The Degree Was Never Just the Degree

For years, the default advice to an ambitious young person was straightforward: go to university.

That assumption is being challenged, and not without reason.

Entrepreneurship is more accessible. Apprenticeships are becoming more sophisticated. Skills can be acquired online at extraordinary speed. Artificial intelligence can already explain concepts, critique arguments and provide forms of individual tuition that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. For some young people, spending three or four years pursuing a traditional degree may genuinely not be the best route.

That is probably healthy.

A system in which university is treated as the only respectable pathway into adulthood was never particularly sensible.

But there is a difference between questioning the monopoly of the degree and declaring its obsolescence.

The latter argument has become increasingly fashionable, particularly in technology circles. Why spend years at university, the argument goes, when you could be building a company, learning directly from employers or acquiring precisely the skills the market needs?

Perhaps.

But it is worth asking what, exactly, we are proposing to replace.

Universities have never simply sold knowledge.

They have bundled together education, credentials, friendships, professional networks, independence, experimentation and access to employers. They bring people together at a formative stage of life, often from backgrounds, countries and disciplines that would otherwise rarely intersect.

People meet future business partners at university. They meet mentors, close friends and professional networks. They encounter ideas and people they might never otherwise have crossed paths with. And, quite literally, many meet their future spouses there too.

None of this makes university indispensable. But it does make its value considerably harder to calculate than the price of tuition divided by a graduate salary.

The economic case has not disappeared either. According to the OECD’s latest comparable data, employment among 25 to 64 year olds averages 86 per cent for those with a bachelor’s degree, rising to 90 per cent for those with a master’s and 93 per cent for those with a doctorate or equivalent qualification. On earnings, adults with a bachelor’s degree make 39 per cent more on average than those whose education ends at upper secondary level. The advantage rises to 83 per cent for those with a master’s or doctorate.

There are other signs that higher education remains an institution in which societies are prepared to place significant capital. Harvard’s endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of its 2025 financial year, up from $53.2 billion a year earlier. Oxford’s Oxford Thinking campaign raised £3.3 billion from more than 170,000 donors over its lifetime, funding scholarships, research and new facilities.

These figures do not prove that the traditional university model is immune from disruption. Quite the opposite. They simply suggest that predictions of its imminent irrelevance deserve a little more scrutiny.

Nor are entrepreneurship and higher education necessarily opposing models.

The mythology of the brilliant university dropout is powerful, particularly in technology. The evidence is less tidy. A Kauffman Foundation study of high growth entrepreneurs found that 95.1 per cent of those surveyed had a bachelor’s degree and 47 per cent held a more advanced qualification. An earlier study of US born founders of engineering and technology companies found that 92 per cent held bachelor’s degrees.

That is historical evidence, and the world those founders entered is not the world facing an 18 year old today. It certainly does not mean tomorrow’s entrepreneurs need degrees. But it does suggest we should be careful about turning some of the most compelling exceptions into a universal prescription.

There is, however, a legitimate challenge here for universities.

If information is abundant and employers become more comfortable assessing capability without relying on a degree, institutions cannot continue charging primarily for access to knowledge. They will have to demonstrate the value of everything surrounding it.

Are students encountering people they would never otherwise meet?

Are they building meaningful professional networks?

Are they learning to argue, collaborate and exercise judgement?

Are universities connecting them to employers, industries and opportunities?

And are three or four years on campus creating experiences that cannot simply be replicated through a collection of online courses?

If the answer is no, critics of the traditional degree have a point.

But the opposite question deserves asking too.

As we enthusiastically unbundle higher education, could we accidentally strip away some of the things that made it valuable in the first place?

There should be more routes into successful adult life, not fewer. University, entrepreneurship, vocational education and apprenticeships do not need to compete for a single winner.

The degree may no longer deserve its old monopoly. But before declaring it obsolete, it is worth asking whether we have fully understood everything that came with it.

Sources: OECD, Education at a Glance; Harvard University Financial Report 2025; University of Oxford, Oxford Thinking Campaign; Kauffman Foundation, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur and research on US technology founders.