FREE NEWSLETTER
Go to main Forum page »
I perhaps have a contrarian view of the utility of some higher education courses. This opinion has developed over the last 20 years or so, talking and interacting with younger staff I employed within my past business. Degree courses seem to have somewhat transformed into a business model, more influenced by volume over suitability of the course and proper weight being given to the future earning and retirement outcome expectations the course will achieve.
To use a fishing analogy, casting the net wide doesn’t necessarily provide the optimal catch quality, although the quantity of catch can still generate a higher revenue overall if the university business model is more focused on income generation over academic success.
I question the suitability of some degree courses that, to my mind, are not well matched to employer needs. Not being an educator, my expertise is very limited and is based solely on observation. But I found that the one thing I always expected from an employee with a degree-level education was the ability for critical thinking. This has sadly not been the case on numerous occasions. Could this be related to the “cast the net wide” analogy? On balance, it seems probable.
Moving on from academic quality or maybe I should use a less inflammatory “mismatch with the demand side for graduates” wording we come next to earning and retirement outcomes. With this subject we can get onto more of a data driven firmer footing than my previous personal impressions. For instance, studies indicate that approximately 20-28% of all undergraduates, depending on the specific degree course and various contributing factors, may achieve lower lifetime earnings and consequently poorer retirement outcomes than individuals who do not pursue a university degree. This significant minority underscores my earlier point about a ‘mismatch with the demand side for graduates,’ demonstrating that not all degree paths lead to the promised financial uplift.
Here are the studies that provide data for this claim:
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS): “The impact of undergraduate degrees on lifetime earnings” https://ifs.org.uk/publications/impact-undergraduate-degrees-lifetime-earnings (This study states that “around one in five undergraduates would have been better off financially had they not gone to university.”)
FREOPP: “Is College Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis” https://freopp.org/whitepapers/is-college-worth-it-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis/ (This analysis finds that “Twenty-eight percent of bachelor’s degree programs have negative ROI when adjusting for the risk of non-completion.”)
A rough estimation for new undergraduate enrollments in a typical year would likely be in the range of 2.5 to 3.5 million students. This includes those starting associate’s or bachelor’s degrees for the first time. If we use very conservative figures and assume 15% of 2 million students achieve lower income and retirement outcomes because of degree unsuitability or labour mismatch the figures become quite stark. Approximately 300,000 possible lower retirement outcomes.
If we think about this yearly number and extend it over a single typical working lifetime of 40 years we have a 40 year pipeline of graduates heading towards poorer living and retirement standards. That’s 12 million people. This strongly indicates that starting a degree course may be a poor life decision for a very large number of people. Pause and think of the scale. 12 million poorer retirements just to “Experience the university lifestyle” I hope the memories are worthy because the course mismatch makes the financial outcome unworthy for a large minority who would possibly have been better served with a vocational educational experience.
I advocate strongly for vocational and higher education. There’s no doubt in my mind that education is a vital component of our early life and continuing through a career. My issue is with the suitability of courses that are driven more by a commercial ethos rather than an educational ethos that lead to suboptimal outcomes. Thinking of our children and grandchildren going forward it would be wise of us to pay attention to this problem when helping them form opinions and choices for their future education needs. Be mindful that not all education experiences are equal.
It seemed to me that college wouldn’t teach me how to think. I got an engineering degree.
I found that the one thing I always expected from an employee with a degree-level education was the ability for critical thinking.
My issue is with the suitability of courses that are driven more by a commercial ethos rather than an educational ethos that lead to suboptimal outcomes.
These two statements of yours beg the questions of what specific courses you think universities should be offering that they aren’t as well as what are some examples of courses that you think are driven by a commerical ethos that lead to suboptimal outcomes.
In this regard, I found it interesting that today’s NY Times has an article by a dean and philosophy professor at the University of Tulsa titled
This Is Who’s Really Driving the Decline in Interest in Liberal Arts Education
Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much.
