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Is College a Scam?
Raising Awake & Embodied Humans
Careful with the word "scam"
I'm not anti-learning. I've spent my whole life learning, and my daughter and I have built a life around staying ferocious learners. So this isn't "education bad." It's a narrower, sharper question: is the deal college currently offers (years of your life, often a mountain of debt, in exchange for a credential) still a good trade? For more and more people, the math has quietly stopped working.
The question hiding underneath
If you only argue about return on investment, you'll spend the whole time haggling over which majors still pay off, and miss the bigger question that just got exposed: what is an education even for?
We inherited an answer without ever choosing it. School, in its modern form, is recent and industrial, built so parents could work in factories and children could be primed for factory life: sit still, be told, perform on cue. College became the deluxe extension of that promise: comply with the system long enough and it will hand you a secure place in the economy. For a few decades, it largely did. The reason the whole arrangement feels unstable now isn't only the price. It's that the promise underneath it (outsource your development to an institution and it will take care of your future) was always a kind of outsourcing. And outsourcing is exactly the thing the future stops rewarding.
What you're actually buying
When you pay for college you're buying three things we usually pretend are one: some knowledge, a credential, and a few formative years with a network. For generations the credential was the load-bearing wall. You paid the price because the diploma reliably opened doors that were otherwise closed.
And the thing quietly knocking that wall out is AI. When anyone with a phone can summon expert-level explanation and help instantly, the scarce thing is no longer knowing the material. The diploma was always a proxy for "this person can learn hard things and apply them." AI is making the learning of hard things cheap and fast outside any institution, and making the doing about judgment, initiative, and creation instead of recall. So the credential is getting devalued from two directions at once. You can end up paying more and more for a key that opens fewer and fewer doors. That's not a conspiracy. It's just the ground moving.
What the better path looks like
The modern question is no longer "should I get the credential?" It's "am I preparing to be an employee in a world that needs fewer of them, or to build something?" That question applies to you, the person deciding, as much as to any parent thinking about their child.
For some paths (medicine, law, certain sciences, a specific dream that genuinely requires it) college is the right door, and worth the cost. The problem isn't college existing. It's treating it as the default: the unquestioned next step taken on autopilot, financed with debt, without anyone asking what they're actually trying to become. That's the move worth examining, at any age.
The capacity that rises in value as AI makes credentials cheaper is the opposite of what school trains: initiative, judgment, the ability to create value, self-direction. Those can be built through college, or outside it. What matters is whether you're building them on purpose.
So, is it a scam?
Not a con. But for a great many people, it's a bad default dressed up as a safe one, an expensive answer to a question they were never invited to ask. The disillusionment so many people feel right now is real. It's usually the first crack in a far better question: if I'm not going to outsource my future to an institution, how do I build a self-directed, alive life, and how would I raise a child to be ready for that from the start?
That question is the door worth walking through. College disillusionment is the door. Building sovereign, self-directed humans in the age of AI: that's the room.
Frequently asked questions
Is college a scam?
Not in the literal sense of a deliberate con; most educators believe in their work. But for many people the core deal (years of time plus significant debt in exchange for a credential) is no longer a reliable trade, especially as AI devalues credentialed knowledge. It's better understood as an expensive default that often goes unquestioned than as a fraud.
Is college still worth it in the age of AI?
It depends on the path. For fields with a genuine licensing or training requirement (medicine, law, some sciences), often yes. For many other paths the return is shrinking, as knowledge becomes freely available and employers increasingly value demonstrated skill, initiative, and self-direction over a degree. The key is to choose deliberately rather than by default.
Will AI replace the need for a college degree?
For some careers, increasingly yes. AI is collapsing the value of memorized, credentialed knowledge and raising the value of judgment, creativity, and the ability to build and self-direct. Degrees that mainly signal "this person can learn things" lose value fastest; paths with hard licensing requirements change more slowly.
What are the alternatives to college?
Apprenticeships, self-directed and project-based learning, entrepreneurship, trade certifications, online learning paired with real work, and building a portfolio of things you've actually made. The throughline is learning by doing and demonstrating capability directly, rather than buying a credential.
Should I skip college?
That's a personal decision, and there's no universal answer. This isn't financial or career advice, just a framework. Ask what you're actually trying to become, whether your specific path genuinely requires a degree, and what the real cost (including debt and four-plus years) buys you versus the alternatives. Decide on purpose, not on autopilot.
If you are raising a child toward a self-directed life, Sanctuary is the weekly home for parents walking this path: ongoing practice, moon-based ceremony and community.
→ Take the next step at sacredschooling.com/sanctuary
— Bronwyn Ayla, L.Ac.
Is College a Scam?
If you're asking whether college is a scam, you're probably not asking it idly. You're standing at a real decision, looking at real numbers, and something isn't adding up. That's the honest starting point. Here's an honest look at what the math actually shows, what's changed in the age of AI, and how to think about it for yourself rather than inheriting the answer.
A scam is a deliberate con, and most of the people inside higher education believe in what they're doing. So if that's what you mean, no. But if what you mean is am I being sold a very expensive promise that's quietly stopped paying off, then increasingly, for a lot of people, yes.