[dragoon]

These are completely different markets. The majority of car consumers just want reliable transportation; the car is essentially a commodity. If Japanese cars are of higher quality, people will buy them instead of American cars.

With university degrees, quality of education is second and prestige is first in importance. These are correlated but not always the same, and this is one of the reasons why academia is not vulnerable to upstarts, unless there's a radical shift in how to evaluate prestige (and I doubt there will be).

Both are vocational necessities for most professionals in the U.S., but the "prestige" of the car one takes to work is irrelevant whereas that of the degree is essential.

[Robin_Message]

In the UK, the prestige of the car one drives is at least as relevant as the degree one has. Really, and I don't see how the US is any different. A few years back (when I lived at home) my Dad's company prevented him getting a Renault Espace as a company car. He wanted it for reliable transportation and to get children and stuff around. But he wasn't allowed one, because it wasn't professional enough. So we got an enormously long Volvo instead, which was great because the rearmost seats faced backwards -- anyway, I digress.

The point is, social signalling is very important in both cars and degrees, and if I had to rank them, I'd say car prestige could even matter more than car quality, whereas education is the other way around.

[silvestrov]

This can change quickly. American cars in the 60'ies were not commodities, design was much more important back then.

There is nothing intrinsic in education which makes the university's prestige the most important. Look outside USA, e.g. at northern Europe where the prestige of the university is not important, but the grades and (esp.) the person are.

For some professions the university and grades is all that's considered when employing someone. But for others (e.g. programming) you need to test the person yourself because the university and grades doesn't tell you (reliably) how good the candidate is.

[enko]

> But for others (e.g. programming) you need to test the person yourself because the university and grades doesn't tell you (reliably) how good the candidate is.

In many small programming shops I know of, whether or not you even have a degree is irrelevant for pretty much this exact reason. A healthy GitHub portfolio & a blog with some reasonably insightful articles > any CS degree you can name (including MIT).

If a 16-year-old asked you, sincerely, what the best past forward for a programmer was for them, would you unhesitatingly recommend uni? I have my doubts.

I have felt for some time that the best education in CS is a macbook pro and a 2 year backpacking holiday and this conviction is only growing over time.

[yummyfajitas]

It's a virtual certainty that upstarts wont have the same prestige.

The situation is even worse if Upstart Tech is non-accredited. Unfortunately, it will be very difficult for Upstart Tech to become accredited if it doesn't behave exactly like Dinosaur Tech - most of the requirements consist of measuring inputs (e.g., contact hours, student services), not outputs (student knowledge).