Is college worth it at all? Examining the time and opportunity cost vs. benefits of a diploma.
Nowadays, college is under fire. Enrollment overall is down. Fewer men are signing up, and instead choosing the trade route or just going to work. The value of a 4-year-degree is being challenged. The “uselessness” of liberal arts degrees (i.e. Himalayan Basket Weaving or Gender Studies) has become a meme.
But it doesn’t end there. Even business degrees, MBAs and Master’s degrees are getting excoriated anymore. We’ve reached our quota for finance bros.
You’ve got the extreme left wing culture that has permeated the college campus scene. 1960s UC Berkley looks like a GOP convention compared to today. Combined with the uber-feminized atmosphere, college is a weird place anymore. Many will charge that it’s no longer a place of free thought or learning, but an indoctrination camp. Yes, there is a strange preoccupation college has with turning students into activists. But to be fair, I think some of the right wing hysterics are overblown.
Above all, college is ridiculously costly anymore, and often it ends up just leaving graduates in serious debt with minimal employment prospects. Many end up working in jobs that have nothing to do with whatever degree they earned, if they find jobs at all.
College has become tainted by the S-word — SCAM. It’s grossly inefficient, too. Four years is a LONG time to invest into something, only to get little or nothing out of it. Apple went from its founding to IPO in four years. A presidential term is four years. Colleges takes as long all while making you learn a bunch of stuff you end up not needing in the “real world.” This is especially glacial in today’s fast-paced digital world where apps like TikTok have built up tens of millions of users in as little as a few months.
The college system seems antiquated today. Almost purposefully faulty. A lot of the reputational attacks against it are justified. But it helps to think of college not as an educational system, but just as big business. Everything makes sense when you understand that people are getting rich off a bad system. Billions are made from student loans and sports programs. School administration has swelled, giving an elite few cushy jobs and incomes protected from economic fluctuations through tenure and grants. All while parents and the culture at large reinforce the NEED to go to college.
Every year millions of psyopped young people zombie walk their way into freshman year, happily shackling themselves with undischargable student loan debt, while getting little in return, and giving four of their prime years they can never get back. College is like the modern day equivalent of selling indulgences, like the Catholic Church did centuries ago.
It’s not even a great place to meet anyone for a long term relationship anymore. Fewer students graduate with a partner, instead choosing to venture into the world single.
What about medical school, engineering, and STEM degrees? Those are surely valuable and necessary. No one’s arguing with them. But the modern college system would collapse if it were stripped down to just those essential components.
All that said, is it worth going to college at all, especially for a worthless degree? I think it depends on your goals and what you’re getting out of it. And how you’re paying for it and what it costs. Due to lack of money, but mostly a lack of drive and focus, I failed to finish college in my early 20s. I attended two community colleges to complete my general credits, working full-time and doing classes piecemeal as best I could. I was accepted into a decent private school I really had no business attending, but only managed to pay for one full year. I dropped out with around 72 credits, right in the no-man’s land before the required minimum of 120 to graduate.
After dropping out, I was forced to go back to work. This was tough and demoralizing. I took it as a real personal failure and it bothered me intensely for years. It wreaked havoc on my psyche and my sense of self-worth. You see, I had been one of the “smart kids” growing up. I was in all the advanced placement classes and so forth. I‘d graduated from one of the best high schools in the country. There were BMWs parked in the student parking lot, though I drove a troubled 1982 Buick Skylark at the time. Many of my peers went on to the Ivy Leagues. I simply had to keep up with them, even if I was from the lower middle class. I had fully bought into the cultural psyop that a college dgree was crucial to SUCCESS. Making matters worse, I saddled myself with over $20,000 of student loan debt for a degree I never finished.
For the longest time, I gave up on my dream of completing college. Trapped by debt and terrible job prospects, I consigned myself to failure. But eventually, I found my way to the North Dakota oilfield in 2012, determined to fix my financial problems and set things right. In a few years, I had paid down almost $35,000 in debt, all while living in a basement with five other guys. There was a severe housing shortage in the town I lived in during the mid-teens oil boom. I didn’t find an apartment until two years after I moved to ND. It was tough living, to say nothing of the harsh weather and isolative nature of the region.
The effort took a toll on my mental health, too. After almost four years I’d had enough of the oilfield and decided to finally go back and finish my college degree. I enrolled in the state school at age 35, choosing to attend most of my classes in-person. Even though I could have finished my degree through any number of online methods, I wanted to go back and “do it right.” Even if that meant giving up working in a lucrative industry and moving across the state.
