Following on from yesterday, I’ll use myself as an example again. Going back to my educational roots, no one in the system ever really sought to question why I was a poor student by their standards, and had a bad attitude to boot. Their goals were to insure they could not be blamed for my lack of caring, or assuring they could duck any finger pointed at them, writing me off as incorrigible at best. Yet, they couldn’t explain, no matter, why I did so well on their written tests.
Now, my first time around at the college level, I had a good job besides. And in fact, thought I had a good employment future to boot. So, I cared quite little about who won the Peloponnesian War or that tuna didn’t come from Tunisia. In fact, I thought tuna came from a deli –on rye. So, I soon dropped out of school.
But, then, I ran into problems. After I got married my father-in-law couldn’t cope with having a successful, but non-formally educated clod wed to his daughter. So he pressured me every chance he got, which was often, to finish my schooling. At the time I was in sales, selling fork lift trucks, and who did I encounter one day? None other than my former pool-playing and basketball partner Mike F. from CCNY.
Among other things Mike brought me up to date on was that he was attending college, downtown at NYU. So, I did some research on the school, thought going there might make some sense, and applied. When they turned me down in a heartbeat, I liked them even better, because they’d demonstrated good sense. I wouldn’t have let me in either. But, being in sales and persistent, I tried to negotiate a deal.
In time, the arrangement they finally agreed to was that I would take a series of courses, and if I achieved particular pre-established grades, they’d let me matriculate, they’d also let me keep the grade-points toward a degree. The courses were a mix of business and liberal arts, with no sleep-through “gut” classes in the list.
Now that I had a challenge on the line, and a huge goal at the end (quieting my father-in law) I actually hit the books. The result was all aces, an “A” in every single course. Soon after that, I met another guy, Eddie B, whose situation was similar to mine. Married, carrying a full course load on top of a job and still earning top grades, he’d applied for a scholastic scholarship and won it, suggesting I try the same.
So, I wound up pleasing everyone in the loop, including myself, and had a series of scholarship grantors paying my freight to boot.
But, what really allowed much of this to happen? And this is where education comes in. Most importantly, I think was that I really wanted to go to school this time around, regardless of the reason. But, that wasn’t enough. To be taught properly, you need real educators and that’s what I got at NYU downtown at Washington Square.
Sure, there were a few “Professors” who thought they were teaching liberal arts under a tree or on the lawn at Harvard, Princeton or Yale. But you could suck it up, grit your teeth and get through their elitist babble with good grades; after all, although those guys were pompous, they were only glorified teachers, so how clever could they be? Not very. What’s more, they had no street-smarts, they were PhD’s. So I survived them too, especially because a full-scholarship hung in the balance.
The real education, though, was on the business side, where the folks, from instructors on up, usually worked the trade they taught and succeeded in the toughest market in the world, Manhattan. And that made them actual, productive, experts in the most competitive arena there is, as well as scholars. Most of them even spoke the same business language I did. So, on top of all else, I respected and liked them.
In some advanced classes there weren’t even texts. For example, the guy who taught top-level classes in advertising was a full professor indeed; but he became one simply because he liked to teach. His real everyday job though was running a couple of key accounts for a major ad firm, where he handled clients like Coke and Buick.
Now, would you rather learn from some ivory tower intellect turning pages from the age old text he wrote or had ghosted by some MBA candidate, or have your professor say “Okay guys, here’s what we did at the office this afternoon. It’s a new campaign that’ll sell a billion dollars worth of stuff for Revlon, and here’s how I won the account. So, get out your notebooks.”
Throughout my studies at NYU, one thing became crystal clear. The school was so good and the education so valuable because the goal on both sides of the coin was learning itself. There was a caring, meaningful effort to get something worthy accomplished, not a conveyor belt designed to push as many bodies through as possible. And, if anyone, staff, student or whoever else in the loop couldn’t hack it they were toast in a New York minute. Beyond that, if you did blow out for whatever reason, whether faculty or student, nobody cared. There were plenty of others waiting who’d kill for the chance to take your place.
So, in that way, I think my original point gets validated. When people want to accomplish there’s a good chance they can do it. Even me. If they care and strive, perhaps get help where it’s needed, they can win. But, when an educational system’s in place that has no objective other than an annual increase in budget, and the hang-dog go through the motions attitudes are obvious from miles away, how can any student be motivated to accomplish anything, except for those few who stimulate themselves? Unless it’s a foreign émigré who’d crawl through burning coals for a chance to succeed in the USA, much less do their homework.
In the end though, I truly believe that no matter the quality of business education, it’s an enhancement at best, and certainly not an answer to success. Because, as I wrote above, when I attended college the second time to get my degree, I was also selling fork lift trucks. I owned a home, had two cars and a swimming pool and still in my twenties was earning substantially more than any of the academics who were “teaching” me. By American standards, that’s a big bite of the dream.
Beyond that, up to and including a senior vice presidency at AT&T Capital Corporation, managing and responsible for a staff of 125 salespeople across the nation, I recall many potential and eventual employers diligently combing my business track record and credentials. Yet, I don’t remember a single one asking me if or where I ever went to college.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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