FBC – 373 – Is the school system completely useless? You tell me

Is the school system a relic of the past?

I mean, in this day and age, do we ACTUALLY need to go to college and graduate?

Or on the contrary, we should skip school altogether and start our own business fast?

These are questions that you might be asking yourself… After all, you have heard stories of college dropouts who made it big.

Is the formula, work hard, get good grades, go to college is big fat lie?

Or is there actually some good that comes out of all this?

We are going to cover this and much more in this episode. I promise you that my take on the subject WILL stun you!

Tune in to this brand new episode and leave me a comment to tell me what your take is on the school system and if you think that it is still useful nowadays

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Today, I wanted to talk to you about a recurring subject. I've probably talked about it, but from a different perspective and this subject is the school system.

More people are on YouTube or the internet who kind of like made it like, oh, man, I want to be an entrepreneur.

The hell with school. Why would I go to school? It’s completely useless. The system is trying to turn me into a cog and that kind of stuff.

I don't actually agree with it because I think only a few people understand the real value of school. And I want to talk to you about what I think on the subject.

So you don't have to share my views, but maybe it's something that you've never considered and you might actually be like, oh, yeah, you know what? There is actually some truth in this.

OK, so first of all, I mean, why do all these people think that, oh, man, school is the devil, don't go to university, tuitions are expensive and stuff? Well, you know, tuitions are expensive depending on where you are. So if you're in the U.S. Yes. It’s Crazy expensive. That's the way the system is set up. But, you know, in France, for example, I think its three hundred euros a year to attend university.

So it's not the end of the world. You can find three hundred euros. Right. So why do all these people think this?

But that's the image that they kind of see with everybody on Instagram that make so much money. I'm a college dropout, you know, that kind of stuff. That's what people are actually selling. Look at how these college dropouts did. I'll never finish high school and stuff and I still made millions. So, you know, people are actually falling into that trap.

You need to be very careful of thinking that, you know, that that's the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Now, on the on the other hand, what the general population doesn't know is the concept of the common enemy. OK, so if you want to sell something to someone, you just need to find someone you hate in common. OK, this is how people get together. And it actually happened to me. So that's why if you have a profound hatred for the same person, then you're friends, right?

So you know the saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right. So here is the enemy of that big machine and stuff, you know, is your friend. So this is how people sell you that stuff by saying, oh, man, you know what? The system is against you. You’re a lab rat and all that kind of stuff. It's designed to make you think this way.

So, it's hard it's easy for the average person to go and actually fall into this trap because they don't necessarily know about the concept of the common enemy.

Is the school system completely useless? You tell me

So, you know, regarding all these people on YouTube saying, oh, I'm a college dropout, this kind of dropout that. I'm like, well, do you know Zuckerberg? He didn’t graduate, but he dropped out of Harvard! The dude was smart. Bill Gates, remember, he didn't graduate, but he was in a prestigious university, which means that he was smart.

Now my problem is this is. Oh, look at this guy. He built the company and he never graduated. So university is useless. And, you know, you may be thinking this way of well, I don't want to go to university because, you know, Bob Smith was able to build an empire with no degree.

But here's the thing. What bothers me is that people are looking at the zero point zero zero zero zero zero one percent of people who actually made it that way and disregarding all the Fortune 500 CEOs who did go to university. So when you say university is useless and all that kind of stuff, how can you disregard all these people who graduated and stuff?

OK, so I'm not saying you have to go to university because that's the only way to do this. What I'm saying is, please stop saying that school and University sucks. What you should say is it's not the only way to get there, but don't say school sucks.

School is helping you acquire some skills that you will then use yourself to be able to navigate in life. And this is where people go horribly wrong. School is teaching you how to research the information. OK, so the school cannot tell you. Oh, well, you know what? If you open this cupboard in five years, just there under this sheet of paper, you find this post, it will be written on there.

They cannot tell you this, but school is teaching you how to research information. School is giving you a methodology and a system to go and acquire it. Right.

So now do you think that this is a skill that you will use in your life, yes or no? Well, if you ask me, yes, you will use it every day, every single day. And so this is one thing that school is teaching you that can set you up for life.

And if you're smart enough, you will you realize that school taught you this. OK, so at this point, maybe school is not used that useless after all.

I want to get you guys to start thinking in a more constructive way about, OK, what was my takeaway from school? What did it actually do for me? And that exercise alone will help you move forward in life. Regardless if you agree with me or disagree with me, you might be able to find stuff that school taught you and you won't carry over that resentment that it’s pointless and school sucks and stuff which is blocking a lot of things in your life.

School Trains You To Comply, Business Forces You To Survive

I am not going to tell you school is worthless, because that is a lazy answer that makes people feel clever. What I will tell you is what nobody told me. School is superb at one thing, teaching you to follow instructions inside a system someone else designed, and business punishes you for exactly that instinct. The straight-A reflex of waiting to be told what to do and how to be graded is the fastest way to stall the moment you work for yourself.

The skills that actually paid me were the ones no classroom tested. Selling something before it was perfect, learning fast from real feedback instead of a textbook, being wrong in public and adjusting, deciding without permission. None of that got graded, and all of it decided whether I ate. So I stopped waiting for a curriculum and started building my own, learning only what the market would actually pay for. I unpack this self-education path in my Substack and on my growth hacking channel. On the widening gap between formal education and real-world skills, Harvard Business Review has written plenty, and HubSpot's blog is full of the practical tactics no school ever teaches. Keep what school gave you. Then teach yourself the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the school system completely useless for entrepreneurs in 2026?

The school system is not completely useless, but it is misaligned for entrepreneurs because it rewards memorization over execution, compliance over experimentation, and grades over real outcomes. Most successful operators I know used self education through books, podcasts, and apprenticeships to fill the gap. School builds basic discipline. Self education builds the actual skills that produce business revenue.

What skills do entrepreneurs really need that schools do not teach?

Entrepreneurs need five skills schools rarely teach. Sales conversation. Copywriting. Personal finance and cash flow. Decision making under uncertainty. Customer interviewing. You can learn each one in roughly a hundred focused hours through specific books and reps with real customers. Schools optimize for predictable careers. Business optimizes for navigating uncertainty, which requires a fundamentally different skill set.

How should young people decide between school and starting a business?

Run school in parallel with one small business experiment during the last two years before graduating. You learn classroom content while building real world reps that compound for life. Quitting school entirely is rarely the right call because the credential opens doors during slow business months. Treat school as one input, not the entire education plan.

What is the fastest way to self educate as an entrepreneur outside school?

Buy three books recommended by operators in your niche, listen to two podcasts weekly, find one paid course on the single skill you need most this quarter, and join one community where members ship real work. That stack costs under five hundred dollars yearly and outperforms most business degrees on practical skill acquisition. Apply each lesson immediately.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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