The Degree Is Doomed

David Perell said “I think my Twitter account is worth more than my college degree,” and in many ways he's right. As more platforms emerge that enable you to “show your work” new credentials will emerge where skills are quantifiable (and, thus, easier to validate), in-demand, and ever-changing. Competency-evaluation could be the key to verticalized... See more

The most important shift may be that credentials matter less than they have, and proving that you can do the work matters more. Between YouTube, Udemy, Replit, Optilistic, and a wide range of online educational resources, anyone smart and motivated enough can learn practically anything they want.

Fadeke Adegbuyi: The command and deep understanding of a subject has been decoupled from credentialism. Experts can be born and brought up on the internet, bypassing post-secondary institutions and other centralized forms of education and knowledge dissemination….Additionally, the rate at which the internet allows for information to be generated an... See more

Our education system is only one type of reputation and credentialing system. Social media, gaming, Github, bootcamps and soon, on-chain activity in decentralized networks, provide forms of reputation that exist outside the framework of the education system.

Of all the research I’ve done about higher ed tech, I’m most reluctant about the pure play online space. If people are going back to school to make a career change, they want to get a job at the end of the experience (shocker, I know). Right now these online courses don’t count for college credit, and don’t have employers waiting to hire students a... See more

Credentials from centralized institutions are subjective — they're only valuable because the institution issuing them is valuable. It's a reputational ponzi scheme. On the contrary, credentials from decentralized networks are more objective — they let people observe work completed without a subjective value judgement on the work itself.

Even as the cost of tuition increased, the value of university went unquestioned. Colleges bundled education and signaling. Students who thrived in boring classes signaled traits to employers, like conscientiousness, intelligence and conformity. Now, due to the proliferation of information on the internet and the rise of affordable and effective al... See more