Who are NexGenT, and why you should take note

I was a very average student growing up, and would always do just enough to get by, but never more, because I was never really interested in education or learning what they taught.

I always viewed it as something I had to do, and go through in order to eventually do the things that I really wanted to do, which was to create something amazing and change the world. But, I knew I would never be able to learn how to do this at School or in College.

All my life, my parents have pushed me into education, saying that if I didn’t come out with a College degree, I wouldn’t be able to get a good, high paying job, and I am sure you have heard that all before. I was never interested in it though, and didn’t really want to go, but I did because of the idea of a better job and a better life afterward. A good degree can open a lot of doors for jobs, but the four or so years that are spent studying at College teaches very little about doing the actual job, and you will learn more from the first month at a job than you learn in your entire College degree.

When I was 18, I founded my own music company with two experienced business partners that helped start up musicians get more exposure in the industry, and this let me be my creative self and do what I liked. For the first time in my life, I actually learned useful, real world experience and life skills. This was a large contrast when compared to the seemingly useless barrage of information thrown at me in school and college, most of which I will never use again. You go through endless hoops of exams and tests that find out how good you are at memorizing material. And, most don’t even care about it, it’s just about moving up to the next level, again and again until you graduate, and that is the true reality of the education system.

They don’t teach things that are important for living in everyday life, such as how to deal with failure, mental health, relationships and raising a family for example, and unless you go out there and experience these in real life, you will never fully understand them, and this is why schools should reform to teaching things that will actually help a person in life, instead of the long years of classes that you forget in an instant. School doesn’t teach life skills, and never will, unless there is change.

For too long, the education system has been the same, and it is completely outdated and needs serious change. It is actually destroying creativity in young people’s lives instead of nurturing it. Why don’t schools teach entrepreneurship or real world knowledge over advanced physics for example, or even alongside? It’s great if you want to be a physicist, but the vast majority of people just aren’t interested, and when are schools going to learn this?

Knowledge in school and College is just based on scores and numbers, and not creativity or passion, and with SAT’s, schools will mostly just look at the GPA, and not at the writing sections. A person can be so creative, and intelligent, but be bad at test taking, or not good at the other sections, and this can crush a person’s creativity, and make them believe that they are dumb or have nothing to offer. If this creativity was nurtured, then maybe they would go on and start companies that could change the world, but unfortunately, that’s not how the education system works.

Some of the most successful people in the world, people who I look up to and admire, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out of College, because they chose to build and achieve something on their own, and realised that they could do it without College.

All of these are reasons why I went to work for a start-up called NexGenT — an IT Engineer training company that is focused on disrupting tech education with programs that take you from zero to engineer in just months instead of years, and without the debt of traditional college. So, if this model could be implemented in other sectors of the education spectrum, then why would you want to waste four years of your life on a College degree, when you could learn the same thing in months, and pay a fraction of the cost?

However, College can be a lot of fun, and a great experience, and there is a lot of value in a College Degree. It can give you a fresh start, and means that you could meet people that you may be friends for life. It’s also great for personal growth and getting involved in clubs and societies. A College degree also automatically puts you higher than others when applying for jobs, and shows that you are qualified in that field, and have enough integrity and commitment to work hard and finish your degree.

If you want to be a doctor, physicist, mathematician or lawyer, then generally the degrees are very efficient and streamlined, and teach what is necessary, and cuts out all of the useless stuff. However, for the rest of you, then this new system of teaching may be for you. If you could learn all this information in months instead of years, and save a lot of money to get the same qualification, then you would do it wouldn’t you? I mean you would be crazy not to!

Well, this is all a nice idea thinking about it, but what if this actually exists? Well I can tell that it currently does; NexGenT trains IT Engineers such as network and systems engineers, and helps them get entry level jobs in some of the largest companies in the world. They are so good at it in fact, that they offer your money back if you can’t get a job in the IT Engineer sector with their Full Stack Network Engineer Tech Degree program.

What if this could be expanded to include the whole of the education scope? That would be awesome right? Well, yeah kind of… If this was possible, then why would anyone even choose college instead? This new system of teaching is not just for the creative, but includes everyone, and will help to create a more educated society, because it is better value for money, so more people can actually afford it, and it’s much quicker than College because it just teaches the essentials, and cuts out all the useless. This will result in more people choosing to opt into further education, creating a more educated and skilled workforce, that helps fill jobs and get people employed.

The downside is that it would likely be all online, so you would not get to meet the same important contacts that you hang onto for life, or have the ‘true College experience’. However, in the modern world, it’s all about competition and if you can do an online course like this and finish in months instead of years, you will already be years ahead of your friends that chose a four-year College degree instead, and they would come out at the same place as you, just years later.

In conclusion, if you want to do a highly specialised profession, like a Doctor, then by all means go to College, and study what you need and go for it. However, if you like the sound of this alternative education, my advice would be to look at the NexGenT system of training, and follow it very closely, as it may just explode and be the pioneering saviour of education.

To show how much I believe in this system and of NexGenT’s future potential, I myself have actually put College on hold to work with NexGenT, because they have the potential to change the world, and I want to be a part of that great change. Do you?

To sum it up, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a College education” — Theodore Roosevelt.

Who are NexGenT, and why you should take note was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.