Educating Entrepreneurs and Visionaries

The BFU Rector received a letter from a prospective student. This scholar is already a successful consultant and was wondering if what Bastiat Free University offered would be a useful addition to his education. The following is in part, with some editorial changes, the Rector's reply.

I know many successful entrepreneurs that disdain formal schooling and yet desire to earn, not just buy, a degree. When Bastiat Free University was conceived the majority of students were expected to be those same successful entrepreneurs. Unless I am mistaken, and I frequently am, you are actually the first fitting that description to contact my office while also seriously wanting to attend BFU.

To better place you within the school, or help you decide if it has any value for you, let me ask you two questions:

1) What do you want from BFU?

2) What do you hope to accomplish in terms of learning?

There are half a dozen marketing questions I should ask - but you know those as well as I do. Your mentioning of the esteemed Richard Daughty (creator of a master's course - ed) already answered a couple of questions.

For your general interest, and to address your question on cost I will direct you to our degree information page. For a quick summary of our educational perspective read this page. These are general - I will be glad to answer your specific questions.

Application requirements are simple; add your desire to a reading of The Candle Makers' Petition. (At some future point we may require an application essay on what The Candle Makers' Petition means when applied to a college education. -ed)

All that remains is the no charge registration.

I would suggest that you check out a couple of the courses before you decide - there is no charge for investigation. To be honest the minimalist structure that now exists is not enough to direct most college students - they have been trained only to follow, not to think.

If your goal is to find a life rather than a job The Netcohort Institute is being built for you. Join the adventure - bring your most audacious dreams.

There is still a lot of work to be done at Bastiat Free University and on re-engineering education using new concepts like The Netcohort Institute. While we need entrepreneurial leaders that are adaptable and able to "think not just follow;" they will have to be educated at very different schools than now exist.

Schools like Bastiat Free University is striving to become.

Best regards,

Allan


Allan R. Wallace, Rector
Bastiat Free University

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BFU is not nearly as good as we want it to be

Just as we advise our students, we dream big dreams.

In reality though there are limits to our capabilities. There are only so many steps toward our ambitious dreams that can be accomplished with our current resources and staff.

"We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we'd make a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better." - Sergey Brin

We are improving BFU, but progress seems slow when compared to the need of generating leaders for the netcohort age; leaders of character, persistence, and vision. We have maximized what we have, but there is still so much to be done. Even what we have already accomplished needs to be improved.

Choices will have to be made between forging ahead with needed initiatives such as the Netcohort Institute and re-visiting early efforts that now seem so naive. It has to be even more frustrating to a student encountering our limitations than it is for us.

I have discouraged students from taking the paid BFU college degree track, I do not feel comfortable with the value offered. Without income though we are unable to improve the courses to where they offer sufficient value. We have received a couple of college donations, (thanks Matt) those have been gratefully applied toward improving what we offer our students.

This current slow growth period will be overcome, just not as soon or as smoothly as we wish. We know that the existing educational bureaucracy is not preparing the adaptable leaders the Netcohort needs. We also know that we are not yet producing those leaders either - but we do have a clear path toward the needed tools.

For now leaders are individually self taught by trial and error within a very tough internationally networked environment. Far too many entrepreneurs are lost or have their feasible dreams destroyed before they come to fruition. Many of their projects are needed - the path is however strewn with their broken shells.

We can not and will not quit, but we must apologize that we have not yet created the resources you need.

Join Us In The Adventure - Bring Your Dreams

If you do not yet have bold, creative, even audacious dreams - start developing them.

Goals are nice, for many the setting of goals and achieving them is an important part of their success. But goals are safe. We set them with an eye firmly fixed on the sequentially achievable, and then initiate a developed path to their completion.

Dreams are different, and they are not achieved by sequential and controlled implementation. Dreams are discovered when we extend our passions beyond current reality and imagine the best possible outcome. We may not be able to achieve our dream alone, but planning the achievement is not the immediate concern of a dream - altering reality is.

Life is not linear!

Our lives and our goals seem to flow from step to step, but it is the huge leaps to the side that surprise and define our future. These massive dislocations of normal activity can be perceived as vicious or as virtuous - but it is dreamers that will discover a new path starting at the disruptions door.

Those who only have goals will likely find their plans destroyed by these occasional new realities, life itself may be destroyed. But those that dream and survive will quickly discover opportunities that others might not see for decades. Be prepared.

There will be thousands of "unforeseen circumstances" that will effect our lives over the next year. Those that base their plans on projections of the future will have plenty of excuses why their plans did not work. To the dreamer, each unforeseen circumstance is an opportunity amplified by the learning they have accumulated around their passions.

Discover your passions.

Discover the deep pleasures of researching every aspect of your passions.

Dream of the best possible, or impossible, implementation of passions.

Work, set goals, achieve - and be prepared for the unexpected to provide the opportunity you need to move confidently in the direction of your most audacious dreams.

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Judge Not (students are deeper than many think)

"Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain

This is just a cut from a true story. I've heard it before, but not to this depth. It is not the reality of the story, or the subject, it is the realization that we can not tell by looking or reading what a student can accomplish. You are at Bastiat Free University to energize your creative and audacious dreams. You will achieve far beyond what the doubters believe possible.

"It begins with a dotty gingham dress. That's what the woman is wearing - and that's what I want you to remember.

With her husband, who's sporting a rumpled, ill-fitting suit, she boards a train in hopes of getting an appointment with the president of Harvard University.

They arrive in Boston and walk all the way to Cambridge. They manage to find the office. The president's secretary takes one look at the pair and decides on the spot that the president wouldn't have time for them. The term gate-keeper hadn't been coined at the time - but the secretary was a gate-keeper to the nth degree.

The couple ask to see the president.

"He's busy all day," the secretary says. Actually she barks the words so severely she expects the couple will be discouraged and go away. But it doesn't seem to put them off. They just sit down and wait. --- (more) --->

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