What is a college education really worth?

General education requirements are no longer general at all. They are absurdly specific. At Cornell, you can fill your literature and arts requirement with “Global Martial Arts Film and Literature.” And at Northwestern, the math requirement can be fulfilled with “Slavonic Linguistics.” It’s little wonder that smart students think their time is better spent coding.

So yes, Zuckerberg was wasting his parents’ money and his own time. Why pay to be at Harvard if that’s what you’re going to do? Why not take a class on Dostoyevsky or the history of Christianity or astronomy or ancient history? You are surrounded by some of the most learned people in the world, and you are holed up in your dorm room typing code. (One could place some blame on the students, but it’s hard to fault people for not knowing what they don’t know.) Surely Thiel has the right idea when it comes to the Zuckerbergs of the world. And colleges have only themselves to blame if they lose some of these very smart young people to his fellowships.

Beyond the top tier, there are also gaping holes in higher education. Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the overwhelming student debt of their new employees.

Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? College as a sorting process for talent or a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved. Would students rather show their SAT scores to companies and then apply for training positions where they can learn the skills they need to be successful? Maybe the companies could throw in some liberal arts courses along the way. At least they would pick the most important ones and require that students put in some serious effort. Even a 40-hour workweek would be a step up from what many students are asked to do now.

If tuition continues to rise faster than inflation, and colleges cannot provide a compelling mission for undergraduate education, we may move further away from Obama’s vision of education and closer to Peter Thiel’s.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the forthcoming “The Faculty Lounges . . . And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For.”

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