Education is a Scam
The modern education system is a troubling paradox that raises serious questions about its true value and purpose. Why the current state of higher education resembles more of a business scheme than a path to knowledge and growth.
First, there's the fundamental disconnect between education and employment. While employers demand degrees for positions, the reality is that much of the required knowledge can be freely accessed online. Students are forced to acquire unrelated, old knowledge while also must seek additional knowledge outside their formal education to stay relevant, at least somewhat competitive, and without personal projects and initiative, their degree alone holds little value.
The certification process itself is questionable. Graduation exams, meant to validate years of study, are often superficial and easy to pass. If these exams truly measured competency, why not allow anyone to take them and prove their knowledge? The answer is simple - it would expose a big lie.
Do governments offer certification beyond institutional education? No - they have no interest in doing so. It's easier to spread the myth that formal education is the only path to success for young people than to develop a legitimate certification system.
What we're witnessing is, as John Uebersax accurately describes, "a racket". The system operates like a well-oiled machine where accredited institutions maintain a monopoly on education credentials. These institutions, protected by their exclusive status, can charge whatever they want while lobbying for policies that benefit them at the expense of students.
The solution? Employers should have the freedom to hire based on actual skills and potential rather than credentials. Let them decide themselves, employers know better what kind of people they need (in terms of skills), why governments don't just provide a good service to HELP them find such people easier rather putting a spoke in their wheels. The current practice of preferring degree holders isn't about quality; it's about legal convenience, despite the fact that these graduates still need extensive on-the-job training.
This educational cartel, legitimized by government policies, represents a significant obstacle to genuine learning and professional development. It's time to question whether this system truly serves its intended purpose or merely perpetuates an expensive, self-serving cycle that benefits institutions at the expense of students' futures.
The modern world is built on knowledge and technologies that are more accessible than ever through the internet.
Related good articles I found:
Unmotivated employees
This system perpetuates a toxic cycle where genuine talent and dedication are overshadowed by bureaucratic requirements. The irony is palpable - while companies claim to seek the best talent, they often overlook highly skilled individuals due to credential requirements that have little correlation with actual ability. This creates an environment where artificial barriers prevent both employers and potential employees from forming mutually beneficial relationships based on merit rather than paperwork.
And what’s making it even worse is the prevalence of unmotivated employees who obtained their positions purely through credentials rather than passion or skill. These individuals often went through formal education simply because it was expected, not because they had genuine interest in their field. This creates a workforce where many are just going through the motions, lacking the drive and enthusiasm that comes from true professional calling and self-directed learning.
For me, programming started as pure passion - I spent years coding simply because I loved it, long before considering it as a career path. Will you still choose this career if your income will drop 3 times? - I will.
How I’m nothing with years of experience
Despite having years of professional experience and demonstrable skills, I find myself in a frustrating position where my capabilities are often overlooked simply because I lack formal credentials. The system places more value on a piece of paper than on practical knowledge and proven ability. This paradox perfectly illustrates how the current educational paradigm fails to recognize real-world competency.
I'm a software developer who taught myself and put significant effort into acquiring skills. I continue learning every day with even more dedication. This highlights what formal education fails to provide - continuous learning. They show no interest in graduates after completion and offer no guidance on self-education.
As an employer you can study my GitHub profile, which is something every developer nowadays have, you can find my project and easily judge about me. Sadly, this is something I would expect to happen which is not happening. I make public some commercial projects I worked on, which failed or have no value anymore. I’m working on side-projects. I’m working on my own projects, which usually testing my ideas by creating websites, games and libraries. Hard skills. My soft skills are not left behind, I’m writing blog posts, documentations, I work on my speech and voice, I present things I’m working on to clients and team mates. I embrace code as an art-science. I learn project management and such since my desired position is Web Frontend Engineer Tech-lead. I have strong skills at designing too since I want to be a superman knowing every aspect of the subject deeply.
I’m proving myself at everything I mentioned to my colleagues and my employer. Do you think it’s cool? Maybe. Do you think a single government in the world cares about it? No. Even right now I don’t have a legal status in a company I’m working in.
Top comments (18)
You seem to have been very unfortunate. I have no degree of any kind, or any qualifications to do what I do... and it's never once been a barrier. I've been in companies where HR have balked at my lack of credentials, but luckily good sense from those actually doing the technical interviewing has always prevailed.
When interviewing candidates, I never look at qualifications. I'm only interested in whether the candidate can do what I need them to do (and hopefully more)
My experience has been in the UK and Thailand. Where are you?
Mmm, currently in Russia, trying to move out, but I have little opportunity. Another problem is my wife's job, she's a pianist/music theorist. The higher education is useless for her (as she's telling me, they teach her the same staff as in her colleague) and EU countries don't like people without credentials, so it's almost impossible to get any kind of visa in this case.
So it's not only about red flags due to Russia, but EU zone not being able to evaluate your skills in any way if you're coming from another country, even if you're the best at what you do. Controversially if you're mediocre but famous, you can expect a much better chance getting visa and residence.
