Can You have a Successful Career in the Liberty Movement Without a College Degree? I Did.

When I moved to Washington, D.C. in 2013, my greatest fear wasn’t getting lost on the metro or making new friends. What I dreaded most of all was being asked about my college education on job applications. 

Like so many of us in the liberty movement, I had come to D.C. with big dreams of working for a think tank and solidifying my role as a young professional in a big city far away from my hometown in Provo, Utah. There was just one problem, I never finished college.

The years I spent in college had been a great experience. I often took 18+ credits a semester while I double majored in political science and history with a minor in constitutional studies. But with three classes left, I dropped out. 

On paper, this seemed like a foolish decision. In reality, it was the best decision I ever made.

Dropping Out of College And into DC

College is supposed to prepare you for a career and my senior year I was offered a fantastic job that would take up so much time, finishing school would be impossible. The job opened doors for me and I eventually made my way to Washington D.C.

My overwhelming passion for my ideological beliefs are what fueled me, but in reality I had no idea what I wanted to actually do in the movement. And with each job application my existential crisis grew. My mind would reel–Why didn’t I just finish college? Why did I think this was a good idea?

I found myself applying for any and every job hoping that something would stick. Oddly enough, the lack of a degree never hurt me, but the lack of confidence held me back. Instead of pursuing my dream of being a writer, I worked in grassroots activism and events, neither was my strong suit, but there was always this cloud looming over my head that said I wasn’t qualified enough to go for my dreams.

One day, that changed.

Since I was in elementary school, I always excelled at writing. There was something magical about writing for me. Whenever I found myself deep in a state of flow, I got an overwhelming feeling that I was doing exactly what I was born to do. And as I was getting older, I knew that if I was going to turn my love for writing into a lucrative career, it was now or never.

When I applied for my first writing job, my approach was different than it had been in the past. Instead of feeling ashamed, I led with my lack of degree and walked in with a portfolio of writing that demonstrated my ability and my professional experience. Immediately after the interview, they offered me the job.

Now it was time to prove myself.

Proving Myself

I felt I had to work even harder than others because I needed to show that I was not defined by my college education, or lack thereof. I went above and beyond, writing several articles a day and quickly began building a name for myself. 

That first job gave me the experience needed to land a job as senior writer for the Foundation of Economic Education and I was even nominated, and became one of the top three finalists, for a Young Voices/Reason award for young writers. 

It was during his era of my career that I decided to make dropping out of college part of my personal brand. The thing I was most ashamed of became the topic I wrote about and shared with others. Eventually, another writer asked me to contribute a chapter to a book called Skip College: Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree.

There is a line from the show Mad Men that has always stuck with me: “If you don’t like what people are saying, change the conversation.” Instead of following the widely-accepted narrative that school was the only path toward success, I committed myself to leading by example and showing other young professionals that there are numerous pathways to success–paths that would tie them to tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.

My resume now includes writing positions at some of the most prominent organizations in the movement. I’ve ghostwritten for big names and am now in charge of the blog at what is arguably THE most successful nonprofit law firm with 17 Supreme Court wins.

Was it always easy? And I had to work extra hard to prove to myself and others that I deserved to be here. 

Fortunately, the emphasis on college degrees is evolving. Google and Apple and other big companies have removed college degrees from their list of qualifications and are instead assessing each the skills and experience of each individual candidate. 

Free market organizations like Praxis exist to offer alternatives to college, placing participants with apprenticeships where they can gain real world experience. While most of their peers are in college preparing for jobs, Praxis participants are already getting hired.

There are most certainly some careers for which a degree is necessary–law being one of them. But communication, in my experience, is something that is best learned by jumping right into it and learning from actual experience instead of textbooks. If you are willing to put in the work needed to gain the necessary experience, you’ll be shocked to learn how little a degree really matters in the professional space.