Authored by Daniel Ameduri via FutureMoneyTrends.com,

As I sat down to enjoy some smoked salmon at a recent BBQ I attended, I ended up at a table with two recent high school graduates.

To my disappointment, when I asked them what their plans were for the summer and beyond, both said they were heading to college.

With student loans and a wasteful four years in front of them, I couldn’t help but ask why.

Is there really anything that takes 4 to 8 years to learn or become an expert in?

Seriously, what a waste of time. Even Ham, the first ape that went into space, only trained for 2 years.

Colleges have convinced nearly everyone that you need a degree to be an effective employee or higher-income adult, but this is just not true.

I can tell you as an employer that I’ve never asked a single person what their grades were and I’ve never asked to see a degree.

The ugly truth is the ones with college degrees usually end up writing SEO articles for $15 an hour and the skilled workers who’ve been writing code as a hobby or editing videos for years on a MAC end up as managers making $75+ per hour.

Young people today who sign up for college are committing to 3 things.

1. Debt: It’s pure insanity that you’re required to pay for information that is freely available to all.

Think about it: a Google search, a 6-week or 6-month course, on the job training… All of these beat the price of college tuition.

Why anyone would borrow money for a college degree makes no sense. Unless the government has screwed your industry with a mandatory college degree in order to get some sort of license, like to practice medicine or law, what exactly is it that you need to pay the college for?

2. Four unproductive years: Ouch! One of the biggest negative effects is that you’re detouring a life for 4 full years or more.

It’s totally unnecessary at this point. When I was 18 years old, I made $55,000 while my peers sat in a classroom learning things that were forgotten before they even left the campus that day.

By the time I was 22 years old, instead of having a degree, I had made $260,000 working at a job for the past four years, I owned two businesses that cash-flowed, and I had over 10 rental properties, not including about $400,000 I had made from flipping homes as a side gig.

3. A workforce that isn’t there: Let’s be honest, colleges are preparing our young people for an economy that no longer exists!

We live in a global freelance economy. Employers want results for the lowest possible price, and they have the entire world to hire from.

The entitlement mindset and enormous false expectations a college puts in a person’s mind are only setting them up for failure.

Summary: The disservice in teaching people that education comes only from school has put millions of families in debt.

The college bubble — both the 1.2 trillion worth of student loans and the lie that you need a degree — is literally coming apart at the seams.

If you know a young person, help them get ahead by not going to college.