The Value of a Degree
by Miki SaxonThe controversy over Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s education as described by Rocky Agrawal in Venture Beat made me laugh. (For those interested, the reason for the firing demand says a lot more about the lengths an investor will go to get what he wants than about Thompson.)
The good thing is that things are changing. Even mighty Google that once hired only 3.7+ GPAs has changed how they recruit using puzzles to identify talent that might fall through the cracks—assuming it even got that far.
Probably the greatest value of higher education—all education, actually—is learning how to learn.
It’s knowing where to find information and how to assimilate, tweak and synthesize it
so it becomes useful in both the short and long terms; more value comes from learning how to focus and think critically.
Skill in the actual major has value for two to four years—less in technical fields that change with radical speed.
From that point on the value of actual degree content goes down 20% or more each year, whereas real experience goes up.
That means in five years specific degrees become meaningless, while specific experience holds all the value.
Moreover, those with the ability to successfully move from industry to industry, field to field, department to department, position to position sans ego and hype truly have a price above rubies—although they rarely think so.
stock.xchng image credit: GlennPeb