(The was the original title that was changed to the one above.)
In her article, the author bemoans the elimination of liberal arts programs and seminars that adminstrators don’t consider cost effective. While she didn’t specifically say so, I think it can be argued that the author would agree that the courses that have been eliminated were much more likely to foster the development of critical thinking than the large survey courses that have replaced them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opinion/liberal-arts-college-students-administration.html
There is no single, permanent answer to what makes a course “suitable.” Individual needs, uncertain futures, and a changing world mean suitability is always provisional.
The best educational systems, like the best cultivators, recognize this uncertainty and strive to create environments where all kinds of seedlings can take root and thrive, even as tomorrow’s climate remains unpredictable. An achievement culture produces anxiety, hyperactivity, and depression when the goalpost keeps changing. A growth culture, by contrast, cultivates flexibility, resilience, and the capacity to meet future challenges with curiosity rather than fear.
In the end, the question about the value and structure of higher education courses expands into something much larger: what kind of culture are we cultivating – and ultimately leaving – for the next generation?
I think it’s important to remember that college isn’t just a “ticket” to a good life—it’s a launchpad for critical thinking, lifelong learning, and meaningful connections.
In my own experience, what I work on has zero resemblance to what I studied in college—except for one essential skill: the ability to learn. Parsing complex problems, learning independently, and thinking critically are the skills that stuck with me and serve me every day.
I also have mixed feelings about society—or worse, politicians—shaping the narrative around which college degrees are considered “valuable” or the zeitgeist, “woke”. I doubt we’d have Apple if Steve Jobs hadn’t been curious enough to audit that calligraphy course at Reed College or travel to India with a college friend in search of spiritual insight.
I agree with most of what you said but want to quibble a bit with the “experience the university lifestyle” comment. In the U.S., a huge percentage of those pursuing college degrees are not living the stereotypical bucolic residential college lives like we see in movies or the Gilmore Girls or whatever. Many live at home with family and commute to school, or share an apartment with roommates and squeeze classes in around working, doing their homework on their smart phones while staffing the front desk at the hotel (to give one example). There’s also a much greater proliferation of taking classes online, especially post-COVID.
My first academic position was at a commuter campus, and those students were juggling classes, jobs, and care for siblings or their own children. I still remember walking a student’s infant up and down the hall outside my classroom while my students, including the young mother, took a quiz. She was a single mom with two little boys—the dad walked out on her during her second pregnancy—and was finishing up her degree on her way to a teaching credential. This education was a lifeline to her being able to support herself and her boys.
I think there are hard questions to be asked about whether a degree is always worth it, but I just wanted to observe that not all students are living cushy lives. In fact, unless they’re Rory Gilmore at Yale, I’d say few of them are.
I think the stereotype of the “poor student” is mostly true. Certainly was during my undergrad student days in the ’60s & ’70s. Some of the happiest days of my life.
That was my experience, too. In fact, this wasn’t an expression at the time, but I had “food insecurity” for most of my college years. I was a skinny little thing. I donate to my alma mater’s student food pantry because of that memory.
I agree with your quibble. The comment was more towards the university corporate brochure image of university life.
I fear that objective measures of the success of college graduates will disappear with the dissolution of the US Dept of Education. The department maintains the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS) to which colleges report data annually such as graduation rates. It also maintains the College Scorecard (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/), a highly useful tool for prospective college students seeking comparative information about how they would fare financially after attending a particular college or pursuing a certain field.
We briefly diverged into this conversation in another recent thread. I heartily believe in the value of good higher education but then I have to as a graduate of a top rated university and MBA programme (educational elements funded largely by first the state and second my then employer.
I don’t however believe it is an absolute and certainly not one that can be measured in financial outcomes alone. I certainly have peers who left education at 16, entered trades and ended up establishing valuable businesses. Pehaps one of the biggest benefits of education I see is that you can learn that financial success alone is not the driver of contentment and fulfillment.
