Don't Go Back to School: Kickstarter to fund a book about self-education

Kio Stark, co-author of the Cult of Done manifesto, debut novelist, and instructor on the uses of technology in interactions with strangers, is running a Kickstarter fundraiser for her newest project, Don't Go Back to School, a collection of memoirs from people who succeeded without university degrees. She's interviewed me for the book already:

Don’t Go Back to School is a handbook for independent learning that shows you how to learn almost anything without school. If you’re thinking about going back to school or about the possibility of self-taught learning, read this book first! Don’t Go Back to School will help you figure out if you can do it on your own—and it’ll show you how. It might just save you a gazillion dollars in tuition fees, and spare you the yoke of student loans for years to come.

In Don’t Go Back to School, I’ll deconstruct the basic infrastructure that school provides—things like resources, expertise, evaluation, and a learning community. And I’ll profile fascinating, self-taught people, showcasing the practical ways they meet those needs. I’ve already talked to people like Cory Doctorow about learning to be a working writer, Dan Sinker about learning to code, Quinn Norton about learning neurology and psychology as a science writer, and a dozen others so far, with many more interviews planned.

Don't Go Back to School

• [machinelf]

  “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”  –Frank Zappa

• [anharmyenone]

  Let us be a world full of 7 billion educators, educating ourselves and each other. There will always be need for paid professional educators, but each of us is or can be an educator too, educating ourselves and each other. Let that be part of our self-identity. Let us all say “I am an educator.”

• [Florian Braun]

  While you may be able to learn most things you can learn in college by studying on your own people don’t generally believe you. As unfair as it is an ignoramus with a degree will have an easier time finding employment than a smart person who learned it all themselves.

  It may not be fair, but there is a rather strong bias towards hiring people with credentials over those who don’t have them.
   It may be better to acquire knowledge on your own but its hard to prove that is what happened. Universities don’t sell an education, they sell you a seal of approval, and like it or not, much is measured by that.

  Edit: Also, outliers aside, it is still statistically better for your income potential to get a degree, even counting student loans.

  • [Sekino]

    It’s true that if one wants to become an accountant for a big box company, or some administrative job, they’ll need their degree.

    But in several fields, there is less of a need for ‘official’ credentials and more appreciation for creativity and initiative. For instance, I’ve radically changed careers in the past, going from being a gemologist in a jewellery store to web programming. I basically walked to a bookstore, bought a $10 book on programming and got to work. A year and a half later, I got hired by a small web company on account of my portfolio alone. Sure, I didn’t make $80 000 a year, but I made way more than my retail job (with much better hours and benefits) and it was way more enjoyable and exciting. The experience also gave me more self-confidence and initiative so I eventually started working freelance in illustration, the work I had always wanted to do. Again, not a millionaire but doing what I love and for a better pay than most slave-wage jobs out there anyway.

    The ‘self-taught’ notion isn’t about eliminating conventional schooling altogether. It’s about offering more options to people who may not have the money and/or schedule to ‘go back to school’. It also seeks to give people self-starting tools so that they can make changes in their own lives without always depending on outside, predefined systems to do so.

    Besides, the only way we can move beyond this pervasive ‘papers over actual knowledge’ trend is by having more people taking different roads and succeeding on their own terms (by that I mean not defining ‘success’ only with a big degree for some big position in a big company).

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      It’s true that if one wants to become an accountant for a big box company…

      In one of my design studio classes, the instructor had us go around the room and give a brief life history. After my drag queen/revolutionary/LSD/Third World travel bio, he said, “That’s a very hire-able resumé for a designer.”

• [nixiebunny]

  It’s a lot easier to learn when you have serious motivation. I used to be a digital logic designer, because I really wanted to make computers. I dropped out of college to pursue computer design, which wasn’t being taught very well at my school at the time. I was building computers for mirror-grinding machines for grad students as a dropout. This was back in 1981, before the IBM PC was available. I parlayed this job into a high-paying industrial computer design job.

  Then one day my wife suggested that I could build a clandestine radio station, and I learned RF and audio electronics in the following years in order to build a better FM transmitter system than what was available to hobbyists at the time. The result was a wonderful pirate radio station that people still talk glowingly about 10 years later.

  Then I wanted to make a Nixie tube wristwatch, and taught myself mechanical design and CAD in order to make the metal watch case. That took a couple years.

  When I need college-math-type questions answered at my university job, I have coworkers with advanced degrees who can help out. Good for them!

