Why Colleges Are Broken

And Some Thoughts on Fixing Them

With Biden moving to forgive student loan debt, the economy tanking, and the rottenness of the educational system becoming more apparent, the topic of colleges and higher education is in hot debate right now. And honestly, education should be a perennial part of the public discourse. Preparing the next generation by passing on practical knowledge and wisdom is paramount to a successful society. But it is hard to solve any problem without a comprehensive understanding of the important pieces of the puzzle.

The problems we are seeing with education can best be understood by the contextual pressures that surround and incentivize students and colleges. And once we understand the root of the problems that plague our educational system, we can set a goal and articulate a solution, both short and long term, to fix it. 

OVERVIEW

I have broken this post down into five parts. First, I will answer the question of Why You Should Care about a strong educational system. I will then cover the current Problems with Colleges, namely lack of market pressure from students and lack of positive incentives for colleges. Next, I will define in broad strokes what an Ideal Education looks like to inform what solutions we should strive for. I will then take us through the Long Term Solutions to reform the educational system and the Short Term Advice for students looking to get the best education they can in the current system.

By the end of this post, you should have a comprehensive understanding of why our educational system is important, why it is broken, what it should look like, how we can fix it, and how students can get the most out of what currently exists. 

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

I will keep this part short as this is probably pretty self evident, but I do want to highlight a key few points to drive home how important proper education is, not just for students, but for society more broadly.

EDUCATION IS PARAMOUNT TO A SUCCESSFUL HUMAN FUTURE

Ideally each generation is learning more about the world around them, documenting this information, and building an understanding of best practices in order to pass this knowledge on to the next generation. The more effectively we educate the next generation, the more capable they will be in leading good lives, progressing human understanding further, and passing that knowledge on in turn to their children. A society with a strong educational system will ensure success, not only in the short term, but for future generations.

COLLECTIVE SUCCESS FROM INDIVIDUAL SUCCESS

One of the core beliefs I hold is that through the greater success of individuals, we all will experience more collective success. If a farmer makes more food, a company makes a better product, or a doctor is able to provide higher quality care, this will improve the lives of the people they serve. Part of the motivation for my website is to offer free knowledge with the hopes that even this small contribution can help build the rising tide of positive change I see in the world, if not for my own sake, but for my future generations. Therefore, we should all care that the individual has access to the best educational resources possible.

BAD EDUCATION IS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE

It is not only the positives of getting something right, but the negatives of getting something wrong that motivate us. A poor education is the single most powerful way to destroy a healthy society. If you were part of a nefarious secret ruling elite that wanted to control a population, the best strategy would not be to take away education, but educate the population in a way of thinking that is counter productive to their own interests.

You might orient them towards meaningless and unfulfilling goals, make them think the problems in the world and in their lives lie with other people and are outside of their control, and encourage them to throw away traditional values and morality and accept debasing and dehumanizing ideologies. In short, a bad education can be used to only hinder progress, but destroy a free and successful human future.

PROBLEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

So what are the problems we are currently seeing in our educational system? Often, it is not about controlling the strategies of the players in the game, but changing the rules and conditions to incentivize certain behaviors. I break down the problem with college education into two parts: the student side where easy money and apathy creates a lack of thoughtful informed decision making, and the college side where a lack of incentives creates bloated and inefficient educational services.

STUDENT SIDE - LACK OF MARKET PRESSURE

The root of the problem that plagues education is the lack of thoughtful decision making from prospective college students that would otherwise pressure colleges to provide higher quality education at reasonable prices. This poor decision making can be attributed to a few things I will cover in greater detail: bad decision making skills, lack of clear goals, poor advice, ease of obtaining student loans, lack of transparent success metrics for colleges, and a dearth of and limited faith in alternative educational paths. These problems create a situation where students put little pressure on colleges to aspire to higher standards.

TEENS RARELY MAKE GOOD DECISIONS

Face it, when we were young, we made a lot of poor decisions. We are often not thinking about the consequences of our actions, let alone what long term goals we should even aspire to. Students often think of college for the short term benefits it would provide: a chance to escape from their parents’ watchful eye and indulge in a free life. And this was because up until that point, many teens didn’t have much agency in their lives and were not used to making decisions for themselves, let alone know how to make good ones.

LACK OF PROPER GOALS

Many prospective college students focus on getting into the best college they can, with barely any thought as to how their college choice will enable their longer term career ambitions. But preparing for and obtaining a good career is the goal that should inform what college, if any, is the best choice for the student. This lack of understanding of the true goal causes many students to make suboptimal decisions on what college to go to and why.

LACK OF ADVISEMENT

I blame the parents. And the guidance counselors. But seriously, it is the lack of wisdom in the approach to smart life decisions that is hamstringing high school graduates as they look to the next chapter in their lives. This is for two main reasons.

First, many boomers went to college and feel like it worked out for them so why should it not work out for their children. As colleges have become more and more useless and overpriced, we have not updated our collective understanding, dooming students to make poor choices into the future.

As I mentioned, a powerful way to understand how things work is to look at the context. Career advisors and guidance counselors are not paid well and the work is not prestigious meaning that many of the best and brightest do not aspire to these roles, despite how important the work is to setting the next generation up for success. If someone did have the skills necessary to do this work well, they would use their skills to find higher paying or more prestigious jobs for themselves. As such, the quality of people occupying these positions is mediocre at best and destructively bad at worst.

EASY MONEY

One of the main problems with college is the ease at which students can obtain loans. I credit Maarek (@maarblek on twitter) with bringing my attention to this point. Studies on lottery winners and those who inherit large fortunes show that humans tend to be less thoughtful with the resources they obtain without hard work. By not allowing students to default, banks are happy to hand out large student loans they know need to be paid back. This in turn means students are less thoughtful with how this money is spent while also enabling those who should not be taking on such debt to do so regardless. 

LACK OF SUCCESS METRICS

One of the best ways to understand if something is a good investment is to see how that investment has paid off for others. As I noted, many in the boomer generation have done well out of college and use that to justify the same path for the current generation. But I would argue that more recent evaluations of the benefits of college would be far less favorable. To this end, there is little data on post college success and even less desire from colleges to advertise the information that does exist, making it difficult for students to effectively assess the cost benefit of a college education.

ALTERNATIVES

The final issue I would raise is not only the lack of, but the downplaying, if not outright condescension, towards alternative career paths. Very few parents will entertain, let alone encourage, their children to consider options outside of traditional college. This inevitably forces many to pursue a college education when this simply might not be the most time and cost effective path for them given their career ambitions.

COLLEGE SIDE - LACK OF GOOD INCENTIVES

Now we come to the other side of the coin. Because of the lack of pressure exerted on colleges to provide a quality education at a competitive price, colleges are incentivized to optimize for other parts of the college experience which are often irrelevant to setting students up for successful careers.

PROFIT INCENTIVES

As businesses, colleges are motivated by profit. Whether they get that money from government grants, student tuition, or alumni donations, they will adapt their business accordingly. Governments and alumni seem to be fully committed to the woke liberal agenda and reward diversity and inclusion almost to the exclusion of all else. Students seem to prioritize the college experience, wanting a place known for its party culture and amenities. Because of this, there is little incentive for colleges to optimize for a quality education.

TEACHERS

As I explained with guidance counselors, the teaching profession is similarly affected by the conditions that surround it. With less opportunity for professors to do actual research, especially if it would contradict the liberal narrative, most true intellectuals have fled academia or been pushed out. This means that most teachers are now incentivized not by a desire to empower their students with a proper education, but to indoctrinate them in their own woke liberal beliefs. So as colleges become less oriented towards education and more towards the college experience and optics, the teaching profession itself has suffered a severe degradation.

LACK OF COMPETITION

To top it all off, colleges have little reason to improve. The push for high school graduates to go to college, plus the availability of loans, means that colleges have no problems filling their classes. The college alternatives are starting to gain traction, but it is my guess most colleges will ignore this until it is too late for them. For the time being, there is very little pressure on these schools to improve when their current business model is working and very few, if any, will be looking into the future and trying to adapt preemptively. 

IDEAL EDUCATION

Before we dive into potential solutions to the rot in educational institutions, we first need to lay out what an ideal educational institution would actually look like. 

THE GOAL OF EDUCATION

The ultimate goal of a college education is to prepare students for success in their careers, both by equipping them with practical and effective knowledge and providing a network and strategy they can leverage to land the best career opportunity possible. Earlier still, high school and middle school education should be about exploration; discovering the interests and skills a student has and how those might be applied in a future career.

DISCOVERY

This means the first step of a proper education is discovery. Exposing students to a wide range of work problems and seeing what sparks their interest and suits their abilities. I would say that it is acceptable for colleges to provide this to students who do not yet know what area of study they would like to specialize in, but ideally, this should be done in high school such that high school graduates can make informed decisions if the college path is right for them, and if so, which institution is ideal. The bottom line is that discovery comes first and should be the main focus for students who do not yet have a clearly defined understanding of the career they wish to pursue.

CAREER ADVISEMENT

Once a student has figured out their area of interest where they can leverage their skills, the next stage is advisement. Educational institutions should have resources to help students decide on the right career for them and the educational path that will best set them up for success. This means just as much importance should be put on planning the education strategy and path as learning in the classes themselves.

LEARNING

Finally, educational institutions should teach knowledge that is practical and applicable to the student’s career. This means colleges need to understand what skills are necessary in the workplace and design curriculums accordingly. I would advocate for a focus on adaptable knowledge as well. Learning meta skills such as organization, communication, planning, relationship building, and problem solving would benefit students far more than deep dives into specific and niche information.

