Nike University

Now that hundreds of thousands of parents have discovered for themselves how the public school system is an incredibly inefficient and ineffective means of providing children with an education, it is interesting to note that some of them are beginning to turn skeptical eyes on the hallowed institution of the university.

I've written before regarding my own doubts about the logic of college, but a conversation with a friend who attended the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators annual conference last weekend got me thinking about the issue again. My friend, whose wife homeschools their children, had attended a workshop titled "Credentials without College," which resonated with him when he realized that he had never once had an employer ask for his diploma or review his college transcript.

What's particularly interesting about my friend's perspective is that he graduated from one of the more expensive and exclusive private universities in the country (picking up keys from Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Phi in the process). But not only did he find his education there to be largely superfluous, it actually got in the way of his career development, for as he informed me during our conversation, his senior year was largely a matter of taking philosophy courses while waiting to graduate and work full-time for the company he'd been with for the three previous summers.

Vox Day