• [Brainspore]

  There are plenty of upsides to being self-taught depending on what field you’re going into, but one common downside is that you may not have someone to tell you why your idea might be wrong. Think Glenn Beck’s history courses or all those would-be engineers who keep trying to build “free energy” machines.

• [sarah_no_cal]

  Reading someone else’s book about how to do something is not my definition of “self taught”.

  • [Bryce Anderson]

    Then your definition of “self-taught” is too narrow, because 99 out of 100 self-taught people relied on some book or other.  Stick to definitions that allow you to converse with the rest of humanity, even if they annoy your inner pedant.

• [Tonweight]

  I endorse this concept wholeheartedly.  As a self-taught “computer guy,” I can attest to the age/education gap first-hand, especially in the software world:  only after I hit 24-26 did folk start taking me seriously (without me jumping through needless hoops to prove I wasn’t some llama/n00b).  Now that I’m closing in on 40, it’s like I don’t even have to try – I’m considered even over folk WITH the degree, just because I’ve now around 15 years in the industry:  I have seven different programming languages on my résumé, four OSs, and most of the accompanying software and quirkiness (among myriad other skills and accomplishments). Certainly not impossible for a student/recent grad, but generally less likely.

  What it really comes down to, at the final accounting, is APPLIED knowledge:  what can you actually DO with these things you claim you KNOW.  It’s what’s really (and sadly) missing from much of the USA’s educational system.  On exams that draw upon the fundamental lessons inherent in the material, it’s not the kids who can remember the answer from last week’s review, but the kids who understand those fundamental lessons that can show they really KNOW stuff.

  While access to domain masters, equipment and facilities, funding, and that sort of thing is sometimes very useful – like at Brown with the Cybernetics research, a program to which I applied and was denied due to “no educational background”… jerks – I’m pretty sure that, given enough time and personal funding, I could probably manage some neat man-machine experiments in my basement anyway.

  Anyway – enough rambling.  It’s a good “idle chatter” topic, for sure.  

  TL;DR:  self-motivated learning = defines awesome; educational system = useful, but ultimately less awesome, IMO.

• [Joe The Wizard]

  Is that a baby or a piglet making sounds in the background? Either way, I bet it’s adorable.

• [Sean Raleigh]

  It goes without saying that of all adults without a college degree, a certain percentage will be “successful” anyway. But extracting some anecdotal experiences from that group might give a false impression of the probability of success for an arbitrary member of that population.

  I’m all for pursuing intellectual interests, with or without a college degree. But let’s not mislead people into believing that we live in a world that will treat people without a degree the same as people with a degree.

  • [Sekino]

    Merely pointing out that there are viable options beside undertaking a college course isn’t ‘misleading’, assuming that the book doesn’t have some kind of ‘make easy money fast’ tone (I certainly hope not).

    When you look at it, learning on your own, in your spare time and with a reasonable budget is a whole lot less of an investment than paying for a course (and working it into your schedule, assuming you are still employed) and having no real guarantee that this rather expensive piece of paper will indeed pan out or be the right choice of field in the long run. Lots of people lack confidence in their own learning ability and their own capacities in general. To give them a bit of encouragement to try out unconventional options responsibly is a positive thing.

    There are plenty of ways to test the waters with a new skill and new knowledge without abandoning your day job overnight or blowing thousands of dollars on some shaky business plan.

    Then again, some people lack common sense and are real suckers for anything they construct as a prospect to make fast money, but these kind of folks get into trouble even with conventional schooling.

• [2loons]

  Very cool but I’d like my physician to also have learned practices from their collective studies. Sure independence is huge and school doesn’t always fit at a stage but many services and employers need a standard peer reviewed audited set of certifications. We cannot operate with self taught welders building our ships or buildings. Be ause you dropped out of Grad School doesn’t mean you ARE a ‘drop-out. It only means your schooling didnt fit your needs now. Another school, program or time things may be different. We all don’t need J School to be newspaper reporters but it sure can help many people advance toward a goal recognized but our culture.

• [HerkyDerky]

  I want to support this. I also want to say, “Learn to use a tripod.” 

  Edit: Okay, I’m being snarky, but it signals a lack of professionalism. That said, I try to live by the cult of done manifesto, so I should assume she has good things to say.

• [Bryce Anderson]

  It reminds me a lot of DIYU, which takes a more journalistic, trendspotting approach.  A hands-on, howto book would make a nice companion piece.