Six years ago, I almost dropped out of university.
Now, I’m often asked for advice by students who are thinking about doing the same.
In 2015, I started a company before enrolling at Oxford: we launched our product, raised a bit of money, hired a few people. The startup was growing, but it wasn’t anything crazy. We weren’t doing great at school either: we were mostly focused on what we were building.
That didn’t leave much time for following our curiosity wherever it took us.
To do either well, we soon arrived at a crossroad: give up on the startup and focus on studying or drop out, in order to have a real chance of building something people wanted.
The details aren’t worth going into this time, but long story short, we ended up half-a**ing both things.
I don’t regret having pushed on through my degree, nor do I regret having started the business, but I do feel like I didn’t give myself a proper chance to do either well. Today, I’m still not sure about what I should have done, but it definitely should have involved being more radical!
At the time, I felt a strong urge to build something, and had the impression that the time was now or never.
But I also genuinely enjoyed most of what I was studying. For some reason however, learning for its own sake just didn’t feel like enough.
Few things are cooler though & I’m glad I now appreciate that again.
Most of the most fascinating (young) people I know are learning things for the sake of learning. Their curiosity led them to see the world under a unique light, and they went on to build incredible things.
It can be in VR for Max, painting for Lou, nature-inspired materials for Louis, or mice brains for Elisa. Sometimes it was within academic institutions, sometimes outside - but that was secondary: the learning was the end, the rest was just means.
Dropout fetish wasn’t as prevalent in Europe as it is now. Like many trends, the hype reaches a peak before stabilising at a new equilibrium and we’re probably nearing that peak.
The initial premise of the movement is true: not everyone needs a four-year degree to find a job, nor does it offer any kind of guarantee anymore. It also probably doesn’t make much sense for anyone to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on those degrees & student debt levels in the US have reached absurd levels.
All this will become even more true in the coming years. However, as serious alternatives continue to emerge, less people will feel forced to start, and so fewer will be tempted to stop.
More ways of learning are becoming “prestigious” and this is something to be celebrated. You can complete advanced courses in any discipline on Coursera, or pursue infinite rabbit holes on YouTube. In many circles, admittance to YC is now more valued as a brand than any MBA. Cohort-based courses like Maven or OnDeck, are making high-quality training & networks accessible to the many at a fraction of the price of incumbent alternatives.
For now, the majority of the people who participate in these are college graduates - very soon however, they will be a credible & recognised option for everyone. This will provide healthy competition to institutions who haven’t changed much to what they offer students in centuries. It will also be an additional step in facilitating the explosion of weirdness.
I’m incredibly excited by the prospects offered by this plurality of methods of learning, networking & ultimately signalling. People being able to pursue their curiosity is a great way to advance our collective knowledge as well as cultural & economic wealth.
As more signals become valuable and academic institutions lose their monopoly as a gateway to exciting career prospects, the question for the would-be dropout has changed. Now, it should probably just boil down to: where is your curiosity taking you?
Sometimes that path will best be served by universities, sometimes it won’t, maybe it will bring you to start a company or it might not. But as a young person, before rushing into any decision, that’s probably the first question you should ask yourself.
If you’re asking yourself questions about dropping out, wondering about what to study, currently studying and thinking about building a startup, about to graduate and unsure about what you want to do - I’d love to have a chat! Some of our most successful founders built their startups right out of university & some didn’t go to university at all! You can also apply for our September batch here. Looking forward to hearing from you!