I really like Seth Godin. He has this way of summarizing an argument in a few words. He also sees angles that others sometimes don’t. I have written before about how students in college are over paying for the credential, not the learning. In other words they are buying a piece of paper.
This is what Seth is talking about in this blog post. But is it true?
If the piece of paper was more important than what you learn I think the following would be happening:
- To keep costs down, more and more teaching would be done by low cost adjuncts.
- Tenure would be under attack because that protects expensive teachers.
- More money would be spent on marketing and facilities than on the education itself.
- Colleges would be admitting more out of state students because they pay more.
- Businesses would be hiring based mostly on where you went to school, not what you learned.
- Our economy would be very unstable because the people who went to the Ivy League schools didn’t actually learn anything.
Yeah, I agree, that’s crazy talk.
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Seth’s Blog: Buying an education or buying a brand?
Great observation about credentialing
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It’s reported that student debt in the USA is approaching a trillion dollars, five times what it was ten years ago.
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Does a $40,000 a year education that comes with an elite degree deliver ten times the education of a cheaper but no less rigorous self-generated approach assembled from less famous institutions and free or inexpensive resources?
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If not, then the money is actually being spent on the value of the degree, on the doors it will open and the jobs it will snag. If this marketing strategy works big, it pays for itself in no time.
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The question is whether a trillion dollars is the right amount for individuals to spend marketing themselves. What would happen if people spent it building up a work history instead? On becoming smarter, more flexible, more self-sufficient and yes, able to take more risk because they owe less money…
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