Young people around the world spend tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives getting university degrees. Partly, that is justified by the unique experience of being a university student. At the same time, it is argued that university confers lifelong benefits. I can think of three major ways in which that could happen:
- Students learn about the things they are actually studying, whether that’s ancient Greek drama or engineering
- Students learn skills in the process of studying, such as time management and interpersonal skills
- Universities sort people: separating those who can handle the kind of competition they foster from those who cannot
While I think universities push the first argument hardest, it is the second and third that are most plausible. Most people only have a small amount of time to devote to sizing up a stranger. That is especially true of anybody who might hire you. What a university degree conveys in a small amount of space is that you have the skills required to get through that process. Rather than actually invest the time and effort to evaluate your capabilities, the person evaluating you can accept this information ‘as read’.
Perhaps one practical message to derive from this hypothesizing is that there are two sorts of university degrees that can be pursued. There is the minority subset where the actual information you learn is the most valuable thing. This includes fields like engineering, medicine, and accounting. Then there are those in which ‘soft skills’ and the sorting process are the principal value, at least from the perspective of employers.