The Top 10 Alternatives to College

Today I am finally sharing with you the top 10 alternatives to college!

After I finished High School, I didn’t wanna go to university (or at least not straight there) and spend another 4 years of my life just learning without having a purpose.

So if you don’t want to go to college, that is okay! Let me tell you why.

• You don’t need a degree to be successful. I know so many people who are happy and make good money without ever getting a degree

• Some things just don’t require a college degree

• If you’re straight out not the type for academics, there is nothing wrong with that.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase via my link I may get a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend things I use and love, but for any questions, refer to my full disclosure here.

Why should I choose one of these 10 alternatives to college?

Well, we are all born into this system of school, school, school, college, work, work work. What if we wouldn’t have that and everyone could choose the best path for themselves what helps them best to get there?

I think everyone should think about that first before choosing to go for higher education. Yes, education is important, but not more important than your happiness.

There are 2 simple questions to ask yourself to help you choose:

1. What is it that I am passionate about or like doing?
2. What do I need to do to be able to do that for a living? Is that a degree, experience?

If you know that, you can read over my suggestions below and see what would help you most, besides going to college (since college isn’t an alternative for itself I found it weird to list it, but obviously some jobs require degrees.:))

1. Work and Travel

This one is one of my favorite alternatives to college, even if you won’t do this for your entire life (you could though).

If you love traveling but don’t have the money for it (I can relate), you can combine it with either remote work or local work.

You can google work and travel + country and you will find some good ideas what each country has to offer.

I can also recommend looking into remote-jobs, cause you can do those while traveling too.

That could be:

• Virtual Assistant
• Influencer
• Investing
• Blogger
• etc

I have a post that is all about unique ways to make money for students, where I have some of those ideas included. You can check it out here.

2. Online Courses

If you want to learn more about a certain area, online courses are great resources to get started.

Let’s say you’re interested in photography and maybe becoming a photographer. There are tons of photography courses online that makes it pretty easy to learn it.

Photography is a pretty good field for online courses because customers don’t usually care about a piece of paper (your diploma) if your photos are amazing and they love your style!

You can find lots of amazing courses on Skillshare, I can really recommend them to you.

3. Internships

Internships are also great opportunities to get to know what you’re really passionate about and what you actually like doing.

You can also make money with some of them, so that’s another bonus.

A good internship, I would think, qualifies you better for a job than being a college student with no experience in the field. Especially if it’s a well-established company you were an intern at.

4. Get a Job

This is probably the most common alternative to college. But why not? If you feel like you just want to make some money to then decide later, you can get a job that doesn’t require a degree.

Here, an internship or some experience would definitely help you get the job.

5. Trade School

My dad went to trade school! Well, it was in Europe so it might be different, but he didn’t go to college and got a job in a bank, which he left after a few years to build his own business. And he did!

Trade school can be a great college alternative if you’d like to still keep learning, but maybe don’t pay thousands of dollars for a university.

Do some research on trade schools and see if any of them offer something that would help you reach your long-term career goal.

6. Start a Business

Yayy this one is my favorite. I did it myself! When I finished my high school diploma, I started a blog (this one) as a business.

There are so many advantages to starting a business right after (or even during) high school because you still have the security of your parents’ house and meals.

(I’m not saying you should live at home forever and burden your parents, but the fact that you don’t have to get a job in addition to your business, to pay your bills, is pretty helpful).

Talking about advantages, check out my post about reasons to start a business here!

You could build pretty much any kind of business that you like!

You can either create a new product and make that a business, or start something local such as a shop, a cafe, etc.

By starting your own business, you can scale it to whatever you want it to or are able to, without needing any kind of proof of knowledge.

You can gain any skill you need by taking classes or online courses, read about it, or just learn it by doing (like I did with this blog).

Check out this post for more business ideas!

7. Make Money Online

This kind of ties into the business point of the top 10 alternatives to college, but it is still different.

You don’t need to create a whole new business to make money independently.

Examples would be:

• Create courses to sell
• Write an ebook
• Dropshipping
• Amazon FBA
• Sell on Etsy or another online shop (digital or physical products)

None of them require you to create your own platform, but they could definitely develop into small businesses if you’d want them to.

Wanna learn how you can start a blog like me and make money? Here is my free course to check out!

8. Go to Military

To be honest, I don’t know much about this one. I feel like the military is a good option for US Americans but in Europe, it’s not really something you’d want to do, as far as I know at least.

Anyway, I know that some people go to the military to learn life skills and get lifelong benefits and get paid.

9. Volunteer

Volunteering is another travel-like and meaningful way to spend some time after high school.

You could build your resume a little more or find out what you want to do as a job with volunteering. I think it’s just great no matter what you use it for.

10. Workshops

Last but not least, attending workshops to learn or improve your skills and network with other people is one of the best alternatives to college.

I have learned so much when I went to finance seminars and photography workshops. You should try it too!

Just make sure to not keep attending them without practicing on your own. You actually have to use it and do it yourself to make it work.

What will you choose?

Now that you know some more options and alternatives to college, you can do some research on them and make a plan for what you’d like to try out.

Don’t be scared of failing! There is no right or wrong. Follow your heart and go your path. It’s your life and no one else’s :)

Until soon,