[lixtra]

I agree that certified education got more expensive. Education price in general got much cheaper with the Information Age. Just look at the body of knowledge that is available to everyone through scihub but also through legal venues. With enough of drive you can pick up a lot of knowledge for free.

If you’re smart you can self-educate yourself in many areas to a better level than 80% of the ivy-league alumni. What you don’t get is: - certificates with prestige - network - extrinsic motivation

[speedplane]

You're minimizing the value of "certificates with prestige". The reason they are valued is that they are a very quick and easy indicator of ability, even if they are only moderately accurate. It's incredibly difficult to judge the ability of someone who is self-taught, you have to dig into their self-study plan and prior projects. If you need to evaluate and sort 10 candidates in 2 hours, you don't have time for that type of research.

With the internet what it is, there ought to be a way to make this evaluation process less labor intensive.

[RugnirViking]

And not only that, it's crazy how much the simple act of going to a university and surrounding yourself with other university educated people contributes to raised wages. For example, I have met a factory worker who through the internet have read a ton and learned several topics to a high level in his free time and he is undoubtably driven but there are so many behvioural and cultural reasons why people would pass over him in an instant.

[speedplane]

This is a common argument, but not sure I buy it. Sure, going to university helps a person identify established business and social norms, but so does working and interacting in society.

Anti social folks who don’t go to college will very likely still be anti-social if they do.

The main benefit of a standardized certificate is that it helps people evaluating your skills do so more easily. There’s no question that a smart hard-working self-taught super-social person will have a harder time than a less skilled person who has a respected institutions stamp of approval.