'Wolf of Wall Street' says college a 'complete waste of time' for most students: 'Avoid it like the plague'
Famed former Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort commented on the diminishing value of a college education, after a new report found some college students learned less than high school graduates a decade after their enrollment.
College is a "complete waste of time" for most students, he believes.
"If you want to be a professional, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or something that really requires a degree then yes, you should go to college, and you should try to go to the best school you can and make the most of it," Belfort said while on "Varney & Company" on Tuesday.
"But all of these other sort of softer subjects like gender studies and all this other stuff, what are you going to do with that stuff, honestly? So I think it’s a complete waste of time," he added.
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Aside from the financial impact, Belfort said he couldn't even recommend that students attend for the social experience anymore, as college campuses have increasingly become hotbeds for far-left social agendas.
"So, unless you need it for your career, you want to be a professional, I'd avoid it like the plague," he critiqued.
A new analysis from the HEA Group found that 1 in 4 students in higher education programs are earning less than the median annual income of $32,000 for high school graduates, CBS News reported.
"Over a thousand institutions (1,022) show the majority of their students failing to earn as much as a typical high school graduate 10 years after they’ve enrolled," the college-based research agency which used data from the Department of Education to assess earnings outcomes of about five million students at 3,887 colleges across the nation said.
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Most young people would be better off learning financial literacy at an early age, Belfort argued. He explained to host Stuart Varney why he thinks financial literacy classes should be part of the core curriculum for middle school students.
"It's so important that kids are financially literate because it's the things that you learn when you are young that really stay with you deep inside. When you learn as an adult or in college, you're playing catch up ball but if you are taught at an early age to really understand the financial system, your own money and how to manage and how things work, I think it’s going to put any kid in good stead for the rest of their lives," he said.
"So many people I know are just overwhelmed and confused by anything about finance, banking, money management, but if you learn it at a very young age, along with your arithmetic tables, I think you'd be a lot better off," Belfort continued.
"The Wolf of Investing" author said financial literacy principles and subjects could be built upon as students get older so that by the time they are adults, managing their finances becomes "second nature."