Yeah, that's a pure nightmare...
This is unfortunately true:
Probably it's not just the EU, like, when, say, during an interview - when people can't 'put you into a perspective' - they probably won't hire you. :(
Simply put - if the interviewers can't quickly compare your background (which is never super clear anyway) to something they're more familiar with - it will be hard. I'd say you'll probably have to actually make this happen for them, cos they can't...
Silly example, but unfortunately true - as I'm Bulgarian (that is - EU) - when interviewing a candidate from the EU - I already have an idea of what to expect. I can focus on specific things I care about - I can just go straight ahead and ask. Same in the UK - I don't live there, but I have the ... so to speak 'experience' with engineers in the UK... And same in the US...
Ah, one more thing you should know about the EU in particular - culture matters a lot. That is - people prefer to work with people who share the same values. I'm not saying that in Russia values are different, I'm saying people might not be able to easily figure out if you share the same values or not. So - during an interview it might be good for you to show them that.
(I'll get back now to that longer comment that I promised to you in another thread, there will be some more over there).
As someone who has done a lot of interviewing and hiring, IMO the benefits of a formal education in Computer Science are subtle but real. I would say that Computer Science grads tend to have a higher skill ceiling due to their deeper knowledge of the "science". You can acquire that knowledge without going to university, but that's rare because few people want to spend their time outside of work pouring over dense computer science concepts.
However for people with more than a few years of experience, their university education becomes merely a tiebreaker in the hiring process, and I've hired plenty of people with no degree. Some organizations feel differently about this than others. I checked out your GitHub for a couple of minutes (which is the most that interviewers are able to spend on it) and zeroed in on your repo with 26 stars (which is good). I saw that it looks well-built but it's also a pretty small project. This definitely gets you bonus points, but it's just one part of the picture (if you were the creator of Vue or something, that would be a different story, and you could get hired just based on that).
I'd caution you against fixating on your lack of degree as being the thing that's holding you back. It's part of the picture, but may be smaller than you think, and you can't change it anyway (not easily, at least). There might be something else going on.
That's funny how you find projects that has attention rather than projects that showcase my experience. My GitHub contains basically a history of my development, it has big projects as well. This proves that employers for some reasons prefer spend their own money on interviews rather than simply studying someone's portfolio that tells much more.
Sorry if this sounds offensive, but I came through this several times already so I know this is truly depressing when you're being interviewed and the employers haven't even looked carefully at the work you've done, this is so disrespectful IMHO. Moreover they look at my age and ALWAYS behave like I'm a child that no chance has a great experience and every time I'm proving them wrong.
The only thing I don't like is that I had to seek for at least someone who will interview me for usually ~6 months and then working more than 1 year to prove it. What's the point of having a big portfolio, many years of experience to just find out that they are not looking into it?
That's why creds so much more than real exp. That's why I'd like to have a way to be certified without spending years on study I can't afford.
It's okay that you feel that way and I'm not offended. But it's necessary for you to know the reality which may feel unfair but is what it is: people looking at your GitHub during this process can only do so for a couple of minutes at best. Recruiters have too many other applications to look through, and engineers have code they have to write. It's not a matter of whether they respect you or not. If you get to a further stage in the interview process and a tiebreaker is needed, your GitHub might get some more scrutiny. But in general, just a couple of minutes is all you have for your GitHub to make an impression.
I did notice that your "my lounge" link in your GitHub profile is broken by the way. I might have looked at what's there if it was working, but recruiters are more likely to skip down over all that and just look at your repos because they want to see some code.
Thanks for your advice, I radically rearranged my GitHub Profile and it should be much cleaner and draw attention to projects that can show off my exp. Removed broken links.
I will appreciate it the most if you could look at it once again. Thanks anyway.
Wow, I think that's an improvement, since it draws more attention to the code (and that's what people looking at your GitHub will be looking for). If you're open to additional feedback, I think it could be strengthened further by moving the ones with links to the top of the list, since those are the things that people can actually click and look at. The others could perhaps benefit from a brief summary, like "Figma Plugin (integrates with Jira to update ticket status based on Figma comments)". I assume you mention the "current workplace" projects in your resume too, and that should definitely briefly describe their purpose/functionality if it doesn't already.
Just want to reiterate too that your GitHub was already good and is an asset to you. I don't think it was holding you back, but I think its new focus may get you a couple of extra bonus points. Good luck!
Hi, I understand your frustration, and I have to say I used to believe in some of what you say (like that education doesn't work), but I changed my mind... Like - it works, but not in the way you may think.
On the plus side though - I think you might be on the right track. I do technical interviews, and I'm a decision maker on who gets hired and who doesn't...
Sooo, will it help you if I write a somewhat longer comment on how I do it? What I look for and so on?
Yes, go on, I appreciate any feedback, who knows maybe I'm the one of those who got it wrong and didn't understand well. I would love to hear another side of this question!
Alright, I'll start with the education topic, although I actually think you shouldn't be putting that much thought into it. I'll then go into what I believe you might want to focus more on. Just keep in mind that I'm sharing my views and I might be wrong.
