Is the Bachelor's degree obsolete?

My post this morning is inspired by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that leads off with the story of a New Jersey guy who interned for MTV while still in high school, found college intro courses deadly dull, and dropped out to do a film bootcamp in NYC.

For my father's generation, who had the perfect storm of the Great Depression, WWII and the Cold War, a high school diploma often was a goal beyond their grasp.  A first-generation American, my dad got six years of schooling before being sent out to work.  He worked in the PA coal mines during the Depression and came away with black lung disease.  He served on Saipan with the Seabees and then laid bricks until he retired at 68.

For my Baby Boom generation, a college diploma became highly achievable, what with the vast expansion of higher education after WWII, the availability of National Defense Loans, and the great prosperity that characterized most of the second half of the 20th century in the U.S.  And a college diploma --- no matter what your major --- pretty much guaranteed a decent job... unless you were addicted to drugs or otherwise debilitated.

                                      You don't need a brain.  You just need a diploma.
                                      (Well, maybe that's not the case anymore.)

Today, we all know too many college grads who are working at jobs below their education levels and shouldering mortgages on their diplomas to boot.  On the other hand, we know some startling examples of students who dropped out and succeeded wildly.   The poster child is Bill Gates, the Harvard dropout who became the richest man in the world (or came close, anyway).

One thing is for sure: a BA or BS is no guarantee of a good job or a satisfying career.  Dropping out isn't necessarily the right road to take either.  Most likely, we are entering an age when actual skills, no matter how acquired, will be the decisive factor in future success.  Whether those skills are documented by a traditional credential, like a diploma, or certificates, or badges, or documentation of life experiences, resumes are going to look a lot different going forward.

Resumes may even morph into interactive online exemplars of an applicant's abilities, including artifacts such as videos.

Resumes may still be decorated with degrees.  But those degrees frequently will be cobbled together: 60 credits from a community college, 15 from AP tests, another 15 based on life experiences... and we at the four-year college will sell you the final 30 and award you a bachelor's degree.

This, I suppose, is what Harvard's Clay Christensen means by disruption.  His theories have come under attack in recent years.  But his notion of a new paradigm for higher ed is on the money, it seems to me.  My view of the "Next Great Wave in Higher Education" --- my first posting on this blog --- says some of the same things.

The elephant in this living room is the question of which colleges and universities will survive in this brave new world and which of us will disappear, dinosaurs just like our outdated degrees.