I decided on English as my degree. Not because it offered any real economic utility, but because I liked writing, and it gave me the shortest route to finishing as quickly as possible. I was passionate about completing what I’d started, but I wasn’t about to invest anymore time than neccessary. I had built up some decent savings, and was largely able to pay the tuition out of pocket.
Is it awkward going to college in your mid-30s? Initially, it was. A lot people tell me I look younger than I am, which might have helped. But it is slightly uncomfortable sitting in classes with people who are 15 years younger than you. I largely kept to myself, though. For me, the biggest struggle was overcoming my own psychological limitations. I had tried several times before to restart my college degree, only to give up. Could I finally break through the invisible barrier? As it turns out, this was largely part of my rationale for returning. I needed to prove that I could do it. My failure to finish almost a decade and a half earlier had left me crippled with self-doubt, depression, and if I’m being honest, self-loathing. If I couldn’t even finish a “worthless” liberal arts degree, what good was I? I know that sounds harsh, but this is part of the pressure that is put on “smart” kids living in a culture where college attendance is akin to worship of the Almighty or else your soul is eternally condemned to hell.
For me, college was not really a practical “necessity.” It was more like therapy. It was a way to heal my damaged psyche and get the monkey off my back. After two years, I graduated with my degree with well over the 120 credits I needed. I had finally done it. Fifteen years later than I had planned. But it was done.
The experience reignited my love of writing and illuminated my outlook on life. It definitely changed me for the better. I’d spent my twenties and early 30s largely pessimistic and depressed. But after paying off my debt and finishing my degree — two things I’d once thought impossible — suddenly anything seemed possible. I felt like Neo finally breaking out of the Matrix at the end of the movie, as corny as that may sound. I saw life not as just a string of unstoppable misfortunes, or as something that was merely happening to me, but as something I could take ownership of. “No fate but what we make for ourselves,” as John Connor puts it in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
After graduating in 2018, propelled by twin successes, I attempted completing a novel again. Something I had tried and failed at eleven years prior. I not only finished it, but went on to write another and another. I just completed my 11th.
Still, there was a severe time and opportunity cost to finishing my degree. Looking back, there were certainly ways of doing it that were more efficient and less costly. It did not cost me just the tution, but the income I would have made had I stayed working in the oilfield. At the time, I was making almost $90,000 a year. So, the decision to go back to school in-person, as opposed to online, really cost over $200,000 in income over the two years. That’s more than the cost of going to Harvard, for God’s sake. I could have bought a house for that instead of just a piece of paper with my name written in fancy font.
By every practical measure, returning to college like I did was not worth the cost. But you really can’t put a price on mental health and personal development. Finishing school helped transform my mindset. It helped me break a decade-plus-long negative feedback loop. Nothing succeeds like success. Paying off my debts kickstarted my “rebirth.” But finishing my degree permanently put me onto a better path. Even if my English degree has no real economic value, it means a lot to me.
After college, I returned to work in the oilfield. Using my reinvigorated mindset, I studied investing and personal finance. I’ve remained debt-free, and built up a solid net worth. Enough to know that in a few short years I’ll achieve another dream I never thought possible — becoming a self-made millionaire. And long before the statistical average for my age group. I’ll likely be able to retire before I’m 50.
College is not for everyone. College degrees, especially liberal arts ones, are overinflated in value and largely unneccessary. For most of history, the only people who went to college for liberal arts were rich kids whose parents could easily pay it. It’s only been relatively recent that anyone could “afford” to go via student loans. I don’t know that that’s a positive development. I think young people today are better served by staying out of debt, unless they are pursuing a degree with real economic value. You can learn most of what you need off YouTube and online for free. The future of education is not the grossly inefficient and costly system we have now, especially with the emergence of AI. It’s in learning specific, concrete skills with real utility. A monthly subscription to an online learning portal like Udemy is probably a better option than a four-year commitment. Way cheaper, too.
College is obsolete in many ways now unless you’re going for a high-value degree. It’s a dinosaur. It’s unnecessary for many. But so is climbing a mountain or putting a 1000 piece puzzle together. For me, going back in my mid-30s was expensive therapy, and a way to get back on the horse. Sometimes proving to yourself that you can do something hard can help motivate you to achieve other things as well. If college can help put you on a better path, then I say it’s ultimately worth it no matter how “worthless” the degree is that you’re obtaining. Not every decision will balance perfectly in an accountant’s ledger. Like with anything else in life, if it means something to you, then it matters.
Dean Brooks 