Time for an unpopular opinion. It’s a polarising topic, and of special interest to me since it relates to the demographic I work with: secondary school students. Over the years I have dispensed a great deal of advice on what to do post-IGCSE (that’s the British equivalent of SATs or school leaving exams, for the American readers). My goal has always been to steer these kids in the direction that would best prepare them for the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. Accuracy is important. So, unlike the philosophical navel-gazing I am fond of engaging in, this is a topic I do not speculate on idly.
1. The issue isn't that degrees and university is useless, it is that young people usually enter university without a plan and end up studying something completely useless.
2. Ask, and many computer scientists will tell you: It is one of the MOST useless degrees. The industry and technology driving it changes so fast that what students learn in class is obsolete by the time they graduate. Where else does this hold true? More industries than you’d suspect.
3. Degrees are a waste of time and effort (unless it's a field that requires the structure and pedagogical style of a university class eg. hard sciences, medicine, etc.). Do you see many 18-year olds getting into uni for such degrees? Not really. Many are there because they believe a degree is the key that unlocks higher wages and white-collar office work. In other words, the implicit (if you’re Asian, explicit) understanding is that you must go to university if you want to be rich.
The reality is: if you want to be rich you shouldn't be spending 4 years learning something, you should spent 4 years building something. Working. Creating. Trying. Failing. Learning from failure. If you know what you want to do with your life, start doing it right out of high school and learn from the hard knocks instead of sitting in a classroom theorising about what a hard knock feels like for 4 years.
4. On top of that, to get a degree in a subject, you end up spending half your time on classes that have nothing to do with it so the university can charge more. These are euphemistically called General Education requirements. And they are a farce.
5. People's skills should be nurtured at a young age before university. This is how boys and girls have been educated and trained for 99% of the time we have been human. Somewhere along the way we allowed ourselves the luxury and delusion of thinking kids are too soft and squishy to pick up real-world skills until they’re 18.
Some people sell themselves short going to uni to study a course with limited job prospects... ending up in debt and with high job expectations.
6. The thing is, though, there still is a respectable amount of value to just being able to have that word ‘degree’ on your resume. Perhaps not as much in the postindustrial West, but definitely so in Asia and the developing world. It immediately gives you a leg up on any competition who doesn’t have one when applying for a job. If nothing else, it demonstrates you have a decent ability to commit to something and can put in sustained effort to get one. That’s a good thing.
7. The top advantage of a degree is it creates a framework of subject matter. These frameworks have developed over centuries and are likely to persist for centuries more, even if universities don’t. In other words they are Lindy. In 15 years the framework will evolve to reflect new lessons and learnings, so it is hasty to label all of it useless. Now, you can self learn MOST subjects – Elon built a space program without having a degree in aerospace engineering – however, for most knowledge is incrementally built.
8. The knowledge may become obsolete. But. Another big advantage of a degree is gaining the ability to learn about difficult topics in a structured manner. Which brings me to an insight that was profound to me at the time, but is common sense when you think about it:
A degree is worth nothing compared to a good problem solver/creative mind.
Education is good, but education by itself does not guarantee a source of income, let alone high income, as baristas with master’s degrees can attest. Somewhere along the line we forgot that credentials and paper qualifications are only a sign pointing to the pupil’s level of education. The fallacy of today is that people associate education directly with credentials. If someone has advanced credentials, we assume they more intelligent/competent/capable. And yet, jobless PhDs and baristas with master’s degrees exist and continue to proliferate.
Told you this was going to make some folks mad.
9. And some will say: Engineering, hard science, and technical degrees are the only ones right now that aren’t useless. Everything else is just a formal certification that allows you to do a job; teacher, lawyer, nurse, doctor, physiotherapist, pilot, etc.. And then there are degrees that are downright counterproductive and offer little to no discernible value; fine arts, philosophy, woke studies, etc.
I have a vested interest in the continued survival of education as an industry (and I have a philosophy degree) but even so… are they wrong? Think about it for a bit and set your feelings at the door. We are taking young men and women out of the economic system for 4 years at the peak of their health/productivity, and pressuring them to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a qualification that may never yield them a job. Many go into debt doing so. It should not be the case that we reward this behaviour with higher paying jobs and social status while ostracising those who’ve elected to spend that time working instead.
10. Those fortunate enough to finish 3 or 4 years of university often struggle to find their footing after graduation. Universities offer career advisement services (some even do job placements) but too many people graduate only to crash and burn, or flounder in the job market just doing an assortment of random gigs. Why? They had no plan.
The plan is more important than the degree. Maturity, critical thinking, networking, financial/strategic literacy, and effective goal setting will be what takes you beyond entry level as far as plain old jobs go.
11. People think degrees ought to be more specialised. I think more degrees should be more generic in scope. This is not my idea, but one I cribbed from an acquaintance who’s been in recruiting and headhunting for 20+ years. This seems counterintuitive but if we taught broad degrees which…
focused on scaffolding of problem solving then
let you learn the applications in the work force
…we'd be better off. Case in point: everyone’s favourite techno wunderkind Elon has degrees in economics and physics. And a PhD from Stanford, no less. Modern academia goes into a tremendous level of depth and specialisation. This has yielded some useful technological advancements but in most other domains of knowledge it has the effect of creating isolated silos of knowledge. Truly useful higher education has to create individuals who are versatile and able to think in first principles and generalise from particulars. Specialisation is for ants.
12. An understated benefit of a degree is primarily to grow your network and create access to doors that typically wouldn’t open without that degree or affiliation. Prior to the 20th century and ensuing democratisation of university education, this was the commonly accepted understanding of university. A place for children of aristocrats to be inducted into the high culture they would inherit, to learn the best that has been thought and said by the ancients, and network with other mini-aristocrats. Higher education has historically always been an aristocratic endeavour.
The current obsession with democratising university to make it as inclusive as possible (some believe it is a human right – LOL!) is a new and novel phenomenon that only came about after WW2 and was possible in a culture of material abundance. It was never going to last. Well, it’s been about 70 years and the taps have dried up. The abundance is gone and won’t return, and with it the great hope of sending every child to university will finally be put to rest.
As the current way of thinking about university education continues to phase out, the old view of education will reassert itself. Wat means? If you’re not a Rothschild or scion of some multimillionaire/billionaire, here’s an idea for you: Save the 4 years and $100K and get a job. Get involved in sales. Get into digital marketing. Learn how to coach people.
If you have to get a certification, get a professional cert like an HVAC or electrician. Professional degrees and professional certifications (i.e. industry certs) will continue to increase in value as we head into the 21st century. All other degrees will continue to decrease in value, increase in cost, and become less relevant.
Some degrees will become obsolete, others will transform, entirely new degrees will be formed. This is nothing new. The way of the world is that it is always changing. Now the change will just be much faster and institutions will likely adapt slower than the real world... which is also nothing new.
You don’t have to live like your parents.
You don’t have to make the choices they did.
You don’t have to go to university if you don’t think it’s a good fit for you. The information is out there for those who will take it.
But if you do decide that it’s for you, well then, choose carefully.