The Higher Education Bubble

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

Attending university has become more of an insurance policy than a true education. It's an insurance policy that's overpriced but purchased out of fear of the unknown.

In fact, you can probably make the case that in the long run, the coronavirus pandemic might help sustain the current paradigm of higher education, rather than destroy it. All it takes is one year of seriously threatening to take away everything that makes college great for us to be reminded why it’s so hard to opt out. Yes, some schools will go un... See more

Like mass media and mass commerce, the average university is on the brink of collapse. Its structure is a rotting legacy of the Industrial Age. For years, anybody who wanted to learn on their own lacked the means to do so. Now, anybody with an internet connection has access to information. Harvard and Stanford will be okay, but dark days are ahead ... See more

As colleges lost their monopoly on information, college became less about learning and more about signaling. Whatever value they once provided is diminishing. Peter Thiel argues that college has become an expensive insurance policy for upper middle class parents who don’t want to see their children fall through the cracks of society.