The cost of higher education is increasing at a rate unmatched by earning potential and consequently each prospective student must now consider an emerging threshold. When it’s passed, an Institution of Higher Education (IHE) is no longer worth attending because the debt incurred may be so large, future net holistic contribution to society would turn negative.
To calculate a threshold, prospectives must estimate expected earnings minus expenses and debt payments, account for economic forecasts, job prospects, and apply statistically significant risk variance, etc. A prospective without a degree should therefore be applying degree level financial modeling to determine if going to an IHE—in some cases to learn the aforementioned modeling—is rational.
Though prospectives are often capable of this modeling, or have access to it, they do not account for it, or decide to discount it, in favor of a popular belief perpetuated by society and expensive IHE marketing. The marketing states that attending an IHE is always positive, which implies trade schools, and other options likes Coursera, are not. This is plainly not true but has been so effectively steeped into impressionable minds, that they stop thinking, believing in the Paper Degree as the savior of their life's purpose.
However, the Paper Degree only has value if its holders satisfy a standard. That standard may have qualities of culture, skill set, or a variety thereof—but each of those qualities has a better version of itself. Between the employee who has a large skill set but can’t think to learn new skills, and an employee who has a small skill set but can quickly think through and learn new skills (like the aforementioned economic modeling), the thinking employee will always eventually outperform the non-thinking.
The ultimate standard that holds a Paper Degree’s value is therefore not the IHEs endowment, or the network of its holders, though there might be strong correlation, but it is the ability of its holders to think contrarily—Not to be confused with standardized memorizing and regurgitating.
If someone attends an IHE despite overreaching their threshold, they are knowingly entering a detrimental situation—actively displaying non-thinking. If they continue to attend an IHE and continue to not adequately process debt consequences, they are either refusing to think, refusing to learn to think, or not being taught how to think (IHEs are thus incentivized to not teach thinking in order to keep tuition income). If those who are past the threshold graduate without learning to think, they are rewarded with a Paper Degree, diluting the value of that degree and the IHE.
More degree holders will hold down earnings as they become non-contributing members of the economy. Some employers, seeking employees who can think, have already begun to take notice, like Google, or Elon Musk who has famously said, “They don’t teach people to think in MBA schools. And the top MBA schools are the worst”.
The demand for lesser Paper Degrees will begin to fall (indeed, college attendance peeked in 2011, and the financial soundness of colleges will begin to waver, closing IHEs, as was the case with Corinthian College and more recently not-for-profit Burlington College among others.
Eventually, if the cost of college does not fall, this great devaluation will reach the thinking prospectives who can graduate debt free, but will decide against attendance (and in fact, attendance has already begun to slide). The irony being, of course, that Higher Education will then mean Lower Education, and these institutions will have ensured the success of the very thing they are sworn to root out—ignorance.
~This is the first in a series of memoirs about mankind's never ending quest to ensuring its own failure. Please follow, comment, and let us know if you have any ideas we should cover. All photography is original. Thanks for reading!
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, clearly Higher Ed. is not going anywhere anytime soon. But I did do an off the cuff calculation recently and figured that if I had a kid today, in 18 years when he or she is ready for college, if they wanted to goto the school I went to, four years would cost $300,000. With that amount of money, you're better off funding your own trading account, or starting your own business... no one in there right mind would goto college for that amount of money... (unless $$$ were worthless of course)
Agreed on most points and an interesting read.
Sadly not all employers are on board with experience trumping degrees. For example hospitals hiring nursing staff with a minimum of BSN Bachelors Science Nursing vs ADN Associates Degree Nursing. Minimum requirements can sometimes shut the door, but clearly the ADN with appropriate experience trumps the extra classes that it takes to get the BSN.
In any case, keep up the excellent posts. Your wallet may not show it yet, but you're valued around here.