Vocational programmes probably good, high achieving academic stars good. The rest more dubious. Certainly at some of the price tags for private universities in the US where I would say the value is probably in the networking than the intrinsic employment value of e.g. a liberal arts degree.
There are certainly lots of grads in the UK with “landfill degrees” working in humble service sector jobs. I think many of them would have been better served working apprenticeships and having education funded by their employers.
But a glut of grads probably just reinforces the system as employers then demand a degree as a basic hygiene factor to show an employee has at least had some sticking power.
One problem is that several majors in college (I will not mention which ones) do not end up giving the graduate marketable skills upon completion. Being able to think critically, and write clearly, is great, but if it is not coupled with a degree that is marketable in the employment field then that is a lot of money spent just to be able to think and write.
There are many examples of current billionaires who dropped out of college as they were already able to think critically, and express their thoughts clearly when writing.
It’s interesting you say that. I was an English major and was able to use that degree to pursue the successful career I just retired from. I’m not especially typical, but I’ll also cite my sister, who got a degree in history, so her main credentials were her demonstrated ability to read and write. She got hired out of college by Charles Schwab. They figured she was smart and they could train her, and they did. She first worked in the tax department and later retrained at Schwab’s expense for coding and an IT career. She di did very well at Schwab for nearly 30 years and now has a management position in IT for a big shipping company. All with an undergraduate degree in history.
Now, times have changed, and employers want specialized degrees. But I still suspect there’s a market for young adults who can read, write, and think.
Good point. Adding to the problem are the many students entering college not possessing the basic writing and reading skills necessary, many required to take remedial courses.
I think basic reading and writing skills may well soon be obsolete unless you are a creative who lives and breathes by crafting engaging wording. AI can and shortly will do better at doing technically accurate writing and/or correcting poor grammar and draftsmanship.
The real value will be in prompt engineering and creative creation and application of agents alongside a higher level skill which will be the ability to call BS on AI output and correct/reiterate.
Universities that aren’t majorly and actively adapting to an AI world and not just addressing plagarism by students, are failing them. Indeed possibly students who can produce high quality assignments by harnessing AI should possibly be rewarded rather than punished because at that stage they are probably getting ahead of their profs.
What would I advise kids to do? Go to college but choose on the basis of what they can articulate about how they will help you be best positioned in the near future world not what “old” degrees were worth. Or just do Maths or Medicine because AI isn’t going to eliminate either of those. Indeed the maths quants might be the ones controlling the AIs.
For my last couple of years of teaching, I added assignments which required students to use an AI tool and then to reflect upon the pros and cons of that experience. I also added syllabus language specifying that if they used AI for any assignments, they had to cite it as they would any other source. It’s pointless to forbid it. Educators should be helping students to think critically and strategically about how best to use it.
Yep just to round this out. Sounds like you were doing exactly the right thing. I first came across having to sign up to an ethics code doing my MBA – I was puzzled as I asked “Why would I not do my own work when I’m giving up so much time and money to do this – I want to maximise my learning”. The response I got was that some cohorts, perhaps with an implication that it was certain nationalities, didn’t have the same cultural values and the qualification was all.
I think education is in real crossfire. The temptation to have black and white outright bans must be huge because cheating will just become easier and less detectable. Yet at the same time the really creative and smart will be pushing the boundaries augmented by AI.
I see it at work already – it’s really hard to tell which of the grads are producing great work because they are really smart and understand most things and which are just smart at using AI tools to scrape a library of previous work. Maybe it ultimately won’t matter.
I too support higher education focused on skills in certain fields and critical thinking in all. I have invested (literally) a great deal of money in higher education over the years and still do for family.
However, the idea that obtaining a degree or two is a ticket or guarantee of success is simply wrong.
In the end it all boils down to the individual, their motivation, attitude, dedication, creativity, determination, etc.
There are many successful people who never set foot in a college classroom and many who did with no added value.