The reason why I know think education works is basically because it 'plants' little seeds of knowledge in people's minds. Students don't realize it, like:
I've had so many situations where a junior is struggling with a hard computational challenge and when I try to help them - 'Listen, there should be a solution somewhere in between this kind of maths and that kind of maths' (or algorithms) - they just go with:
And then they move on to working on a solution. That's why I changed my mind about education - I do prefer people who have 'the seeds,' cos then I can just quickly help them with how to combine them. True, you can build the same from experience - but it will be harder for a candidate to show that I can help them so quickly when they get stuck somewhere.
If you think about 'what's the scope of education' - I think it's really this, nothing more - little seeds of knowledge that an employer can 'combine' to achieve its goals. Employers are really diverse, universities cannot possibly know how to 'produce employees' for all of them. It's a bit like universities saying to employers:
In that sense - it works. And yes, I do believe lifelong learning is the responsibility of employers and employees.
Right, enough about this. Like I said - I don't think you should focus on education and degrees. Experience also matters, it just might be harder to show that you'll fit.
(I'll do another comment for this part)
I agree with that sense actually, but my points were these:
Still not sure why you're thinking so much about these topics, but let's see, I'll share some more views based on your points:
No, they don't. That's the point in my opinion. In the context of 'potential future employment of a student' - efficient education for one employer doesn't necessarily mean efficient for another. It's too diverse. And if you add the fact that nobody knows what will be needed in the future - it's even harder to predict what education is the efficient one. With respect to that - in my opinion efficient education is the one that 'plants' more 'seeds' - more knowledge to combine.
I think that's even better - some people say that education teaches you how to learn. I kinda agree...
That's something else... Thousands of dollars are (usually) not paid by the employers. In my opinion usually is worth it - because of the environment - how are the other kids there? For a parent, it matters what kind of friends will their kid grow with...
Is this really important to you or are you mentioning it as an example? I would say knowledge is not the only thing that matters to an employer. Would even go as far as saying that... well, things like 'what happens when somebody does not know' matters more... Should I go deeper into this?
Personally I wouldn't count on this. True, governments often come up with programs intended to improve the
living standards of people with a kind of education or profession, but at the same time - I wouldn't underestimate the lobbying power of employers. :)
In general - these are some very deep topics that we (here) can't really resolve... We don't have the knowledge :) Let's go more in the direction of what can help you find a job? Do you think it's hard for you to 'prove your knowledge'? Or is it something else?
Ok, but efficiency is literally a formula, so yes it can be efficient at the target they aim, and yes universities target the thing they declare the knowledge (web developer, bridge engineer). No, their goal is not planting "seeds", you will not find it anywhere in official documents, sorry to say, but this is another made up argument from nothing to protect education because this is a part of the culture (my parents and friends had, so and do you). Saying "but it still does at least something and it's somewhere useful" can be used in many other situations, it's like a guy in a company, which does objectively the worst work and always fails in the critical moments, but you keep him because he's funny and motivates other workers. - There are many other ways to have the same effect but with less money spent, creating recreational space, engaging in talks and activities. By defending the education with such argument you simply miss to see such opportunities.
If you study in UK, why planting "seeds" should cost $15,000? Like, I mean, you can ask your parents for free, no? Internet?
Friends are good, but I think it would be even greater if you don't have to pay money either from taxes or yourself to make several friends. I think it's great when you obtain this skill in a school and you can keep making them without need for university. Will you need another university each time to make some more friends? However I understand it, really, it's pretty doubtful. If it can be useless in terms of knowledge, but you can make the best friends, which will lately help you create sometime more useful. Though in my case, I found and lost friends at the same time, so not sure here.
That's obvious, that's why I'm discussing it, to let people give me feedback, so I can hear them out and maybe do some more investigations to gain such knowledge.
Proving the knowledge is a wide specter need. I want to know that I did my education well by getting a certificate. I want this certificate to actually be a good point for employers. Currently, such certificate or a cred is required by the EU zone itself. This is why I'm so disappointed :(
I want to move to EU from another country, how I'm supposed to prove my knowledge? Should I go through all the unis again just for proving I'm eligible?
I totally understand your frustration. The education system often prioritizes degrees over real-world skills, which creates an imbalance, especially in fields like software development. It's true that many self-taught developers, like yourself, have the hands-on experience that outshines what a degree offers. Unfortunately, the system doesn't always value practical knowledge, and employers sometimes overlook strong portfolios or GitHub profiles in favor of a formal credential. It’s time for a shift—skills and passion should be the focus, not just a piece of paper. Hopefully, as more people embrace self-learning, the system will catch up.
I'm afraid we will need to wait long enough for it to happen, so that we will not care about it anymore for ourselves, I guess.
I'm sure some people will disagree with this, and I'm not entirely sure where I stand, but I do understand this perspective.
I would love to go deeper in this kind of problem and be engaged in any kind of discussion to try to solve this problem. If I had enough fame and possibility, I would definitely be the voice against such a broken/obsolete system.
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