The early atoms of this website originated in the half-baked emails I’d exchange with my good friend Jon during the workday, riffing on the random news and events du jour. So it’s only fitting to sample one from 2018 that seems especially pertinent today in times of COVID: the future of the college education racket.

The initial email I sent (not shown) to kick off the thread:

According to a headline I saw on LinkedIn: “Most US graduates not college-ready.”

So, using my undeniable logic: if most high school grads are not ready for college, and many (if not most) college grads are not prepared for the workforce, does that mean…oh, oh my god…should we tell someone?!

Random Star Trek joke aside, I laid out a potential chain of events in a subsequent email that ends in a financial death spiral for many private institutions, restated here (because of the formatting issue in the screenshot above):

• Colleges find it increasingly difficult to enroll “qualified” students
• Colleges lower the bar for admission (and dumb down the curriculum as you mentioned) because hey, they need to make money and you don’t make money on empty classroom seats
• ROI on a college degree continues to drop (based on the aforementioned dumbed down curriculum, etc etc) putting additional downward pressure on enrollment
• Some kind of disruptor, likely multiple kinds (like a Khan Academy and others/skills training orgs/venture-backed ideas I can’t even conceive of) offers a realistic alternative to getting a Bachelors (in that it’s both cheaper and more impactful with regard to joining the workforce)
• 50%+ private colleges in the country seriously start looking at long term sustainability of their institution…and it doesn’t look rosy…

And this was BEFORE they tried charging sticker price for remote learning this Fall…

P.S., can I get a re-do of my 2018 World Series pick given what we know now?