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Marc Bodnick
Universities are going to be around for a long, long time.
Conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley (which I agree with) is that universities are going to be meaningfully less important in 10-20 years. Two big reasons:
So with the actual cost and opportunity cost of going to college increasing, more and more young people will simply not go and self-educate / self-train themselves.
In 20-30 years, the idea that everyone is going to go to a common physical place to learn in the classroom from teachers doesn't make sense, given how powerful and efficient self-directed online learning is.
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Universities are going to be around for a long, long time.
- U.S. colleges and universities generally do a good (if inefficient) job of educating kids and preparing them for adulthood.
- The norm of going to universities is very strong and sticky. It will take years before universities show real softness. University education is protected by an interconnecting system of social norms / modeling, institutional relationships, social expectations, and hiring practices. It's difficult today for anyone except the most exceptional and independent-minded students to skip college.
- To be clear, this isn't surprising. Entrenched, traditional industries take a long time to start their decline, even in the face of much better alternatives. Think about how long its taking cable television to fade away, despite years of attacks from internet entertainment companies (e.g., Netflix) who clearly provide a better value proposition. Heck, the yellow pages and payphone industries stuck around years after it seemed clear that the writing was on the wall.
Conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley (which I agree with) is that universities are going to be meaningfully less important in 10-20 years. Two big reasons:
- Universities are crazy expensive and getting worse every year. Not just tuition (which is rising at a huge rate, well above inflation). But also time -- for many people, it's a waste of time to spend four years in college learning stuff that can be learned in a year or two.
- It's getting easier, better, and faster to learn stuff on your own from the internet. You can teach yourself lots of skills and knowledge online, and these resources are getting better every year.
So with the actual cost and opportunity cost of going to college increasing, more and more young people will simply not go and self-educate / self-train themselves.
In 20-30 years, the idea that everyone is going to go to a common physical place to learn in the classroom from teachers doesn't make sense, given how powerful and efficient self-directed online learning is.
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Continue reading...
