[robbedpeter]

Some perspectives still hold that degrees are critical, but unless it's from less than a handful of the top programs in a field, the degree is barely worth the paper it's printed on. Degrees are useful to get into corporate work, but having industry experience, a competent body of work, recognition from your peers, and a demonstrated work ethic can get you into almost any type of job at a competitive rate of pay.

In some cases, degrees can be harmful by elevating incompetent, ignorant, entitled graduates to positions they shouldn't have, particularly in middle management. Getting a degree is not paying your dues or putting in time toward something useful. It can be, but it depends on the individual, so degrees fail as a shibboleth for utility.

[DeathArrow]

Always construction workers feel smarter than architects and civil engineers. Nurses feel smarter than doctors. YouTube watchers feel smarter than PhDs in physics.

[robbedpeter]

And it's possible to acquire the equivalent of a PhD through the vast wealth of information and literal college courses online. Degrees don't mean what they used to.

The dilution of quality caused by profit based perverse incentives, the cultural issues grounded in grievance studies, and the enormous wealth of high quality material and alternatives to formal education have radically changed what academia means to society going forward.

Gatekeeping for profit and not discriminating between the value of a degree in mathematics and a degree in underwater basket weaving, eliminating political, ideological, and epistemic diversity have resulted in a world where degrees increasingly mean you simply paid money to exist in the presence of other folks with paper over a sufficient length of time that all parties involved felt satisfied with the kabuki show.

Accreditation through a legitimate culture of intellectual peers in which institutional academia has earned the respect and dedication of its members approaches the ideal case. Few, if any, American institutions pass muster. They're not without value, and some departments are world class, but they exist in relation to near total institutional failure, and they are infecting the rest of the world.

Academic journals, outdated pedagogy, DIE gatekeeping, woke babysitting and infantilized students are just the most obvious rot.

American academia has a lot of soul searching and hard work to do, or it's going to be displaced by something better that serves the need for legitimate accreditation in society. I personally don't want that to be private corporations, and I'm rooting for the professors and alumni who want to preserve the integrity of their institutions.

[strken]

If you're referring to Dunning-Kruger, it doesn't work like that. Go read the paper. More educated people feel they know more than less educated people, they just underestimate the degree.