Of the bubble in ... education

Education is a market. It offers an adequation between the offer and the supply.

But of which market are we talking of? Is it even a market?

The economical market of companies to fit their need for qualification and the one of the student?

So far, a first question should be asked : are diploma related to increase in producitivty?

Toni de Marco says : it cannot be measured for jobs with high intellectual contribution.

Martin Gropius says: acquiring the technics of art are easy but we are all born unequal when it comes to creativity, and academia are putting an artificial barrier on being an artist by learning cir-convoluted techniques.


My father was a surgeon. The son of a mason. That made it from almost orphan, to compagnonage, to CNAM (after hours university) to construction engineer.

On the other hand my mothers' family are a dynasty long migrating bankers/entrepreuneurs since centuries. That slowly declined. On the run since as far as you can write, since roman origins to hugenots. But with a bright auto-didact mother that is one of my model.

I bear in my cultural DNA the Schrodinger view of our society. I am 50%-10% 50%-90% and love both my parents.

It kinds of resonate in an echoing voice that we may wonder if the ties between profession and diploma are related. After all both my parents succeeded both in failing and succeeding in having a diploma, and I love also my great father self made man's iconical story (he was a convinced atheist)

And then, you put on facebook how iodins cure autism and cancer and you should not go to an oncologists if you have cancer, and you see me trolled in a fanatic flamewar about how I think physicians with state enforced diplomas are the only one that should be listened to.

Well. Contradictions are what we seems to be made of? No.

The problems is I believe in regulations, I just don't like the regulation entities and some creepiness in the implementations.

I am very glad that surgeons are educated and are barred from operating without a diploma.
I am very glad that autodidact can succeed ...

In the era of my parents. After World War II.

When war killed so many people elites included that the "market" of education existed.
There were such a dire need for educated people that :
  • companies were ready to take basically well educated people and take on their money to give them their professional education;
  • even the bosses needed to be healed so there were an incentive for "correctness" of education.
Since 1942 the year my father had his first teacher opening  a door saying "you are the worst generation we ever had", to 1991 my last days in the same school he was, teachers are complaining their quality is lowering. Isn't it trivial that since kinds go to school to be "taught" if the level of education lowers, it means the teacher are failing.

Especially at the lowest level. Where the most discrimination is, the less money is required and where the most efficiency can be achieved.

Life is like a Leagues of Legend game.

The small accumulation in the loss of creeps at the beginning of the game yield huge difference later.

The stuff that people overlook. The Lol on twitch will highlight the ganging. But, the guy silently creeping early game with a early weak stage late game character prudently under his tower is to be watched carefuly (unless it is heimerdinger).

So, the education's actual focus is on "higher education". People get loans for it. Why?


Because "higher" positions are de facto regulated by requiring a diploma.

But the competition is not quite fair. University is a maskerade. It turns rich kids able to pay tuition have the glory of smart kids being paid peanuts to do R&D in the university.  (paying gamers vs pgm).

M.I.T., Princeton,  polytechnique, whatever famous ivy league players are selective.

You are either bright and being drafted to be in the labs writing papers and giving up every drop of your IP to the university. Even to file patents you will not have a share on.

Or you can pay the tuition.

Having this diploma ensure you have a better odd for a well paid job.

But the market seems saturated in the offer plan.

Good thinking would be that competition have increased, and people taking risks should bear the consequence of their actions. So kids are at fault here.

Hold your horses. USA situation where 20 yo kids takes loans without enough information on the reality of a job market and of the use of diploma is a scam. French situation where all citizens are required to pay more for an elite education than normal education and are bond by loans made by the government that transform in whole life taxes is also a scam.

First thing : if market is the answer to a problem, I do not think a rigged market is worse than regulations.

Rigged market are rigged with asymmetrical obfuscate rules.
Regulation by definition have public rules that makes the game "fair".

It is the same difference as between playing bonneteau and lottery. And government scam written in complex laws are still a scam.

What does a diploma buy to the corporation?

The certainty of common techniques. Techniques that can be proved by practice and quality of production to exists. How much practice actual diploma have compared to my father's internship for being a surgeon or my great father's compagnonage?

I do accept that PhD may have practice in something else than writing so indigestible proses that calling them "scientific communication" is a scam in itself. Because some do work.

The biggest production I see from education right now everywhere is "self justification".

What universities delivers as a production ? Papers. For whom? Other universities. In which purpose? To fill more paper justifying their uniqueness.

Business schools? Papers. Business studies, conferences ... TED talks...

Engineering schools? Patents. Papers, conferences.

But when it comes to all this deluge of paper, accountability get diluted.

How much does a diploma worth after 2 years of practice for a company. Peanuts.

Are diplomed engineers more ethical than the rest? Ask a lot of commission in the world about corrupted market supervised by engineers with ethical education that makes them "the best among us".

Why do company pay for something they do not need?

Because it is not a market it is regulated.

A lot of hidden incentive by regulation are here. Lawyers requires diploma, accountant, subsidizes in research require "educated" workers ...  and there is a fiduceo effect. And that's how educated people impoverish themselves by being stupid.


Not finishing your studies is a best if and only if you stopped your studies in the middle of an ivy league school.

So investors built a myth of the garage band duo based on all success stories they chose. It is easier for them to negociate contracts.

And now the normalisation through diploma whose assumption is that it produces people that are able is rigged.


Because since actually the global education has raised diploma are hyper competitive for the students with negative ROI even for the cheapest... Thus, students having loans are more vulnerable hence less likely to negotiate good wages resulting in the slow slides of all X-Y-Z generations in "déclassement". Resulting in all positions to be filled with over educated person and the belief you cannot change it.

As Mr Tesla/paypal said "never aim for competition".

The over valuation of diploma (the bubble) as a perverse effect on future entrepreneur.

Breaking their own belief in diploma would break their own esteem.

They get caught in a cage of a paradox.


If they deny diplomas they have to accept they were stupid and not that educated. X years of long educations, Y years of underpromising jobs,  N years of loans. No person in despair wishes to face their own mistakes and results of their wrong doings. Because, maybe the 1% are ultra assholes to the 99%; but 10% are mega assholes to the 90% but the 90% still remains assholes to the 10%. But they cannot break this cage without shattering a part of their ego.

Reproducing an order that is unfair based on "supposed" merit of the education when you are educated and brainwashing your surroundings with it is the worst crime possible to education : defeating its purpose.

But worse it harms them.

Having these loans: they are vulnerable. So they negotiate all of their positions in vulnerability. Hence making every uneducated workers vulnerable too. Resulting in devaluation of the whole concept of workforce. People you can train if they are suitable and companies pay for whatever additional education they need. If they choose technologies that requires rocket scientist to publish a menu in a restaurant when a chalk and a blackboard can do the job, the law of business say they should die.

And economically, this result ... in smaller basin of recruitment hence less competition when it comes to "educated" workforce. The one that every one wants nowadays.

I don't say education is bad. I say educational institutions and academies are the worst ennemies of education. The same as genre in art. We are caught in a vicious circle. Where we were the 10% and blame the assholish 1% but the more the society impoverish the more the 90% are also becoming more and more assholish to the 10%. It is like a huge I hold your balls contest and every one is squeezing their neighbors balls harder out of frustration of their own balls being squeezed tighter.

This level of stupidity should stop before we all explode each others balls. But I require the more "educated" people show they are smart first because they claim to be smarter and also because I am a professional gamer with balls of steel and a grip of iron.


Another day, I will talk about successes in education. Educations that just care about maximizing the teaching of all possible skills in a small amount of time and let professionalization's costs in the hand of the economical entities. 


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