Contrary to this WSJ article, I don’t agree with the idea of turning all college education into vocational preparation — but I have had some resolute conversations similar to the part where Murray parodies the inflated importance of the college degree —
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”
— that cynicism carries over to how my feelings on graduate education are fermenting.
As much as I occasionally toy with grad school, I admit that advanced degrees are going to go the way of the college degree quite soon — they’ll become unremarkable measures of obligatory social climbing that have little to say about intellect or accomplishment (even moreso than they appear to be now). Their impressiveness will diminish and society will look to some other “next step” as the new mark of higher education (but maybe instead of a super advanced degree, it will take a turn for the better and be something outside the known system).
So if not grad school right now, then what is the alternative? At this exact precise moment in time, I’m very glad to be learning from an industry rather than from an institution.