We humans have a warped, frame-of-reference valuation we place on items. It’s a bias of how much something should cost, and we rarely compare across categories. We’ll drop $50 for a movie in a theater, but we think twice about signing up for another $10/month streaming service that we can cancel in a few months. We’ll spend $100 for a night out at a restaurant or bar, but we’re not sure if we want to spend a few extra bucks on the organic or grass-fed versions of foods. We’ll drop $8 for a drink at Starbucks, but we refuse to spend 99 cents on the ad-free version of an app we use every day. We’ll spend $3000 to travel a week on vacation, but we hesitate to spend $1000 on classes that may teach us a new skill which may lead to a life-changing new career.

There may be no other area where our sense of value has become distorted than 4-year “accredited” colleges. Many decades ago, 4-year colleges were a tremendous value, a true investment that returned many times what you paid. Of course, classes cost a tiny fraction of what they cost now, and there was nowhere near the alternative options for education. Compare that to today. College costs can bankrupt parents, or alternatively, make students lifetime slaves to their loans. A large percentage of the courses are partially or completely taught online, negating a lot of the interpersonal interaction with teachers. And they’re regularly turning out students who can recite the Communist Manifesto from memory but have few practical skills for doing modern jobs.

Compare the opportunity cost of what you give up when you spend the money for traditional colleges. Here’s a current example of a cheaper state school near where I live:

So, for a 3-credit course, or a few hours of interactive classroom time per week for a semester, the cheapest in-state tuition at UWGB is about $1100, with additional costs for books, etc. On this website, I’ve documented just a scratch of the endless free and low-cost education sites, but what if you want no-hassle full classes without advertising, plus certificates of completion to prove to employers that you did the work? You can get a year full access subscription to LinkedIn Premium ($240), Coursera Plus ($400), and Youtube Ad-Free Premium ($140) for a grand total of $780 + tax. In other words, tens of thousands of complete courses and millions of ad-free instruction videos, all for several hundred dollars cheaper that one, single 3-credit course in college. And this is a lower-cost, in-state tuition option. Harvard, in comparison, charges about $7500 for a 3-credit course.

I get it, though, that employers want to see proof that you know the material. If your course completion certificate portfolio isn’t sufficient, you can find 3rd party certification tests to prove almost any skill nowadays. Just Google a certification in your career field or use a website such as Certification Finder.

Technical/trade schools are a different matter since there are certain skills that can only be taught in person, but even these practical, hands-on courses are much cheaper than traditional colleges.

Really, the only things keeping 4-year colleges in business are tradition and prestige, along with the whole government “accredited” part that is a state or federal requirement for many types of jobs. We live in a different world now though, so this whole crock-of-shit system needs to change. Most employers are open nowadays to non-traditional, self-educated individuals. So, that means we just need to remove the anchor of big government, once again limiting our freedom and placing costly obstacles to progress.

Blog Link: https://educationdojo.com/articles/2025/07/the-accredited-college-scam/

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