An emerging scandal involving accusations that many of the nation’s elite universities conspired to keep financial aid packages artificially low seems like a steel door slamming in the face of middle America.

The University of Chicago agreed last week to pay $13.5 million to settle allegations that it, along with 15 other top schools, illegally price fixed financial aid to deny poorer students admission. Coming just four years after the admission bribery schemes uncovered by Operation Varsity Blues, the education-to-career game certainly seems fixed.

But all hope isn’t lost. After all, it’s the University of Wisconsin − not Harvard, Princeton or Yale − that boasts more current Fortune 500 CEOs than any other school in America. The world’s top companies don’t care where their CEOs went to school, and you shouldn’t either.

Despite what the higher education industrial complex says, where you go has a lot less to do with your future success than what you do during and after college. That’s the opinion of billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who graduated from Indiana University. In an e-mail, he told me that it’s most important to find an education students can “afford without debt.”

“Every college,” Cuban wrote in the email, “has strong programs that can educate you.” But “nothing will hinder your ability to use your college education (more) than debt,” because “debt pushes you to take a job that pays your loans rather than picking a job you love.”

Community colleges are good alternative to high-priced universities

The big-name schools claim that their prestige will lead to great jobs. Yet, community colleges and four-year state schools can get you to the same career, quality of life and retirement destinations.

One reason for this is that they are affordable for those without vacation homes in the Bahamas. The think tank Just Facts found that community colleges cost about 70% less, and state schools cost about 25% less, than private nonprofit universities.

In Virginia, where I live, the State Council of Higher Education reports that the average cost for an in-state student attending a state college or university is $26,484 a year; and earning an associate degree from a community college and then transferring to a four-year institution takes the price of a bachelor’s degree down by $20,065.

Those thousands of dollars in short-term savings could set up today’s high school seniors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement income decades down the road instead of spending years paying off student loan debt.

Another reason to choose community colleges and other state schools is that they often work together for student success. At least 31 states have automatic transfer programs from community colleges to four-year state schools. This means that for two years, students can save money on tuition and often room and board by attending a school close to home.

Bank executive Todd Rowley facilitated a dual enrollment agreement between Virginia Tech and Northern Virginia Community College. He told me that it was “wasteful” for students to pay room, board and Tech’s higher tuition instead of “staying at home for free and getting the same education at community college rates.”

The agreement went into place in 2021, and hundreds of students are now earning cybersecurity degrees that will land them high-paying jobs with area employers such as Amazon, defense contractors and the federal government.

Employers increasingly focus on skills rather than degrees

Most employers don’t care where you went to school. Fortune 1000 employee experience consultant Joey Coleman told me that “the employers of choice in almost every industry are increasingly deprioritizing degrees to focus on a prospective employee’s skill sets, attitude and work ethic.”

That is true with traditional degrees such as business and the fine arts to technical degrees such as cybersecurity − and from small companies like mine to major employers like Google, IBM and Bank of America.

I know this from personal experience. I graduated from PSU in 2008 − not Penn State but Plymouth State. I got a generic business degree from an institution that became a university only the year before I started. But none of that mattered to the people who ended up hiring me, and my clients certainly don’t care. They care far more about the high quality of education I received from professors with real-world experience in their fields.

The scandals plaguing big-name institutions of higher education shouldn’t be an occasion for gloating among those of us who were locked out of those schools. But the latest news does reinforce an important lesson: Although they might work out fine for those who can afford them, nobody needs a gold-plated diploma from Harvard or Yale to make a successful life.

Let the big guys worry about prestige, and go take over the world at a community college and a state school.

Tony has received a lot of headlines for his story; but in our opinion, the unsung hero of his entrepreneurial adventure is Don Strube. Don didn’t follow Tony’s social media; he learned of Tony because of Florida Paints’ Director of Manufacturing. Don pursued Tony as an employee because of the recommendation of Florida Paints’ HR lead. And since hiring Tony, Don has trusted him to:

• Launch an online Tonester Paints product line which is in one Florida Paints retail store.
• Experiment with new target markets through YouTube and Instagram.
• Grow the TikTok channel from 1.6 million followers to 1.8 million; his YouTube channel from zero followers to 460,000; and his Instagram channel from 20,000 followers to 129,000 followers.

Don Strube is a 60-year-old lifelong businessman who knows how to lead. He doesn’t need to know everything; he hires, trains, and incentivizes senior executives to give him the right advice at the right time to make the right decisions. It’s why Florida Paints is projected to gross $50 million in 2021, and why Don was the star of our founder’s recent Forbes.com article on building great teams.

