Mark Cuban: Everyone should try college—'go to a cheap school' instead of worrying about prestige

Self-made billionaire Mark Cuban says college is worth a shot for everyone, even if you don't end up getting a degree — and where you do doesn't really matter.

If you're worried about racking up student loan debt, unsure whether college will benefit you long-term or considering delaying your decision with a gap year, Cuban has a simple piece of advice: "Go to a cheap school," Cuban said in a Monday interview with social media personality Jules Terpak.

"Going to school isn't about your major — at least not in the first two years," he says. "It's about learning how to learn and it's about getting excited to learn and exposing yourself to all kinds of different people [and] ideas."

Cuban understands that college can be "so expensive," he says. So, if uncertainty over your future plans makes college tuition seem like an unnecessary expense, Cuban says opting for a "cheap" school could be your best route.

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For some, that could mean opting for a public university with lower tuition for in-state students or attending a school that offers you a generous financial aid package. Cuban advocates for two-year community colleges, where the average tuition is just over $4,000 annually, according to the College Board.

Cuban himself was an in-state student at the University of Pittsburgh for a year, before transferring to Indiana University and graduating from there in 1981. He picked Indiana because it had the cheapest tuition out of the country's top 10 business education programs, at the time.

"I'm not one of these people that says: 'Don't go to college. Go start a company,'" Cuban said. "If you want to start a business, go to college and learn the language of business."

You can learn important skills by taking classes in areas like accounting, finance, and marketing, Cuban added: "Those are tools that are really going to be helpful for business, even if you don't end up getting a degree. That's fine."

After a brief post-graduation stint in banking, Cuban started a software startup called MicroSolutions that he sold to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990. His next tech company, audio streaming platform Broadcast.com, sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, making him a billionaire.

There's no such thing as a 'good college': expert

Workers with college degrees do earn more on average than any other group, and those with at least "some college" education earn more than those without, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

But the challenge of paying off large student loan debts has led many Americans to question the value of attending college at all.

Cuban isn't alone in believing that the value of college isn't dependent on how prestigious, or expensive, a school is. Parenting researcher and author Jennifer Breheny Wallace tells her own kids that there's no such thing as a "good college," and they should focus on getting the most out of their education, no matter where they enroll, she told CNBC Make It last year.

College graduates' future wellbeing primarily depends on their on-campus experiences, not the prestige of their schools, according to a 2014 survey of 30,000 U.S. college graduates by Gallup and Purdue University.

"We all know people who went to these highly selective schools whose lives did not turn out as well as they had hoped," said Wallace. "And we all have adults in our lives, who [went to] schools we've never even heard of before, whose lives turned out extraordinary."

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