Don't Send Your Kids to College

I taught my eight-year-old daughter how to play poker the other day. Since I'm dead-set against the idea of her going to college, I figure she might as well get some skills as a gambler. Every time she's about to lie to me in poker, she looks to the left. Once I told her she did that, she sometimes looked to the left on purpose to make me think she was lying when she was actually telling the truth. That's called controlling your opponent, when you tell them something and then they try to use that information against you, but you know in advance they will do so. She became a fool two times over and had no chance while I took all her money. But it was a learning experience for her.

I said I have no intention of sending my kids to college. And this is the crux of the matter, I feel, for young people who want to be successful over the next 50-year period. I find the thought of college these days abhorrent, particularly for kids aged 18-20. Kids have a lot of energy at that point, and to deaden it with a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that. I can't remember anything good coming from my freshman year other than that I started a business with a few of my classmates that inspired me for other businesses later on. We set up a business called CollegeCard, which was a debit card that we offered to college students. This was 1987, before credit cards were common for college kids. Parents would send us money, which we'd deposit in the student's account with us, and the students could then use their cards up to that amount. My role in the company was to convince every business in town to not only accept our card but to offer discounts to its users. At night, I also ran the delivery business, which delivered from every restaurant that accepted our card. I was notoriously incapable of generating any tips although one of my partners, Wende Biggs (daughter of Barton Biggs), always got great tips. And I had an unrequited crush on her. Thankfully, she'll never read this because she lives on a farm in France now.