Tony Piloseno is Florida Paints’ gateway into first-generation and next-generation paint buyers. But he’s part of the Florida Paints family only because Don learned three critical leadership principles:

• Let go of control and hire the right executives. There are only so many hours in the day.
• Create effective processes to retain, incentivize, and hold executives accountable. You don’t want to waste time and money hiring, training, and firing the wrong people – or fail to correct hiring mistakes by keeping the wrong people in the wrong seats.
• Develop a culture for long-term success. Strube’s personal culture of dynamic thinking has become Florida Paints’ culture, which is why his new Generation Z employee is creating the company’s future customers.

Many early and mid-stage business owners struggle to achieve what Strube has accomplished – the ability to let go of control, build a trustworthy team, and create a culture for long-term growth. Through interviews with Strube and Piloseno, other leaders of multi-million-dollar companies, and several consultants, the Forbes article lays out how a business owner’s growth as a leader can be the lynchpin to faster, more durable company growth. We hope that it helps you and your team create the next level of success.

Author of Never Lose a Customer Again, a best-selling book on how to turn one sale into lifelong customer loyalty, Coleman specializes in securing customer retention within 100 days of signing a contract. “Most companies spend a lot of time, money, and effort on customer acquisition,” said Coleman, “but they spend little time, money, or effort focused on retaining clients they’ve already acquired.”

In other words, the majority of companies miss greater profit potential with clients they’ve already secured and with which they’ve developed successful relationships. Instead, they spend and spread far and wide, seeking a large target market – and missing the trees for the forest.

Coleman’s research shows that, across all industries, geographic locations, sizes, and types of business, “somewhere between 20{7c6527512529bb2d1a11cab05ed53e8eecfe721575e8501144ad2deb057fb22a} and 70{7c6527512529bb2d1a11cab05ed53e8eecfe721575e8501144ad2deb057fb22a} of new customers will decide to stop doing business with you in the first 100 days.” And he cites research from Bain Company Advisory Partner Fred Reichheld, who discovered that reducing customer defection by just five percent increases profits anywhere between 25 and 100{7c6527512529bb2d1a11cab05ed53e8eecfe721575e8501144ad2deb057fb22a}. “Each dollar spent by an existing customer becomes more profitable, and there is no need to spend as much money on sales, marketing, and acquisition,” says Coleman. “Since most businesses run at a profit, the extra net profits which come from increased customer loyalty are icing on the cake.”

Focusing early and often on customer loyalty is a cross-industry principle which can bring massive results.

• The accountant’s customer loyalty strategy will turn a one-and-done tax return into quarterly meetings, tax strategy advice, and other services to triple or quadruple revenue from a single client.
• The candy store literally brings you in for a penny but gets you to leave with an expensive sweatshirt, mugs, and the local sugary treat.
• The carpenter repairs your roof and advises you to install a new roof, new gutters, and a new skylight.
• Verizon’s “discount” phone prices comes with price tags for the insurance policy, a line for each family member, and unlimited Internet.

“I advise my clients to spend 70 percent of their marketing dollars, time, and energy on current customers,” says Trivers, whose strategies have earned 500 clients upwards of two billion dollars in increased income. “Instead of spending money going after theoretical clients, successful companies look at what’s already working and focus there.”

But many companies fail to secure loyalty when it counts. The stereotypical example is the plumber or carpenter whose final price is far higher than the estimate – and then when something goes wrong, they leave you to clean up the mess because of a technicality in the warranty.

Coleman said this attitude pervades some industries, like insurers. “Everyone thinks what the insurance customer is trying to do is to be insured. That is one goal, but the bigger goal is that they will be taken care of when and if they need to make a claim,” he said. “Since insurance events are unpredictable, insurers must constantly remind the customer that we’ll be there with them, and when something does go wrong, get the customer as much money as they can.” 

Insurance agents “should be the client’s advocate,” says Coleman. However, “most insurance agents” tell customers they won’t get their money and they “aren’t involved in any part of the insurance process. Then, a year later, they want you to renew your policy again – with an increase in premiums.”

Whether you are the candy store whose loyalty strategy is over in 10 minutes or the accountant whose strategy lasts years, choosing to invest in current clients to create more profitable revenue is a time and research-tested principle. “If you look at organizations which are really dialed into this stuff, they know who their customers are and who their customers are not,” says Coleman. “And they make no apologies for focusing exclusively on their customers.”