Burn the Syllabus: Rebuilding Higher Ed from First Principles
This isn’t anti-education. It’s pro-reality.
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Universities didn’t collapse into chaos overnight. The erosion began quietly—with small, procedural shifts that few noticed and fewer challenged. Over time, these changes snowballed, transforming once-great institutions into ideological battlegrounds. Today, many alumni hardly recognize their alma maters. To rebuild what’s been lost, we can’t stop at surface-level policy fixes. We must return to first principles—reexamining the purpose of higher education itself, and asking the question no one in power wants to answer: What problem are we actually trying to solve with colleges?
If we’re honest, it’s about preparing young people for the adult marketplace—not just jobs, but the messy reality of earning a living, solving problems, and navigating a world that doesn’t grade on effort. Yet universities churn out grads with $100K debt, shaky skills, and a worldview that wilts under scrutiny. How do we fix this? By rethinking education from the ground up, using first principles to strip away assumptions and build something that works.
Let’s take that process for a spin.
Step 1: Define the Problem
First principles start with clarity—what are we trying to achieve? Education isn’t tenure, rankings, or diversity statements. It’s this:
How do we prepare young adults to become competent, responsible, and contributing members and leaders of society?
That’s the core function of higher education—not just job training, but civilizational handoff. Educating young people for the adult marketplace means equipping them to thrive in a system of trade, innovation, and competition. They need skills to create value (e.g., coding, plumbing, negotiating), resilience to handle setbacks (rejections, failures), and judgment to make choices (ethical dilemmas, financial risks). The goal isn’t to coddle or indoctrinate—it’s to launch adults who can stand on their own, in an uncertain and potentially dangerous world.
If your institution isn’t doing that, it’s not a university. It’s an expensive daycare with Wi-Fi.
Step 2: Identify Assumptions
Next, we hunt for baggage—hidden beliefs we’ve accepted without enough proof. These are some common assumptions about higher education.
A four-year degree is the only path. Everyone needs a BA to “succeed,” no exceptions.
Classrooms are best. Learning happens best in lecture halls with PhDs and PowerPoints. Accreditors love this one, especially the need to require professors have degrees. Sorry Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Ralph Lauren, James Cameron, Rachael Ray, Jay-Z, and many more, you’ll never teach on campus.
Broad curricula ensure well-roundedness. Every student needs Shakespeare, stats, and sociology to be “whole.”
The debt is worth it. $50K-$200K in loans is a fair price for a diploma’s “prestige.”
Employers want theory. Grads with abstract knowledge (e.g., gender studies) are market-ready.
Campuses teach life skills. Dorm life lets students build grit and judgment.
These are the sacred cows grazing on hefty tuition checks—made of our children’s futures. Let’s deconstruct them.
Step 3: Question the Assumptions
Time to play detective and look for evidence! Let’s rummage around and see what falls out.
Four-year degree? Explain this to me like I’m Steve Jobs. The marketplace doesn’t care about your papers—it wants results. Coders get hired for portfolios and job history, not transcripts. Tradespeople can earn six figures after an apprenticeship that often pays for itself. Evidence: 52% of grads are underemployed, per a 2024 report from the Strada Education Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute. Opposite idea: What if a two-year apprenticeship or self-taught hustle worked better?
Classrooms? Proof they’re tops? Not so much. Online courses (e.g., Coursera, Udemy, EdX, Khan Academy, Skillshare, YouTube, the list goes on and on.) teach welding or web design faster than a semester slog. Real-world mentors—bosses, freelancers—can outshine tenured profs (the same ones accreditors demand have PhDs). Flip it: Could on-the-job training trump campus? Don’t most people with degrees already learn their positions on the job?
Broad curricula? Nice in theory—but does a mechanic need Chaucer to fix a carburetor? What if we focused on skills they’ll use and find other ways to share cultural knowledge, like The Catherine Project, Toastmasters, Openculture.com, Academic Earth, or The Great Courses? What if instead of pausing adulthood for four years to earn a ‘degree’, we intertwined education over a lifetime, building skills that allowed a person to shift through the job sector as their talents allow? I hear Daniel Day Lewis is a decent cobbler in addition to being a great actor.
The debt is worth it? Run the numbers: $600/month loan payments for a $40K job? Let’s hope new graduates don’t need a new car, on top of rent. Opposite: Free training (e.g., coding bootcamps, trade schools) can launch careers without chains. Why not other professions? Apprenticeships pay you to learn. Shall I repeat that, or should we all just sign on to become electricians right now?!
Employers want theory? Nope—surveys (e.g., LinkedIn 2024) show bosses crave problem-solvers, not pontificators. Some are even saying college isn’t the best place for creativity, the fundamental quality behind strong problem-solving. So what’s happening to all those theory-heavy college grads? If anything, Gender studies majors sling coffee; welders don’t. Flip it: Teach what markets reward. (And how’s this for a study topic–Education system penalizes problem solving. Google Scholar finds zero matches. Oh, wait, most research happens at universities. Coincidence?)
Does campus living teach life skills? Debatable. Binge-drinking, diversity statements, safe spaces, and echo chambers don’t scream “resilience.” Failure’s a better teacher—try losing a client, bombing a pitch, or getting fired. What if real-world stakes beat dorm drama?
Step 4: Find Fundamental Truths
What are the bare bones—what’s education for the marketplace, really? At its core, it’s about these truths:
Value Creation: The marketplace (even the dating market) rewards those who solve problems—build a product, write computer code, fix a pipe, close a deal. Skills are currency.
