This book was interesting both as a matter of general curiosity and personal relevance. The general curiosity is that I am now thirty years out of university and sometimes muse about the value that university education has had for me in my life (yes, it has had value but not always in ways I expected).
The personal relevance is that I have a son in high school who'll soon be making the decision of whether to go to college or to take a full time job to develop his life's passion then perhaps go to college later to complement it with a degree.
The first thing you'll want to know before reading this book is whether author Dale Stephens is a nut. Is he an embittered college drop-out bent on rationalizing his failure to graduate by convincing us that college is a waste of time and money for everybody? Mr. Stephens did write a piece in the Wall Street Journal this weekend titled "A Smart Investor would skip the MBA." Many WSJ readers who commented on the article judged it to be simple-minded. But his book is more practical-minded than the short WSJ article. It advises high school students to ask the questions that they must answer in order to prepare themselves for entry into the performance driven world of academia and career.