Do You Need College To Be Successful in Marketing? EP37

Episode 37 Transcript

What's up everybody. Welcome back to the Marketing Combat Podcast. I am your hostess with the mostest Chris Kubbernus and my co -host is the ever -vessin Jason Donnelly. What's up Jason Donnelly? How are you doing buddy? Honestly, every time you introduce me, I feel good for the rest of the day. So every time that we do this, if you call me any names that are positive or negative and I have to look them up and find out later what you actually think of me, it's a time. That's a callback to another episode. I hope you all heard it, listened to it, watched it.

Anywho, the big question for today is in today's ad world, mean across the board, we could think just ads, but across the board, do we need college to succeed anymore? There's so many people out there putting job ads and saying you need a college degree, a master's degree, five years experience to get in the door for a new position. Yeah, we wanted to just debate that.

I'm going to dive right in and tell you, no, there is no need for college anymore across the board. Let me tell you why, because I used to be, I know this is very surprising, probably surprising to Chris. I was an adjunct professor back in the day for advanced communication and technical writing. And even then, and this was in another lifetime, I think that college was going out the door as I was teaching it. I think...

Moving forward, like we're so connected digitally across everything, across social, across anything that we want to know about, anything that we want to learn, you can do it. One of my best friends in the world, I won't call him out by name, but he is the most impressive person I have ever known, decided to add an entire half of a house onto his house. He had no building experience whatsoever, no electric experience whatsoever. He got some guys to come in and...

a base and then he did everything. He did everything and he did it all on YouTube videos. He didn't go to college, he didn't go to technical school, he didn't do anything. So I think that honestly if you put the time in, you can learn the stuff that you need to be successful in this world. You just have to really put the time in. So college is that place that you're kind of forced, like even high school, you're forced to go to high school. In the past it was like you have to go to college to...

get that experience. Now I think it's you have to have the drive to learn the stuff that you want to learn. Like Chris and I right now are kind of putting our hat in the ring for make .com and all the different AI automation apps. So we're trying to learn that right now. We're not going to college for it. We're going to YouTube. We're going to the internet. We're going to read about it. And all educational content that you need right now is right on your telephone. I was going to say computer. It's right on your phone.

So Chris, tell me why I'm wrong. I don't know how you could fight this. You are 100 % wrong. And if you went back to school, you would know why. Damn it. Listen, no, I'm going to school you. I agree with you. I'm going first agree with you in some cases. So when it comes to a marketing degree, or it comes to any degree, let's just take that out.

any degree, any skills, like hard skills. Like you mentioned, you know, this guy who built a house, like that is a hard skill, like carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, any of the hard skills. You could probably learn a lot. You're not going to learn expert level, but you're going to learn a lot. And then you could, you know,

Mix that with experience and that's the same with any you need experience to get to an expert level. And then on top of that, I would say within marketing, there are some hard skills like marketing automation that we've learned, copywriting, know, video editing. Like there's a lot of things that college will be able to teach you. And by the time the college gets the information on how to do it, you know, that trend or that,

skill set is already obsolete, right? And we're seeing this across the board on all education. And this is why I think education needs to change and education needs to do one thing that we're very much missing in society today, which is, two, few things. First one along, or first thing I would say is critical thinking. I think that there's a lack of critical thinking. There's a lack of unpacking ideas, challenging ideas, try to cite sources, research.

background information on why an idea is a bad idea. I think that there's a lot of wholeheartedly, this person says that this thing is good. Communism is good. Let's challenge that and see how did communism actually work out for 90 % of the cases that it actually had a foothold in or whatever those things might be. I'm just taking communism. Sorry if I'm triggering people in the comments, but.

That is the one thing that came to mind, right? So I think that the critical thinking thing, we need way more of that and colleges need to teach that. And I don't know how you teach that, but you have to sort of get that in mind. And then historic history, I think is a good one. There is a lot of things that we're not looking back at. Okay, how did the Roman Empire fall? How did societies form? How was it back in the day for this sort of thing?

storytelling, how do people emotionally connect to stories, that sort of thing. think there's a lot of that historical context that is missing and lacking that needs to be taught. And those are some of the best things in my education. When I look back and go, that was well worth it. Could I have gotten it like Goodwill Hunting Style, $2 in late fees? Absolutely. Could I have done it on YouTube? Absolutely. But there is a thing like, can you go...

to the gym and work out and get strong by yourself? Yes. Would you do it better and quicker and maybe faster with a personal trainer? Yeah, probably. I think all of us would agree that if we had a personal trainer helping us work out every day, we would get there faster. So this is my point. It's like college or university is a personal trainer. You can go to the gym on your own and have perfectly good results. But if you want to get there faster and...

maybe with less injury, then you go to school. And I think that's what school is for and should be for. Is it too expensive in parts of the world in the US? Absolutely. Is it a waste of time in some places? Absolutely. So you really have to take a responsibility in your own education and go, is this teacher shitty? Is this school shitty? Am I getting my $20 ,000 a year out of this? You know, these assholes. And if you're not, you should take your money elsewhere. So I still think college and university is valid. You need to own it.

You need to take responsibility for it and really work the system. But in terms of like hard skills, like Jason has mentioned, marketing skills, how to post on Instagram, how to make a viral hook, how to do marketing strategy. There's a lot of that stuff that could be taught in a different way or learned in a different way. That's my take on it. Any other rebuttals, Jason? Anything you want to add? Honestly, I've said this for years. I just think that education as a whole needs an evolution. It's old.

practices and I'll stand by that I don't think that you need college but I also agree that having a place that you're you're almost forced into finding that thing and communicating with others and kind of getting the somebody holding your hand along the way instead of just going to your room and sitting in front of your computer kind of thing but I I think that people kids specifically are finding finding the things that they love so much quicker because they're inundated with so much

every day, through so much visually, through their phone, through their laptop, through social media, that they can pick quicker. I think education 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you went to college, those first two years were learning history, we're learning English storytelling, all that kind of thing. And then the second two were really diving into the thing that you wanted to do for your profession. But I think it just needs an evolution. I do really, but we're going to see that. think AI is going to play a part in that. think a lot of society changes, things are going to...

affect that. Let us know your thoughts. We'd love to hear from you guys. Education, university specifically, is it a waste of time or is it a waste of time? Let us know. See you guys next time.