Honestly — I don't believe university is everything. It may sound strange coming from someone who runs an academy. But the path I walked myself is exactly why I can say it.
For most of my early life I could not answer the question of what I wanted to do. I changed majors four times in college, took long breaks, and ended up spending eight years inside the university. Once, I even told my parents I was going to quit and become a car mechanic. In the end, out of a quiet sense of duty to them, I finished.
My final major — the one the school refused to let me change again — was Computer Science. That path carried me all the way to graduate school at Seoul National University. But even then, I already knew: this was not really my road.
The answer came back to me in a memory. During one of my leaves of absence, I had taught students. I remembered the quiet tension of preparing a lesson at dawn. The small moment when a student's eyes shifted mid-sentence. That was where the signal was.
A road I would not have found, if I had not walked through a university first.
So I believe university is not everything, but it is very much worth it. What matters is not the name of the school. It is whether, during those four or eight years, a student meets themselves — whether they find what they actually want to do.
I was lucky to find mine before I turned thirty. I call that success. Not a score, not a logo, not a ranking — a person who has found their own path.
This is why what we teach at Higher must be more than SAT scores, AP grades, or essay sentences. Tests are meant to be passed, and schools meant to be graduated from. What we actually hope a student leaves with is a posture toward learning itself.
It is also why we call our teachers mentors, not instructors. Before subject delivery, their work is to walk alongside a student's life. If a road is hard but learning lives at the end of it — to share that conviction with the student. That is our classroom.
Higher is not a place that makes scores.
It is a place that draws out possibility.
On the road a student walks toward their own dream — the mentors of Higher will walk beside them.