In our country where practically every household encircles their resources, schedules and aspirations around the educational wellbeing of the younger ones, it is surprising to note how a major news from the world of employability went off without creating a stir.

A job-search company recently reported that 15 top organisations of the world “no longer require their applicants to have a college degree”. The list not only includes tech giants such as Google, Apple and IBM but also companies from financial and consulting sectors such as E&Y and Bank of America.

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Those who closely follow debates on degrees know that this revelation might not remain an exception in the near future. For example, business magnate and investor Elon Musk, when asked, whether he gets impressed by someone with a degree from a great university, he minced no words. “There’s no need to have a college degree…at all,” he replied. An MBA degree from world’s top b schools in USA now costs nearly Rs 1 crore.

Those parents or aspiring students who spend sleepless nights because of their limited financial means to acquire overpriced MBA must not despair but reflect carefully on the views of Google’s co-founder Larry Page who calls MBAs’ approach to doing business “stupid” and bluntly expresses Google’s reservation in hiring MBAs. PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel went a step ahead and made a call to students to skip college by offering them a sum of $100,000 to start their own venture.

Before we start deconstructing the reasons for the fall of degrees, every young learner who goes through tremendous pressure of clearing entrance examinations can be reassured not to worry. At the risk of facing the wrath of old school educationists, I wish to convey that nothing detrimental will happen if one refuses to run in this rat race of education. Indeed it is important that a learner develops the capabilities to perform.

Remarkably, it is very much possible to develop these outside the four walls of a classroom. One of the prime reasons for the failure of degrees is because everyone’s focus is at the entry and exit without taking into account what goes on once a student reaches inside a university. Roger Martin, the former dean of Rotman School of Management, Canada, once said that if given a choice of recruiting from either the admissions lists or the graduating lists of even a business school like Harvard, he would not waste a second to pick the admission list.

Interestingly, if one deeply analyses the criteria adopted by ranking agencies, the key focus is on two things — the average salary of graduates and the research output of the faculty members. The change in the performance and ability of students at their point of entry and exit is hardly factored into consideration.

The most important factors in the uselessness of degrees are the curriculum and pedagogy, which are just not able to keep pace with the changes demanded by progress experienced by markets, technology and science. When a redundant curriculum taught with outdated pedagogy becomes criteria for assessing and disciplining students, the entire purpose of learning goes for a toss. One of the earliest casualties is the inherent zeal of a human mind to experiment. The ability to push the frontiers of knowledge requires ability to experiment. And experiment requires failing, risk taking and breaking the conventional norm — the traits which have no value when one is pursuing a formulaic journey.

On a greater level, the exploitation of higher education by a large number of fly-by-night greedy private operators has also played a major role in turning a degree into a mere piece of paper. A degree with a micro-specialisation is sold as a cutting-age qualification whereas in majority of cases these are worthless assemblage of confusing terminologies. One must reflect to ask what kind of architectural knowledge went into creating a masterpiece such as Konark temple of 13th century or how the urban planning of Indian cities in the early 20th century outshines many of the modern townships.

In a way what could be achieved with 40 books then is not being achieved with even 400 books now. Or what could perhaps be achieved by an unlettered specialist or a mere graduate in the past is not being achieved by many postgraduates or PhDs in this day and age. Of course, there is no denial that education is supreme but the beauty is that one can educate oneself outside the boundaries of a conventional degree. Thanks to the availability of almost free knowledge, a learner can now gather from all possible resources — to fuel his imagination, to critically reflect, to choose his pace and constantly evolve his direction — the essential attributes to excel in the machine age.

The news travel slowly in the field of education hence those who are sold on the stories of past glory of the ones with prestigious labels must think twice before subjecting their children to the grueling race in the hope of a job that may not even exist a decade later.

The writer is an associate fellow at Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, UK.