A Way Around the College Cartel
7th October 2020
Going to college isn’t about learning, but about credentialing — for most students anyway. They take a smattering of courses, the content of which they quickly forget, have fun, and blow through a great amount of money. At the end, a school gives them a piece of paper attesting to their “education.”
To many employers, that paper is now “required.” They seldom care about the content of the individual’s supposed studies, but merely that he made it through. What if there were a better device for signaling trainability without the huge cost?
British universities grant their degrees based on examinations. The three years a student spends at the university is devoted to attending lectures and working with a tutor, and the degree depends on the outcome of a series of in-depth exams extending over about a week. This ensures that the recipient actually can do what the degree says the recipient can do. I like this system a lot. It is much superior to the collect-enough-boxtops approach modern American colleges use.