The perceived value of a college degree has decreased in recent years. Here's the reason: some companies will now recruit college students as early as their sophomore year. I'm looking at you investment banks [1].

Before I explain myself, let me tell you why I think college is valuable:

At college, you get to learn things.

Alright yes that’s valuable but you don’t need to attend college to learn things. Is there anything else?

At college you get to learn things, and you don’t need to worry about putting food on your plate [2].

Okay that's better. But why is that valuable?

If you have no responsibilities then you have complete freedom over how you choose to spend your time, and therefore what you choose to work on. And when people have the choice, they tend to spend their time working on things they enjoy. Similarly, (because we're still forced to learn, tragic!) students tend to choose to spend their time learning about things they’re interested in.

And that is valuable. Not only for students, who get to learn about themselves and satisfy their intellectual curiosity, but also for you. How? When people work on things they like, they tend to work harder on them. So, if you get a bunch of smart students to work hard on things that they enjoy, sometimes they create things that are valuable to society.

Early recruitment tore this model down. An entry-level job at Goldman Sachs pays $120,000 a year, and they recruit students during their sophomore year. If you’re a freshman, you know that if you’re going to want food on your plate after you graduate, you better start worrying about it now.

Now students at college still get to learn things but they have to worry about putting food on their plate. And that changes everything because it turns college into a four-year interview process.

Instead of exploring their interests and working hard on things they like, students now have to focus on signalling employability. This could explain why the most popular extra-curricular organisations at Harvard are consulting groups.

There's no way you can convince me that students are actually thrilled about spending their free time on consulting.

Do you want to know why we haven't had another Facebook at Harvard? Because during his sophomore spring the Mark Zuckerberg of 2018 was chasing a Goldman Sachs internship instead of building Facebook.

Do you think I'm wrong? Ask yourself this: would I have done things the same way if I truly didn't have to worry about getting a job until after I was done with school? You have your answer.

[1] And consulting firms, PE firms, quant trading firms, big tech companies etc etc… (it just didn't sound as good if I included everyone)

[2] I really don’t want to sound reductive here, of course there are so many students that face incredible personal and financial hardships while attending college, and do have to worry about bringing food to their own plate. But we go to Harvard, 96% of students come from families in the top 50% of earners.