✍🏼ESSAYS📝
This section actually designed to be a podcast section. And, I genuinely hope it will be. It is hard to find people can talk, bravely, nowadays. Until that day, I will share some thoughts via my words.
Index
How Much Would You Sell Your Undergraduate Degree For?
Recently, I've been asking my friends a question: "How much would you sell your undergraduate degree for?" The idea behind this question is to see how much value people place on their degrees these days and how much of that value can be translated into money. I've talked with friends from various fields and backgrounds. It turns out that the way people view the value of a degree can vary greatly. After all, isn't having an undergraduate degree considered one of the safest ways to ensure a middle-to-upper class lifestyle? Or at least, isn't that the general belief we've been fed?
Most of my friends are engineering graduates, but I also have friends in law and medicine. Generally, no one considered selling their degree for a low price, and everyone responded as if they were seriously considering the offer. On average, my friends thought their degrees were worth between $700,000 and $1 million. Some even said they could sell for this price, whether or not there was room for negotiation. These figures show that undergraduate degrees still hold considerable value.
To compare the past with the present, I asked my dad the same question. He graduated from METU with an Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree in the 1980s. Normally, I wouldn't ask him such questions, but given that many of my friends are also Electrical and Electronics Engineering graduates, his perspective seemed important. His answer was around $2.5 million. This big difference shows how the value of degrees has changed over the past 40 years. From our discussion, I gathered that access to information was much harder back then. Also, A university degree was almost the only credible proof of one's expertise in a field. These factors made degrees much more valuable in those days.
Looking at it from the supply and demand perspective, which I believe is the main issue, the increase in the number of universities and graduates also affects the value of degrees. Every year, thousands of new, qualified graduates enter the job market, all holding degrees just like yours. This oversupply forces the value of a university degree to be reevaluated. Today, the competition is much fiercer. Based on what I know and hear, I can confidently say that in the AI sector, the demand is not growing fast enough to match the supply, which reduces the perceived value of degrees. While I mainly speak on engineering field, I think, nowadays, the supply-demand relationship is similar in most job markets.
In my opinion, If I would make some mock predictions and projections, I believe that the value people place on their degrees will significantly decrease over time. Even if this problem is acknowledged and measures are taken, the effects will take time to manifest, considering that university education is a long process i.e. You cannot say to a sophomore student that he or she expelled from the school or take another radical action like that. Until then, I think people will be more inclined to take risks and explore different demand channels, even if they are risky. These changes have already started. The emergence of new careers like YouTuber, content creator, influencer, e-sports player, etc., which don't typically require a degree, indicates that living a middle-to-upper class lifestyle without taking risks is no longer as easily achievable as it once was.
In conclusion, I will definitely continue asking this type of questions, possibly in a revised form, to better understand the importance and value of undergraduate degrees. In the future, the significance of having a degree might decrease even more than I anticipate. People might build their careers by discovering and innovating in new demand channels. Only time will tell how fast and in what direction this change will occur.