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Three Thought Thursday
Education in Three Parts: the Importance, the Trend, and the Opportunity
709 Words | 3 Min 10 Sec Read
Dear Reader,
Did you see that TedTalk that came out earlier this week?
In case you missed it, Scott Galloway, a marketing professor, podcaster, and author, gave a TedTalk that has amassed over five million views across platforms in under a week. Viral is an understatement. This talk will go down in history with Danger of a Single Story, Power of Vulnerability, and Do Schools Kill Creativity.
The topic?
How the US is destroying young people’s future.
One of Scott’s theses during his scathing, data-driven, and entertaining speech is on education.
“[Education] is about taking unremarkable kids and giving them a shot at being remarkable.”
Education—that’s the theme for this Three Thought Thursday.
The Importance of Education
She stood at the doorway of a classroom—the first one she had ever entered. She was seventeen. Tara Westover grew up in the Idaho mountains to survivalist parents who distrusted mainstream education. This is why Tara knew how to operate heavy machinery before she knew what it meant to turn the pages of a textbook. Many years later, Tara is now the New York Times bestselling author of Educated: A Memoir. The whole thesis of her book revolves around what makes education important: it allows people to break free from their past. Everyone deserves the right to education because the essence of education is to transform people for the better. Tara’s message behind Educated is a living, breathing example of Scott’s comments on turning the unremarkable into the remarkable. What is the importance of education?
Education provides everyone the opportunity to be on a level playing field.
The Trend in Education
“It’s gotta be a billion [dollars] or more.” In December of 2023, Alex Hormozi’s media team caught him contemplating a big decision. Unbeknownst to his audience, Alex was mulling over an investment that would become the largest-ever investment in the history of his private equity investment company. Three months later, Skool, an online education community platform, announced that it had sold majority ownership to Alex. “I just made the biggest investment of my life,” was the comment on Alex’s Instagram soon after the news broke. A mega-successful, ultra-wealthy entrepreneur made the biggest bet of his life on… education. Why? He noticed a trend. US Education is a ~$1.3 trillion industry. It is split into two categories: formal education (two and four-year degrees) and alternative education (e-learning and online). Formal education is a ~$850 billion industry, while alternative education is a ~$250 billion industry. Skool is in that significantly smaller alternative education industry, but there is a trend. Although alternative education is a smaller industry, the industry is growing by 20% yearly (or gaining ~$40 billion). Despite being much larger, the formal education industry is shrinking by 6% yearly (or losing ~$50 billion). One of the past decade's most popular and successful entrepreneurs just took a billion-dollar swing on alternative education.
Education is trending more in favor of the alternative education industry.
The Opportunity with Education
It was a spring day in 2018 when a modern-day business thought leader took the internet by storm. Naval Ravikant released a series of tweets about “How to get rich (without getting lucky).” In one section of his 20+ tweet “tweet storm,” he discussed the concept of a topic called specific knowledge:
“Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.”
Why bring up specific knowledge? If education aims to get everyone on a level playing field, the second step is to equip individuals with the opportunity to get ahead. How? Specific knowledge. The funny thing about specific knowledge is that it comes from pursuing curiosity and training outside of a formal school system. Would you happen to know what else falls under those same qualifications? Alternative education.
Alternative education allows individuals to pursue educational opportunities to develop specific knowledge.
Education is the great equalizer and opportunist.
See you next Thursday,
Tommy