Paul GrahamVerified account

Universities are backing themselves into a dangerous corner by becoming more expensive at the same time they're becoming less necessary.

Should we focus on the cost of what they provide or on the price they charge for it? Cost of providing an MIT undergraduate education is around $90k/year, average price they charge is around $20k/year.

I believe universities' costs have grown significantly faster than inflation, so that's one source of trouble. Another is that a lot of the courses are a waste of time. (And by that I mean intellectually, not just in the narrow sense of teaching marketable skills.)

Universities' costs grow faster than inflation because of Baumol's law, the same reason that health care costs grow faster than inflation and all services that require skilled workers. And I can honestly say I didn't take a single class at MIT that was a waste of time.

(There are a few classes I didn't like and didn't get as much out of, including organic chemistry, intro to microeconomics, and intro to linguistics. But in all of those cases I'm still really glad I took one class.)

What fraction of the courses you took at Cornell, Harvard, RISD, and Accademia di Belle Arti were a waste of time?

It's been a while, but maybe 4/5.