Matthew McConaughey skipped film school classes to audition for roles, got straight Cs that semester, and says those real-world experiences taught him more than any test. He argues universities need to teach skills employers actually want, not just hand out degrees.
Chapters
The education system has to be more than a knowledge factory. What do I remember in my education? I remember the stuff I was learning trying to hustle in film school, making Cs outside of the classroom more than what I learned when I aced the test on the exam in the classroom.
There's this beautiful story in your book about how you went up to the dean. You were missing tons of classes in film school in Austin because you were actually out there producing, hustling, doing auditions. Tell us that story.
I got a pager on.
Remember the pagers you used to have in the 90s? They beep.
They'd tell you, oh, well, that'd be in class, my honors class, studying film. And my pager would go off, and they'd go, can you be in. Can you be in Dallas in two hours for audition for Dwight Yoakum? And I'll be like, I'm out of here. And I'd get up in the middle class and just go, Well, I started missing quite a few classes, and the teachers. The dean calls me and goes, look, you can't. This is an honors program. You can't just keep stepping out of class. And I go, dean, I'm not going. I'm not just pissing off out there. I'm actually chasing down practical work, experiential work that you're teaching me that I'm learning in class and I'm chasing it down in real life. Well, I continued to chase my pager. I continued to go out and try and get auditions. Missed a whole lot of classes, but showed up for every big exam.
And at the end of that semester.
I got Cs across the board, straight Cs.
Ah.
So quietly he understood what I was saying, that I was out there practically pursuing in life experiential learning for what I was studying in the classroom. I love that.
What is your opinion on the current education system?
The education system has to be more than a knowledge factory. You know, I understand right now. My kids are younger. Look. Yeah, learn. Learn your basics. Read, write, Rithik. Learn these basics. I understand that, but when do we start? I think we can start sooner. The constructive reasoning, constructive argument, the why of doing things, the context of situations. Now, I always had this joke with a friend of mine who asked me, like, hey, why'd the Liberty belt crack? And I always went, I don't know. But I passed that test.
You know, if it ain't that piece of paper. Some other choice we're gonna try and make for you. Let me tell you this. The Older you do get, more rules are going to try to get you to follow. You just got to keep living, man. L I V I N Do I.
Think we need the test? Do I think we need to learn? Do I think we need the book? Yes, I do. But as I say, the College of Communication at school, where I'm a, I'm a professor to those journalism students, those advertising students. If you're a journalism student and you've got a protest on campus, get the hell out of the classroom. Get, get down there and go cover it. Now. Today, the world's Chang. What are we, Are we preparing with kids? Young men and women coming out of school need to be prepared for different job requirements than I did or my brother did, or my other brother did, or our parents did. The school system still look kind of the same, though. We need to talk to the companies, talk to the tech companies. What do you, what do you need? What are you wanting out of our university instead of teaching the same old things that we've been teaching? We. Because I remember this when I. My oldest brother, who's 65, when he grew up, you were successful and you could get a job if you got a ged, that means you graduated high school.
Now me, I graduated high school in 1988, got my college degree in 1993, and that college degree in 93 did not mean as much. It was not a ticket, it was not a voucher, it was not a free pass go to anything. So I asked the question, what does your college degree mean? It means you got an education. It means you have more knowledge in a specific subject vocation. It means you may have more expertise in what your degree is in, but what's it worth in the job market out there today?
There are 4.0 college degree master degree students out there out of work, jobless right now. Well, that tells me there's a gap between what we're teaching them and what we need in the workforce. We got to close that gap.