Adaptability: Life’s a curveball machine—recessions, tech shifts, betrayals. You need grit to pivot, not crumble.
Decision-Making: Every choice (hire, invest, quit) shapes your path. Good judgment—honed by experience, not lectures—keeps you steady.
How to Find Knowledge: In today’s world, what that knowledge should be is often a moving target. For some subjects, this is straightforward. Doctors should know anatomy, physicists should be able to do math. Beyond the basics, knowing how and where to find the information you need, when you need it, is valuable.
These aren’t negotiable. No degree, protest, or hashtag changes them. They’re the physics of adulthood.
Some will surely complain that such a view strips the heart out of education, where’s the art? Where’s the soul? To be clear, these fundamentals don’t preclude having liberal arts studies. At the same time, as long as universities are charging enough to buy a reasonable house in a Southern market for the privilege of a college degree, it’s wise to question the value of every class. Better to strip the universities’ soul, than saddle a generation for their lifetime with paying university administrators salaries.
The apprenticeship model is just looking better and better.
Step 5: We Can Rebuild It, We Have the Technology
Do we really need universities? That’s an open question in our current circumstance. If Higher Education is going to continue or double down on practices that have half of UCLA med students testing out as substandard, maybe not.
Though perhaps they can be saved with some very difficult and painful choices.
Either way, let’s play around with some alternatives based on our fundamental truths that are more cost-effective, and may give us better results—no ivory towers, no dogma. Here’s a first principles lesson plan:
Skill-First Training: Focus on what markets need—coding, plumbing, sales, caregiving. Offer modular paths: six-month intensives, two-year trades, or self-paced online tracks. If one dollar saved at 20 is worth 150 saved at 60, why not prioritize apprenticeship plans that pay students while they learn rather than find more ways to indebt them? There are so many ways a ‘degree’ could be broken up to allow students to find work in their chosen field, why not try some?
Why: Skills and experience get jobs, why not work to provide both at once? Students benefit, but so does the general public, as anyone who has gotten their teeth cleaned at the dental school, or a haircut at a cosmetology school, knows.
Real-World Exposure: Ditch lecture halls for apprenticeships and projects. Pair kids with mentors—electricians, entrepreneurs, nurses—for six months. Let them build apps, wire houses, or pitch clients. Failure’s allowed; it’s the best teacher.
Why: Experience trumps theory—Google hires non-degreed coders who prove they can hack it.
Teach Grit Through Stakes: Simulate life’s punches—budget exercises with real cash, mock negotiations where losing hurts, or public pitches with feedback. No grades, just outcomes. Example: A “marketplace bootcamp” where kids run a pop-up shop and keep (or lose) the profits.
Why: Resilience isn’t taught; it’s earned—70% of startups fail, but founders learn fast.
Judgment Workshops: Train decision-making via case studies and role-plays—ethical dilemmas (e.g., fire a friend?), financial bets (invest or save?), emotional pressure cookers (e.g. deliver bad news to a client), or crisis calls (pivot or fold?). No right answers, just consequences.
Why: Judgment’s a muscle—for students who find they buckle under pressure, isn’t it better they learn that in college, when they can quickly pivot to another discipline or dig in and beef up their fortitude, rather than the work world, where the stakes are higher for everyone?
Affordable and Accessible: Costs for a university degree are absurd. There are many ways to bring the price of education down—use free platforms (YouTube, open-source courses) and local mentors. Subsidize via businesses that need workers, not taxpayers. Example: Tesla’s training programs for factory hires—company foots the bill, grads get jobs.
Why: Debt’s a shackle—average student loan debt is over $30K, and in some states it is as high as $43K. Also, there’s not a lot of data to show that a more expensive college provides a better education. Generally speaking, data about educational outcomes needs both improvement and more transparency.
Measure Success by Outcomes: Forget diplomas—track hires, businesses launched, or problems solved. Are students getting employment in their field of study? If not, why not? Public dashboards should show which degrees or skill sets deliver (e.g., 90% job placement vs. 30%).
Why: Markets don’t lie—results beat credentials, and it’s time we acknowledge that truth.
Step 6: Test and Iterate
Track who’s employed, who’s broke, who’s thriving. Tweak what flops—maybe coding needs more math, or plumbing improves with softer skills. Scale what works. No sacred cows—if mentors suck, fire them. If online beats in-person, pivot. Make it easy for students to target skills that suit their abilities and interests, with open plans that allow people to easily return throughout their lifetime to expand their skill sets for changing markets.
Why This Beats Universities
Today’s colleges peddle prestige, not preparation. For many professions, a college degree is more about gatekeeping than merit. $1.7 trillion in U.S. student debt demands an accounting for return on investment, especially for graduate degrees, where there are no limits on federal borrowing.
The university experience has been revamped for coddling, not challenges; theory, not tools. This blueprint flips it: real skills, real stakes, real results. It’s not about degrees—it’s about adults who can hack the marketplace, not whine when it’s hard.
The problem’s straightforward: Kids need to learn, create, adapt, and decide. Universities too focused on censoring wrong think and racism under the guise of performative allyship actively harm students and the general public. Let’s build a generation that doesn’t just survive the adult world—they own it.
These are some ideas to start with. What are yours?
Further Reading
Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites by Ilya Shapiro
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus