I heard this sentence from Charlie Kirk during one of his debating tours at a university. He explained it in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). That said, “spending so much money on a degree or a piece of credentials doesn’t guarantee a job that covers the bill, or even a job under the current job market.” It is a stupid strategy in terms of economic cost when the target is just finding a job.

Another reason is that a credential doesn’t equal capability. A credential means that you passed the test, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to do things outside the textbook, like making software and creating content, which represent you better than grades.

Especially when people found the power of ChatGPT and Claude, a bachelor’s degree devalued drastically. The information is literally free, and you can obtain knowledge and anything you want to know within seconds. It changes the game, the market, efficiency, and time: 10 years ago, a strange bug in a project could take 1–30 days. Now, the process becomes 1. Copy and paste code to Claude 2. Claude thinks and gives you an answer in 1 min. Sometimes, you don’t need to write code yourself…

Then, what is the purpose of education? The reasons include:

1. Being able to justify answers critically. You need to know what’s right to identify what’s wrong.
2. How to learn (meta-learning). Being able to decompose, construct, and practice knowledge in a new field.