Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]

* Life experience

* Knowledge gained

* Friends made

But what would you add?

I think the concept of university is mostly a time waste and the reasons for it is:

- University is the concept of someone teaching you a topic and then you being able to claim you are qualified in this topic. However, people nowadays need to train themselves in complete new fields multiple times in their lifetime and therefore we already have to teach ourselvs new things all the time and be able to proof that we are qualified in something without a university degree. So why a degree in the first place?

- Before we had the internet, digital books, online training courses and other learning materials at our fingertips one had to go to a different physical location packed with other students and learn a subject at a slower pace so that everyone could equally follow the topic. Today this is a waste of time. If one has access to all the learning materials themselves, then they can consume it at their own pace, possibly learn a 3 year course in a single year. Why slow yourself down unnecessarily?

- Experience > degree. After the first 2-4 years of work experience nobody cares anymore about your initial degree, unless it's medicine or law. Once you've worked, people are interested in your actual ability to deliver and after 2-4 years there's enough data to convince someone how good you are.

- The more people have a degree, the less it's something which makes you stand out. I believe that being different is the best way to stand out from a crowded and competitive market, no matter how. Basically you want to be part of the minority. If nobody has a degree, you want to have a degree, if everybody has a degree, then you don't. People like to see something special in other people, if you can convince them that you know something without going through a lengthy programm like everybody else, then people will think you are smarter or something like that (even if it's not true). This only works though if your in the minority. It's the same pshycology which allows one person to charge 300% more than competitors and having the largest share of customers, because they think that there's something inherently better about it.

- In many countries attending university means creating debt. There's good debt and there's bad debt. If I take credit to buy a property which has very high and real chances of drastically increasing in value, then it's good debt, but if I take credit in order to learn something which I can learn myself and which after 2-4 years won't even matter anymore, then it's possible very bad debt.

I know someone who paid 150k for an MBA at a business school and I think the money was wasted. If you pay 150k on an MBA in business, then clearly the course material will be entirely wasted on you. 150k is good money that could have been spent so much better in other areas, like buying property and then see the value grow whilst receiving passive income through rent or investing in an actual business which you want to create after the MBA.

This is the fundamental problem with self-education: you tend to get stuck in local loops based on your current interests, motivations and knowledge. Sure, the information is out there, but without a proper introduction by an expert, real-world peers learning the same material, and the overarching school structure, it may as well be written in hieroglyphics. External education, when properly designed, should broaden the mind and prepare it for self-education, but without it, you often end up with a fairly limited view of the world shaped by whatever you personally find interesting.