Engineering Job Future

The Dark Side of Schooling

Staff Article, written by Don Wilde

Several years ago, in Albuquerque, I was invited to tell my entrepreneurial story at a convention of MBA school professors from all over the southwest. One of the other presentations was from a team of professors in Houston, and they had the unfortunate task of reporting that there is a negative correlation between number of years of schooling and likelihood of success in business.

In other words, people who enrolled in MBA programs (or attained other advanced degrees) were LESS likely to run successful businesses.

Most of their justifications, if I recall correctly, had to do with the difference between an academic environment and the 'real world'. Certainly that is a big factor, but I'd like to discuss a more subtle but deeper habit that is reinforced over and over in almost all forms of schooling.

I call it Authoritarian Behavioral Conditioning, and it's an A-B-C that has insidious consequences. You can overcome it -- humans can overcome almost any mind disease they choose to -- so the first step is to become aware of it.

Think about it, what happens in school? Over and over again, you are told to wait for somebody to tell you what to think and what to do. Six classes a day, one hundred and eighty days a year, for twelve years or more, you are conditioned to let someone else tell you what's important and what's right, and what's worth doing. You get gold stars when you do what you're told, and eventually you get a fancy piece of paper.

It's actually very simple and obvious, but it slips underneath the radar screen because it's The Way School Is. More and more, it's The Way Everything Is, and it's just not helping us adapt and thrive as much as we need to in today's dynamic world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that everybody make up their own rules and do whatever they want to do all the time. The idea of authority has done humanity a lot of good. Leadership and organization are positive behaviors! As a member of a society, we each have a responsibility to allow everyone else their right to pursue their own happiness, and that means we can't just take without giving.

What is true, however, is that society and technology are evolving at faster and faster rates, and we need to be able to adapt more and more quickly to changing circumstances by doing our own intelligent assessment of circumstances and consequences, and learning to hone and trust our own judgment.

It's crucial to bring this behavior from your sub-conscious to your conscious mind. Be aware of how often you accept someone else's dictates even though your inner compass says it's going to take you in the wrong direction. Catch yourself when you say things like "that's the way it is," and spend a few moments wondering if that really is the way it is and if that's the way it should be.