LONG TERM SOLUTIONS

To force colleges to adapt towards an educational model that is oriented towards the ideal functions I outlined, we need to create the proper incentivization.

CUT FUNDING

The less easy money in the system, the more demand students will put on colleges to be a worthwhile investment. Allowing students to default on loans would help incentivize banks to only loan to students who would be able to pay them back. This in turn would mean students would have to have a clearer understanding of their future career and demonstrate an ability to achieve success. Harder to obtain loans would mean less apathy from students with how the money was spent. Getting the government out of funding schools would mean they would no longer have a way to shape college incentives.

EMPOWER STUDENTS TO MAKE BETTER DECISION

Students making more informed and selective decisions about whether to go to college and, if so, what college to apply to would force colleges to improve performance in the areas that were important to students. Specifically, teaching students to value a college by its ability to set them up for success in a future career. We can start this trend by having better open resources for students on how to orient themselves on their career path, the pros and cons of college, and how to make an optimized decision.

FOCUS ON RESULTS

Something measured is something observed. The more that colleges are measured in the ability to set students up for future career success, the more this metric will be used by students in their decision making process. Colleges can hide behind the boomer experience and promoting unimportant metrics like DIE initiatives only as long as students don’t demand and judge colleges by the metrics that really matter.

PROMOTE ALTERNATIVES - PARALLEL EDUCATION

One of the best ways to deal with a broken system is to ignore it and build something better. Ivan Jirous called this a Parallel Society and I think this same idea can be applied to education. By building and promoting a parallel educational system, we can put pressure on traditional colleges to adapt or die.

ADVICE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS

While this all might be well and good as a plan going forward, what about students who are stuck relying on the current system? Here is my advice for those of you thinking about your educational path.

FIGURE OUT YOUR CAREER GOALS

Discovery of your interests and talents is the first step to deciding on the right career, and since you can’t choose the right educational path without a goal to orient yourself to, this is your first step. If you haven’t already, figure out what you are interested in and skilled at and what careers those interests and skills can be applied.

FIND A GOOD ADVISOR

Most advisors are useless so it is worth taking your time and finding someone you can truly trust to give you good advice. It is probably the case that the best person to inform you on the job market and career path is not someone with the title career advisor or guidance counselor. You should also talk to a wide range of people as some will be better than others in talking about different areas of the job market. 

As someone experienced in this field, I am happy to offer my own advice and my DMs are open on twitter. 

CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES

College is a huge time and money commitment, and unless you feel confident your college of choice has the resources you need and you will take advantage of them, I highly recommend considering a non college path.

For example, coding bootcamps require only a few months of time and if you find a good one, you will leave with the skills you need to be proficient at an entry level coding job. You do not need college if you plan to go into sales and can work your way up if you know the entry jobs, such as SDR, to go after. There are also plenty of opensource online resources you can access that will impart knowledge more practical and empowering than most high level college courses. Do not doubt the power of the internet.

GAIN EXPERIENCE

The single biggest thing recruiters look for on a resume is on the job experience. You need to have a well formatted and articulated resume as well, but the more closely the work and education aligns with the job you are applying to, the more interested the recruiter will be in interviewing you as an applicant. It would then follow that finding internships or entry level jobs in your desired field is far more important on a resume than any four year college experience might be.

NETWORK

Not only knowledge, experience, and grit, but also networking are key to achieving the goal of a good career. You should explore every opportunity you can, such as building a professional profile on linkedin, engaging with online communities for professionals in your space, going to networking events, and even asking your friends and family for introductions. It is always best to approach new connections by simply asking to learn from them and not asking for a job.

CONCLUSION

The current iteration of our educational system is rotten. Awash in easy money and thoughtless decision making, students and colleges are not incentivized to aspire to the ideal of a practical and effective education, and society is suffering because of it. If we are to see improvements, we need to encourage students to make better decisions and start to build a strong parallel educational system that can provide students with what they truly need to be successful in their careers. Discovery, proper advisement, and practical education is what educational institutions should aspire to and we all need to hold them to that standard.

TAKEAWAYS

• We should care about our educational system as education is how we set up humanity for future success which will benefit all of us

• The current educational system is broken for a few reasons

  • Students do not make informed and thoughtful decisions because they lack clear goals, proper advisement, and decision making skills

  • Easy money makes students apathetic and keeps colleges lazy

  • Colleges are monetarily incentivized to provide things other than a quality education 

• An ideal educational system allows discovery of interests and talents, provides wise advisement on how to apply them in the job market, and empowers students with the knowledge and network to be successful in their careers.

• Long term solutions to fix education are to cut funding, empower students to make more informed decisions, and build alternative parallel educational systems

• Current students can adapt in the short term by thinking about their career goals and make sure they are making informed and practical decision on the best path to those goals