of Virginia will, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all that we know, and make men of them. Oh, that's just wonderful. It's absolutely fabulous. Send your college boys over here, and we will make men of them. The first time that the frat boys were insulted right there. I love it. 1744. You believe that date? And the language. You have to love the language. Absolutely amazing. Someone was obviously trained in the English language and well. Fabulous stuff. You guys would be so rich so fast, and be able to do so much, not only for yourselves and for your family, but for others.