Higher Education: a Vintage Classic

Belief in higher education has dropped significantly over the past 10 years, which requires great reflection. Well, at least now parents and grandparents will stop urging kids to study. I am still not sure, really, whether this is good or bad. Although common sense is worrying, I see that education is one of the most secure ways to change the social status of an individual, many layers behind being a gold digger, of course.

The security of investing in education has paid large dividends for almost everybody throughout centuries. We believed and invested so much in education that it became the mantra of raising kids. It's unacceptable nowadays for a kid to reach the age of 10, for example, without ever having attended school, while my dad, who I consider a successful SMB entrepreneur, started school at the age of 13 and didn't complete his university education.

The Misunderstood Path to Success

We made a mistake during the process though. We thought that the great change in life we provided was due to higher education. And it's easy to understand why:

• "Hey, Mr. Smith is a successful person."
• "Really? What does he do?"
• "He is a doctor".

Conclusion:

• "We need to send more people to become doctors.";
• "I need to tell my son to become a doctor".

But very few people will ask: "Oh, and what did he do to become a doctor, I mean, to get into medical school?"

The Late Bloomer’s Dilemma

Everyone who has attended a university knows that the level of preparedness you arrive with at the university will greatly influence the outcome. Everybody also knows that if you didn't have access to great education while you were a kid and a teenager, you will probably never get into medical school. And yet, we focus our efforts on the universities. Universities receive the highest endowments from both private and public institutions. Not only this, parents often invest in education heavily at the university or the year before it. In Brazil, especially, the most expensive year is the last one of high school. Sorry, buddies. It's too late. Your kid won't absorb in one year everything the other kid absorbed in 12. It's like preparing for a marathon by sprinting the day before.

Quality vs. Quantity

So, it's no surprise that a title, often even a doctor's title, has lost its value. We invested heavily in higher education but are sending less prepared pupils, producing poor professionals, who won't perform in the tough market jungle, and will discover that higher education doesn't hold the same value anymore. So, maybe it's not truly a bad sign. Maybe people have just lost trust in higher education as a whole since now there are countless low-performing universities. But they still believe that great universities are worth it. It's just a matter of which university. I myself fall into this category. That's why it's easy for me to imagine. I'd rather study by myself and get a job than get into a low-performing university.

Navigating the Ideological Minefield

But what worries me the most, though, is that among conservatives, the decline rate is the highest among all other groups. Is this because, besides sending less prepared pupils, we lost the fight to create neutral institutions? Decades ago, we would go to the universities looking for the opinions of experts, trusting they were applying the scientific method and that they were protected to think freely. Nowadays, we first ask, "From which university does this study come?" "Oh, they are right-wing, let me check."

So, What’s Next?

Why do you think people are losing trust in higher education?

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