Death of the Degree? Not So Fast

By Daniel Pianko and Ryan Craig. To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done. and to the C students, I say you too may one day be president of the United States. – President George W. Bush, Yale Commencement Address, 2001
The death of the college degree – the standard signal for an educated adult for over a millennium – is foretold by the lions of Silicon Valley.  Over the past year, the phenomenon known as massive open online courses (MOOCs) -- now being offered by elite universities like Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Berkeley -- have been featured in virtually every major media outlet.  The prevailing notion reflected in breathless headlines is that taking a MOOC or two to learn a specific skill – and, in the process, earning what’s being called a “badge” – will kill degrees whose length and cost seem antiquated.  Like overgrown Boy and Girl Scouts, adults will sport a collection of badges instead of framing and hanging their diplomas.
Degree doubters have a valid point. The degree is a crude instrument for evaluating educational attainment. A bachelor’s degree merely indicates that a student sat (or slept in a drunken stupor) through at least 120 credit hours of C-graded “college-level” work.
But the degree is not going away; even Silicon Valley billions will not disrupt it. For one, degrees are deeply embedded into the fabric of the labor market. The U.S. Army effectively mandates a regionally accredited bachelor’s degree to become an officer. Doctors, lawyers, architects and other professionals may not practice without degrees from accredited universities. More broadly, a bachelor’s degree is universally viewed as the price of entry to a white-collar career (although increasingly not a guarantee). More...