Interesting blogpost, but I think the problems you point to are fundamentally unsolvable as long as people keep competing for what are perceived as “prestigious” colleges. The closest thing to a partial solution is to improve the baseline of a good education by expanding things like MOOC’s and open educational resources. (Even this would only help to the extent that it reduces the disutility of going to a “bad” college, or potentially of skipping traditional college ed altogether. We don’t even know what makes some colleges “more prestigious” than others; to the best of our knowledge, it’s simply a matter of luck and/or self-reinforcing popularity contests.)
Interesting blogpost, but I think the problems you point to are fundamentally unsolvable as long as people keep competing for what are perceived as “prestigious” colleges. The closest thing to a partial solution is to improve the baseline of a good education by expanding things like MOOC’s and open educational resources. (Even this would only help to the extent that it reduces the disutility of going to a “bad” college, or potentially of skipping traditional college ed altogether. We don’t even know what makes some colleges “more prestigious” than others; to the best of our knowledge, it’s simply a matter of luck and/or self-reinforcing popularity contests.)