A better college education

Seth Godin wrote a great post today regarding free work vs interniships and it prompted me to question or current collegiate system.

What if an individual took four years, contacted companies and individuals in the field they were interested in and offered to work for free as a way of building experience? Wouldn’t that be similar to going to college?

The primary difference being accountability.

Now you are working for someone who has a business and your input will have a result and a consequence. College your only accountability is a grade…not to be discounted, but it does prompt one to find short cuts vs. actual learning. Not to mention the value of real world experiences. The best sales training I ever had was working for the yellow pages. I learned to create a list, make a call, set an appointment, educate the client and close the sale. I quickly learned that the more time I spent qualifying my prospect list, the better my conversion. Had I not relied on those conversions to feed myself…I may have spent that time doing something else.

If nothing else, this begs the question, what if? I am unfortunately a little late in the life game to take advantage of this. However, I would be willing to help mentor someone through the process. Help them to define the goals, set the opportunities and craft a winning strategy.

I bet an individual could actually get more accomplished in two years than the traditional four and in this economy…they’d probably have a job when they were done!