Review: Master’s Degrees Are the Second-Biggest Scam in Higher Education
- Going to college was one of the worst decisions I’ve made in my life…and trust me, I’ve made some really bad ones.
Now, if you read that and think to yourself, “Whaddya talking about, going to college was one of the best decisions of my life!” that’s fine.
But when I see that response I can only assume:
- You were recruited for a sport
- Or you had some other way of getting a big fat scholarship
- Or you had a very clear idea of what you wanted to study in college
- Or you went to an affordable state college and had a plan to pay for it
- And/or you were smart enough to know that if you made the right friends in college, you’d be set for life
- And/or you went to Harvard or some other big-brand school and you were smart enough to know that if you made the right friends in college, you’d be set for life.
But none of those applied to me or about 97% of the other saps we went to school with.
So we basically just flushed our time and money down the drain.
For what it’s worth, I’m not bad-mouthing higher education here. Higher education is a wonderful thing for those who need higher education.
But that’s not why most people go to college or get a master’s degree, so college ends up being a time-sucking, debt-building, bait-and-switch because…
- There are better, cheaper ways to meet women
- There are better, cheaper ways to launch many careers
- There are better, cheaper ways to kill time while you grow up enough to figure out your life
…and these are probably the most common reasons why most students are trudging around their college campus and sleepily going to classes.
For all the reasons above, if you are the parent of a kid in college or a college-bound kid you should take your son or daughter on a long drive and use this article to plunge into a very important discussion about the future (and not just master’s degrees, but any college degree):
Because you are the parent, this article is a great tool for start a discussion with your kid about the pros and cons of college.
When I was a child, there was no discussion of the cons of college. Only the supposed pro side of the equation. But now we know, it’s been a con for a long, long time:
Post-secondary education is dedicated to marketing authority in the form of credentials, and credentials are the thing that helps non-experts tell the difference between the excellent job candidate and the merely adequate candidate. Got a BA? Not good enough; everybody’s got one. The local university will be happy to sell you a Master’s degree. And if that’s not enough, go for a doctorate. A PhD is like a USDA stamp on the butt of a pig. You need one of those, too. State U will fix you right up. Or splurge and get one from the Ivy League. By the time you’re ready to start earning a living, you’re up to eight years older than when you graduated from high school and around a quarter-million dollars in debt — although they may not teach you that in grad school.
Oh, and if you and your kid no longer have the attention span required to read an actual article with words?
Here’s a video from best-selling business author and New York University Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway that will help you both come to the same sane conclusion — and he’s pulling back the curtain on his own industry!