Against all authority“I told my parents, I’m willing to die on this hill. I don’t want to go on with this because it’s just about ticking boxes. My
Against all authority
“I told my parents, I’m willing to die on this hill. I don’t want to go on with this because it’s just about ticking boxes. My dad happened to agree.
“We went to the school, I think it was on my 16th birthday, and I withdrew.”
Read More: The Top Universities for Blockchain by CoinDesk 2021
You may not know Keonne Rodriguez by name, but you know his story. From the age of nine he compulsively played with the family computer, and was being paid to code web pages for local businesses by the time he was 14. He would go on to major success in the blockchain industry – but despite his obvious talent and focus, he had challenges with formal education.
“I was in advanced programs, honors, advanced placement [but] I was really starting to develop an allergy to bureaucracy and things that didn’t make sense.” The breaking point came when his high school instituted a required computing course – one Rodriguez is certain he could have taught.
The college conundrum
Some of the most successful people in the tech industry either didn’t attend or didn’t complete college. Famed dropouts include Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – world-changers who made billions of dollars without a diploma.
Those stories have become totemic in the tech world, even as broader skepticism of college spreads. That skepticism is partly driven by financial calculus: As tuition and student debt loads rise dramatically, there’s more reason to ask whether the investment in college is really worth it. Various startups and reformers have established alternative paths, from coding boot camps to online certification programs to radical new models like Minerva University.
Some organizations, such as Peter Thiel’s Thiel Fellowship, push an even stronger line: not that college is too expensive or inefficient but that, at least for some people, it’s a waste of time at any cost. The Fellowship awards $100,000 to “young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom.” Recipients must skip or drop out of college to be eligible.
That backdrop makes things particularly challenging and confusing for young people interested in careers in crypto. Spending three or four or five years on a campus could seem like a big sacrifice in an industry that changes so fast. And perhaps the single most widely admired person in crypto stands as an example of the potential of skipping school: Vitalik Buterin received the Thiel Fellowship in 2014 and, instead of going to college, used the time to build Ethereum.
But the data about college outcomes tells a much different story than the biographies of these few outliers. The average college degree holder will earn $625,483 more than a high school graduate over his or her lifetime. College graduates also have much higher lifetime employment rates, better lifelong health and even longer-lasting marriages, according to a 2015 study by University of Maine education researcher Philip Trostel.
Moderate critics of higher ed acknowledge this reality. “I’m a pragmatist. At the individual level, you should take the system as it’s constructed,” said investor Marc Andreessen during a 2020 interview that was otherwise quite critical of the status quo in higher ed. “I think it’s actually quite dangerous to give someone as an individual the advice, ‘don’t go to college.’”
The data about college outcomes tells a much different story than the biographies of these few outliers
The reality on the ground in the crypto and blockchain industries, too, seems a bit less freewheeling than the mythos would have it. While reporting this story, I reached out to about a dozen close contacts in the industry, asking if they knew anyone who had found a role building in crypto without going to college. Rodriguez was the only example I was able to unearth. Unscientifically, it seems the overwhelming majority of people with serious careers in crypto are college graduates.
That makes sense once you remember how many complex ideas are wrapped up in the design and deployment of blockchains. The crypto industry moves fast, but that’s in part because it draws from a many-layered, complex “stack” of intellectual traditions, legal norms and technical breakthroughs stretching back decades, even centuries. That includes not just extremely advanced computer science, but the far frontiers of securities law, economics, even sociology and art.
The bitcoin off-ramp
Keonne [Key-own-ee] Rodriguez defied those odds and immediately thrived – not just without going to college, but without even finishing high school. Despite his outlier status, his means of ascent holds career lessons even for people who do take the college route.
Most importantly, Rodriguez was able to clearly demonstrate his real-world effectiveness thanks to a portfolio of web design work built up in his early teens. His portfolio was the first step towards a string of full-time positions that grew his skill set…
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