 So Harvard, one of the greatest and most prestigious universities in the world announced last week that they are going to deliver their next academic year using online classes only. They are also not backing up in terms of pricing and will still maintain its nearly $50,000 tuition. Now, there's a lot of debate online whether or not this is a good strategic move coming from the other side or a total repo. And most people jumped to their guns saying that they can get the same type of education by just googling stuff all day and using their mental arsenal. But there's one more thing to consider before yelling out loud that high-status universities are gradually becoming obsolete. And the thing is that a high-status university has never been about building a wide variety of skill sets, but mostly about acquiring credentialism, i.e. your diploma, and networking while building your social connections. So a huge higher-ranked university often resembles a hub that is supposedly intellectually stimulating as well. And this design was created by the university itself. Knowing that society considers that being smart and intellectually capable can mostly be linked to you having a degree. It is how the system was built. For a long time, people were not showing off using their personal projects and hobbies, but only by showing their diploma. And if you find yourself in a social situation where people are asking you whether or not you have a degree in advanced mathematics or martial nanotechnology, don't be afraid. You are not alone. Because this is a mental shortcut people use when they don't want to hear your story and only care about the summary. The summary is your academic path, your degree, whether you have it or not. They do not care about your social context or where you are coming from or your personality and macro goals, but only whether you are an achiever or not. Because they don't have time to listen to you talking about your startup idea or your micro blogging platform, which only has 5 users by the way or even your YouTube channel or GitHub repository. So they are using the degree as a mental shortcut, which theoretically encapsulates your past and your future as well. Now universities are also designed for networking and social connectivity. And social institutions have been decaying over time, and we must not forget that most of us had our social connections through these institutions. Nowadays, people are placing their toddlers even in high-stages kindergartens, making sure their kids are in the same class with a royal family child. They are trying to build social connections right away. And then they are going to college together and that's it. But if you think about how public schools have become less of a commitment, with less and less involved parents and more and more mature kids running on the hallways, that school's social framework is slowly fading away. So high-stages universities are the ones trying to keep that social foundation altogether. And again, quite a lot of people started arguing online and yelling at each other saying that paying hard cash for the same education you can get for free online is a total scam. But this isn't necessarily true. For an individual coming from a rich family that's also well-connected, most of the value he gets out of his university experience is the brand itself, the stamp he gets while entering the club. Then he can spend those years partying and boxing with a future prime minister and nowadays protesting. But when you think about an individual who worked his butt out trying to figure out a way to enter the realm of science and coming from an immigrant family, the value of that particular university's brand carries a lot of weight when the individual will be trying to niche down. And I suppose the central idea is that a degree by definition means training. If you can be trained to do a job, millions of other people will also get trained and compete with you. And maybe if you are exceptionally talented in the field, you will also be wealthy. But pay closer attention that wealth doesn't necessarily mean wealth. And even though it might be true that a 50k tuition for a more enhanced Zoom class sounds a bit like a rip-off, there's also this thing we need to think about called opportunity costs. The opportunity to have peer-to-peer interactions, arguments and physicality. It's again like paying to enter to a party where all the popular kids are attending to. And there's an argument that we will slowly move towards building credentialism and social connections using online-only hubs, where people can have easy access to our future and past projects, our writings and resources and our documentation and overall goals. And we started seeing this type of strategy being applied when talking about big companies where the company itself does not ask you for a degree anymore, but it is more focused on pure skill. And in terms of elite universities charging hard cash fees to their students, it all depends on how much perceived value it gives to the buyer itself, and not about how much it costs the university to produce their untouchable asset. But don't get me wrong, I believe it's all contextual anyway. I myself am a self-taught individual and I'm not fond of the academia that much, and I currently believe that the future of education is about speed learning, how to use the internet to extract, connect and build on bits of information coming from big data, and learning how to pull out trustworthy resources and knowledge repositories and ultimately connecting the dots faster than anyone else. And an individual who will be able to navigate through its intricate web will be the valedictorian of the future.