Don’t go to an Ivy League school

People brag about their kids going to Harvard. The famed Ivy League. Uh. The whole industry of schools that cost $70,000 per year — putting students into literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt which you can’t even declare bankruptcy against — had been built around playing on our innate desire to seek approval from our parents.

“My kid is going to Harvard. Wow,” parents think.

“I’m going to Harvard. Wow,” kids think. Then, after several months, “I am in Harvard. Eh…is that it?”

I didn’t go to Harvard — although I was accepted to Stanford — I went to a pretty expensive school in Boston. It cost my father $68,000 per year. My family was roughly and singlehandedly financing an entire professor’s salary.

As I went from class to class, looking at other kids whose parents also sent them to study the most pointless subject in the Universe — ‘business’ — I couldn’t stop thinking, “What was my family paying for?” The campus looked more like a daycare for young adults. Students were generously fed three times a day, had only 2–3 classes per day, and spent most of our time alone jerking off in their rooms. And this, I should point out, was the #1 business school in the country. (No wonder there are so many narcissistic morons making the world a better place from their glass-window offices in Silicon Valley.)

Needless to state, I dropped out seven months in. But five years later, today, I am considering going back to school. And because I’ll have to pay for my education this time around — I am an adult now and, well, my father refused to pay for my education any further after my bold move of buying a one-way ticket to Moscow — I am choosing a school differently now.

For starters, I don’t believe one should study in the U.S.. It’s outrageously expensive and not worth it. One year in my college costs more than the entire BA degree at London School of Economics. (And my college sucks compared to LSE!) The UK and Europe have roughly the same level of higher education at a fraction of the cost.

Second, when you study fundamental subjects like Literature, History, Philosophy, etc. — which you always should — instead of practical (fake) subjects like business, marketing, or journalism — it matters less where you go to and more who teaches you. I remember visiting a community college where my acquantance studied and was surprised — nonplussed! — by the level of education and the quality of…