"Not for business purposes. Better training will become more and more a necessity. The truth is, with most young men, a college education means that just at the time when they should be having business principles instilled into them, and be getting themselves energetically pulled together for their life's work, they are sent to college. Then intervenes what many a young man looks back on as the jolliest time of his life, - four years of college. Often when he comes out of college the young man is unfitted by this good time to buckle down to hard work, and the result is a failure to grasp opportunities that would have opened the way for a successful career.How very insightful these words sound as millions of kids are graduating from college with worthless degrees and no jobs waiting for them these days.
Well, if you're thinking how sexist this man is to talk only about men, please bear with me for a second. You might also think, in light of all the calamities surrounding the aforementioned problems with college graduates, that this was quoted out of a recent business magazine. But in fact, it's far from that.
This statement can be found in the book How They Succeeded and was uttered by Marshall Field, one of the richest businessmen in US history. He was born in 1835 according to the book (and 1834 according to Wikipedia) and was known for his Marshall Field's company and department stores, which continued to operate under this name until 2006 when they were renamed into Macy's by the new owners.
Today most people think acquiring a college degree is a necessity without even thinking about it much. College education is encouraged, subsidized, if not made outright free (of course, to the user, not to the taxpayer) by practically all governments. This is supposed to be the ideal, the way forward towards an enlightened, successful and technology driven society. Of course, when you make education free or below the market price, you are going to get more demand and college education is going to get more expensive and of lesser quality. People are going go to college who otherwise wouldn't or shouldn't. But here you have Field saying not only that not everyone should go to college, he is saying that it is detrimental to entrepreneurship and development. And being one of the most successful people in modern history, he should know a thing or two about success.
Marshall Field was a Merchant whose success is reportedly based on hard work, determination and honesty. In his own words, the qualities that make for success are honesty, energy, frugality and integrity. The phrase "the customer is always right" is apparently attributed to him. During his lifetime he gave in charity and donations one million dollars (given that in the last 100 years or so, the US dollar has lost ca. 95% of its value, this was a huge amount of money) to the Museum of Natural History which is now named after him and co-founded the University of Chichago with John D. Rockefeller (who, interestingly enough, also did not go to college). After his death an additional 8 million dollars went to the museum in accordance with his will. Apparently he was worth $150,000,000 when he died in 1906.
Matej Avsenak Ogorevc
Ni komentarjev:
Objavite komentar