Over the past several years, colleges and universities have been rocked by myriad issues, scandals, controversies, and grave doubts about their value at all. The problems concern the hegemony of “woke” theory; the rise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); the ubiquity of plagiarism by students and faculty; cheating scandals; plus exorbitant cost and the resulting debt burden.
All of it raises that great question: Is this worth it compared with the cost?
There is a lot at stake in this debate, as in trillions of dollars and a vast machinery of entrenched professionals at all levels.
But here is what is interesting. The private sector is already telling the truth about the whole thing. Colleges have already been superseded by a completely separate education and credentialing system that is huge, active, effective, and absolutely essential for any profession that still requires precision, knowledge, and genuine expertise.
I’m speaking of the many thousands of credentials that are not only available but also often required for any advancement in some of the most important professions. Each is governed by a test. The test cannot be gamed. There is no chance of cheating. Each test is backed by huge books that teach. The teaching is backed by videos, practice exams, flashcards, and an entire industry devoted to helping the student.
All of this comes after graduating in whatever field. In many cases, the credentialing systems don’t even care if you have ever been to college. It’s enough that you pass the test. Getting a college degree, even an advanced degree, doesn’t even matter in many of these professions. All that really matters—because it actually measures and filters in ways in which college does not—is that you have managed to get your certification.
No one tells you this as you are slogging through four years of college heaven or hell while spending six figures of someone else’s money—or racking up vast debt that you pay off for years following—all with the supposed goal of being a success in life. In the end, if you land in some profession with a bright future, the first plan for you is to start studying for your first credential.
Huh? What is that? Well, it’s how it works in the real world. That may come as a surprise or shock to many. They paid the big bucks for a degree, but in the real world, no one really thinks much about it? True story.
To what professions does this apply? Accounting, obviously. But also every nook and cranny of finance and investment. It applies to tax preparers, every kind of engineering, project management, law and medicine (of course), actuaries, contract preparation, hospitality, genealogy, logistics, information technology and computers, emergency management, geology, and much more besides.
Each field has a professional organization. Each professional organization has a credential. Each credential has an exam. Each exam has a book. And each book has extensive methods of learning the material to enable students to learn and pass.
In other words, they all do what colleges say they do but don’t actually do. And each of these testing and credentialing systems has ways to overcome the problems associated with plagiarism, cheating, and corruption. Not even one of them pays the slightest attention to DEI, ESG, or woke blather at all. They are 100 percent about the material and the great goal of helping and making sure that students learn it all.
Colleges and universities are all confused about how they are going to overcome the great crisis in public confidence. All the while, the crisis has already been resolved in ways that subtly discredit the whole institution.
None of these credentialing systems pays the slightest bit of attention to the drama coming from academia. They don’t care. I mean, they truly do not care in the slightest. You can show up to a finance job wielding a doctoral degree in finance, and the job interviewer will just roll his eyes. Not until you get your Series 65 or CFP, CFA, or something similar will you be regarded as actually competent—regardless of your supposed academic degrees.
And speaking of, you should take a look at the curriculum of these in particular. You would be amazed. I seriously doubt that 99 percent of academic-employed economists could pass these tests. They would likely fail spectacularly. That’s because the private credentials are about actual performance in the real world, not big theories about nothing that do not pertain to anyone’s actual life.
For example, in explaining the existence and meaning of the yield curve, the Series 65 books do a deep dive into the structure-of-production theories of Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and the business cycle theories of F.A. Hayek. These are subjects of which most academic economists are totally ignorant. But in the real world, you cannot be ignorant of these things. You have to know them very well because they have exploratory value.
The thing is this. The private sector is far ahead of academia in knowing what its people need to know, how to get them to know it, and how to test people to make sure that they do know. Credentialing has already figured it out. There is a market measure in operation, whereas in academia, they really don’t care in the slightest bit whether and to what extent the students know anything or even whether the professors are pushing anything really valuable or doing research that is evidence-based or anything else.
And that’s the core of the problem. If there is no real incentive or signaling system in place to get academia back on track toward producing value for the paying customers, how can it reform itself? So long as people keep coughing up $150K to pay for a meaningless piece of paper you hang on the wall, the money continues to flow and the corruption will continue and get worse.
All the while, the rest of the world has moved on to create a vast network of teaching and learning that actually does work! What a commentary!
And so why don’t we more often hear about these systems in which vast numbers of high-end professionals must participate for personal success? I will tell you why. The people who report the news and think of themselves as curators of the public mind face no such credentialing demands. Actually, they don’t have to prove themselves in any way. They just plop down in their coveted chairs, get their marching orders, and go to work.
They are not real professionals who face relentless demands on their focus and achievements. Top media journalists are not like accountants, engineers, or financial advisers. They don’t actually have to be trained at all in anything other than following orders and crafting canned sentences. They deeply resent other professions that still have standards.
To some extent, you could say the same thing of the academic class. They hang around the universities long enough, shell out the big bucks, learn to cite the right people, and find themselves in possession of a degree they can use to move to a new institution and be on the other side, teaching instead of learning. They have no real skin in the game otherwise.
Message: It’s very likely that for many if not most professions, a college education has already been superseded and supplanted. They just don’t know it yet.
