Quote Originally Posted by Allen View Post
A rebuild is already in progress: I and several friends with several people who went through ~$30-40K boot camps for software dev/engineering or Sales/Marketing/Design & have seen 3-5x Y1 ROI on it. Primary education is coming ala Stephenson's Diamond Age. The opportunity cost of non traditional education is approaching sub 20% that of a 4+ year degree, and the time commitment is closer to ~12%. Go to Lambda School, get a $200K TC remote software job and do a night B.S. at Georgia Tech, Stanford or Bizerkly who'll give you work experience credit on your way to getting a MBA through them.

The current university education system prioritizes teaching what keeps the teachers employed, not what the market wants. If you're non STEM, you need to go into a work study program that has minimum intern time requirements before you graduate. If you're not going to THE best school for your program, the financially prudent thing to do is go instate & save money until you can transfer or graduate. I know plenty of people from when I went to college who're B.A. in lib arts bullshit & spent 3-4 years managing retail before going into the trades full time because they were making more money putting decks in on the weekend then in their 9-5.
I do agree that the models are shifting to commonality of distance education and non-traditional education with some programs fast-tracking, but we're still talking single percentage numbers of how many hundreds/thousands of colleges and universities. I do think these programs will pick up speed and grow. Also reformation in the way of assessing the type of liberal arts prerequisites required for STEM as well as the need for, prevalence of, and robustness of non-STEM degrees.

Currently nursing is seeing more second-degree students than any other program, often for the very reason you mentioned: leaving behind a $10/hour job with a fill-in-the-blank BA/BS that has little market or applicability.