Sam Altman says finishing his degree would have brought ‘vastly diminishing returns.’ Are the naysayers right about college?

It may have been a jarring take for the attendees of Internapalooza, the Silicon Valley event that Altman made a surprise appearance at late last month. But it’s just one more voice in the growing movement rejecting the idea that higher education is the best route to a good life.

Cost, competition and more are prompting reconsideration

For decades, young people have been conditioned to follow the university-to-entry-level-corporate-role pipeline, with white collar jobs perceived as being generally “better,” as well as virtually impossible to land without at least an undergrad diploma. But youth now, facing an exceptionally challenging job market and cost of living crisis, are growing more cognizant of alternative trajectories that can not only be just as successful, but can cost far less time and money to achieve.

For many, it’s becoming harder to justify the exorbitant and rising cost of higher education, especially when it hardly guarantees a position at all, let alone a well-paying one in one’s industry of choice. Adding to the quandary is the fact that formal credentials are losing their perceived value, that many major employers are easing up on education requirements, preferring tangible skills instead, and that the oft-overlooked trades are both lucrative and extremely in-demand.

While some maintain that university is still worth the cost, others argue that programs in certain disciplines are now almost completely useless and even that office jobs as we know them “are over.” And though Altman is closer to the former camp than the latter, he does seem to be suggesting a rethink of certain facets of schooling, not the concept of it in general, given how the world of work has evolved over the last few years.

There are still some things that only a college setting can offer

“I think I learned a lot,” Altman said of his two-year stint, though he noted that any longer “would have been like vastly diminishing returns.”Highlights for him included meeting people, exploring living alone for the first time, getting to work on projects without the stakes being as high as they would be on the job and working at Stanford’s computer science lab after his freshman year — experiences that, admittedly, are hard to access anywhere outside of a college setting.

“I know a lot of people now who have not gone to college at all have done great, so I don’t know,” he continued.

Looking ahead, with the rapid progression of AI and ensuing transformation of the workplace, he added that he “cannot imagine the world five years from now (…) I’m sure there will still be some sort of transition to be an adult, learn about the world, figure yourself out, [but] I sort of doubt it will look like college does today.”