Read Me Before College

Here are the problems

1. The education system is stuck in the past

Education, in general, and college, in particular, have failed to adapt to today's massive technological innovations. We now live in the information age. This reality means that there is no knowledge that is hidden in the halls of Ivy League Universities, and there is no reason to pay thousands of dollars per semester to learn things to which we already have ready access. Some of the most profound things I learned while attending university were through 6 dollar books and free online videos. But, the current college system still pretends that it has a monopoly on knowledge and acts as it did hundreds of years ago.

In that era, books and instruction were peculiar, but now information is ubiquitous and cheap. The world's best teachers can be found on YouTube, offering world-class instruction for free. Meanwhile, the college system has not modified its practices to accommodate these shifts, and why would it? In reality, the universities do not have to compete with independent educators because only universities have the right to hand out diplomas.

Additionally, the future of education is likely to trend completely digital as the proliferation of AI in education will likely result in personal AI tutors that could coordinate lesson plans and assessments that perfectly suit individual students:

All this begs the question, why continue to learn according to an outdated university model? It's not because it's the most efficient or that it's the best for students. The real reason has more to do with governments, industry, and occupational licensing.

2. Education serves industry and government, not students

It is often said of Google, that they offer their services for free because the people who use Google are themselves the product rather than the consumer. Same goes for education. Even though most students are paying for a portion of their tuition or housing (many have scholarships), they are only doing so because most employers demand college degrees. Some industries like healthcare, comprise mainly of professions in which it is actually illegal to operate without a degree. So, students pay colleges, but industries benefit by shifting the responsibility for job training to schools, and governments benefit by having everyone attend government institutions for their education.

But for the most part, employers aren't acting maliciously. In reality, due in large part to an increasing tide of automation, there are vastly more candidates for most jobs than there are spots to fill. So, requiring a college degree becomes a convenient way of narrowing down the pool of applicants. However, college is just a bandaid fix covering the more fundamental problem. Global population will increase and so will automation. Sooner than later, candidates will have to be culled again. Just look at how it is already commonplace to see the Master's degree held up as the new standard for many high paying jobs.

Therefore, It is understandable that employers have to narrow the field somehow, but there are better ways of selecting candidates (more on that later). That being said, there are other motivations behind requiring college degrees. One of them is to protect current holders of the jobs in a particular industry, and this interest is often served through a practice called occupational licensing. Occupational licensing includes any law mandating that a person must hold a certain set of licenses or credentials in order to perform a given job. There is occupational licensing that we are familiar with like that which is used to ensure doctors and lawyers are properly credentialed, but there are also many overly burdensome laws in many cities and states that crackdown on hairdressers, technicians, and other workers. In fact, many of these industries require college degrees in order to protect their vested members from competition. Creating scarcity results in artificial demand for those jobs and keeps wages high for those already employed. It starts with one degree, then two, maybe three, then they introduce continuing education and membership dues. Such techniques are widespread and even occur in professions for which there is a dire need as is the case with doctors and nurses. Of course, some licensing is good for setting standards of quality, but the perverse incentive structure should not be ignored. Additionally, all of this would be impossible without the involvement of the government as they are the ones who enforce occupational licensing laws.

Speaking of the government, universities receive a hefty portion of their revenue from state and federal governments. In the case of state colleges, the flow of cash is often direct, but even private institutions receive grants for research, scholarship funds, and student loan money (lots of it), all of which come from the government. As with employers, the government has it's own goals when it comes to education. Decisions are made according to various state and federal agendas. These too are often misaligned with the goals of actual students. The prime example being the goal of funneling people into universities in the first place when they wouldn't otherwise find it necessary. Also, student loan debt enriches the banks whose loans are effectively subsidized by the government. As you can see, there's a whole education industrial complex.

All of this produces an education system that does not prioritize the welfare of its students. Instead, the usage of standardized testing and irrelevant curriculum predominate. Class difficulty is based on projected industry demand for new workers, the supply of students interested in that field, or a professor's whim. Quality instruction takes a back seat because the system does not incentivize quality and is instead geared toward artificially weeding out applicants to the benefit of other parties. Industry professionals like doctors and engineers are assured that their jobs will not be overrun by new entrants into the field and the government is ensured a steady flow of people into its university system.

3. Education doesn't deliver on its promises

It would be a different matter though if after completing college, people found consistent success in the workplace and were satisfied with what they're degree conferred upon them. However, this is not the case. As degrees become more commonplace,  landing the job for which your degree was supposedly preparing you often feels like a long shot. Many college graduates are underemployed, severely in debt, and dissatisfied with the life they've found on the other side of their college experience. This video's long, but it talks about a lot of these same issues:

But, education can work differently. Other models like trade schools and coding boot-camps actually serve students first and achieve better outcomes than the university system. These are the kinds of solutions that we should be taking a closer look at.