The Top Prophecy of the Week

The Collapse of American Higher Education [Gilder's Daily Prophecy] August 28, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [ARCHIVES]( James Altucher Reveals: [“My No. 1 Biotech Play for 2021!”]( [James Altucher]( never going to guess what ex-hedge-fund manager James Altucher [just revealed…]( It’s possibly his most controversial call yet. It involves a breakthrough new biotech niche… a molecule banned for 70 years… and a tiny $3 stock… [Click here for the details.]( [Warning] Do you enjoy receiving Gilder's Daily Prophecy? Please [Click Here Now]( so we know to continue sending you Gilder's Daily Prophecy for free! The Top Prophecy of the Week [Jeffrey Tucker]Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, Before we get to today’s issue, there is a MASSIVE development in the markets you need to be aware of. If you have money in the market you need to protect… Or more importantly, wondering how we could be on the verge of the largest stock market sell offs in history… Then you need to [watch this quick video immediately](. Billionaires across the globe have been sounding the alarm bells. And according to our research, this coming Monday could be the day disaster strikes. And if you want to learn a unique strategy that can hedge your portfolio… Allowing you to take home enormous returns in the process… [Then don’t waste a single moment. Watch this before it’s too late](. Your son has successfully graduated from high school. The student loans for college are granted. Your dorm room fees are paid. The total bill for the first year is $40K. The school mandates vaccines for everyone from faculty to staff to students. You don’t believe your son needs it, and you are right, but you can’t afford to risk his future. You will do anything for him and always have. Graduating from a good school is essential (maybe) for life success. So you are all in. You have dropped him off and now you check in daily. How are the classes going? Well, he is just taking the core right now. There is a biology class, and that’s good, though you worry that the professor will hijack the whole thing and talk only about the glory of Covid vaccines and lockdowns while attacking those who resist Fauci’s latest commands. Maybe that’s right. We shall see. The others include political theory, which is fraught with peril. The American literature class starts with marginalized writers in American history, those dealing with the African American experience and women. That’s fine, probably, so long as they eventually get to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Twain (don’t count on it). The final class is mandatory: women in American film. This one you know for sure will teach nothing you can’t learn in one of 100,00 YouTubes. Money for Nothing? That pretty much covers the first semester. You are left wondering why you are paying so much, and why your son is accumulating so much debt, for it doesn't look like you imagined college was supposed to be like. The lineup seems to lean more toward political indoctrination in ideas that are contrary to everything you believe. And for that they will eventually charge $200K plus suck away four years of life. And you do wonder: will you recognize your son after it is all over? In what way will this college education and degree really assure his career, or will there need to be more degrees (and expense) following the first degree? Maybe he should have chosen something like engineering that is more solid, but that is not what draws him. For that matter, he doesn’t know what he wants, which is why he hasn’t declared a major. In any case, the decision is gone. You are left wondering about it all but what can you do? You are the parent and dedicated to helping your child achieve his dreams. Yes, the institution is taking advantage of your generosity and fears, and pillaging money based on that. You know that, but there don’t seem to be too many options. When Does the Racket End? When the [Khan Academy]( went online, it struck me that the days of paying such a high price for education would come into question. Then universities started putting all their lectures and curricula online. Then academic papers started becoming available. For the industrious student, all the content they could get at college was being made available for free. How possibly could this gigantic, inflated, overbuilt, and hugely expensive sector we call higher education survive? What I had underestimated was the risk aversion of parents. What they are paying for is not the educational content but the credential that the student gets at the end. It would be far easier to go the route of the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz and just have a kindly old man give them a diploma but that’s not how it works. You have to shell out a high amount of money and time. But, hey, they have it for life right? What could go wrong? Data indicates higher earnings among the college education, but the relationship between cause and effect here is not clear. It’s not that employers are willing to pay just for the degree; they are not. The degree indicates something about a person’s discipline and commitment and intelligence. The causality runs the other direction: the people with earning power tend to be those who are willing to endure the sufferings of higher education to shore up their future. The connection between the two is undeniable, but not determinative. Reader, can you please RSVP before next Tuesday? [August 31]( On Tuesday, August 31 @ 8:00 p.m. Eastern, our Publisher is making a MAJOR announcement about a simple change that could help you increase your gains up to 3-fold on George’s recommendations. No options or leverage needed. You buy the same stocks at the same time… but with this change your returns can be dramatically higher. [You DO NOT want to miss this.]( Alternatives to Higher Education What this point of view overlooks are the very viable alternatives that are readily available, and ever more so. If you jump right from high school into a business at the most basic starting level, doing the job others are unwilling to do, particularly not the college graduates, you create an advantage for yourself. You get an education in real life. You learn a work ethic. You can make time for yourself by getting other forms of credentials from private companies. Salesforce administrators and Microsoft programmers are more marketable in industry than a degree in English. Employees are deeply in need of such, as anyone who goes through the slog of obtaining such credentials knows for sure. Such credentialing exists in every industry, no matter what it is. They are arguably more credible than a degree. To be sure, this route seems riskier than going to college. What if it doesn’t work? Will you spend the rest of your life regretting the life that you didn’t give your son or daughter? In the end, what a parent comes to realize is that the life your children have for themselves is ultimately of their own making. You can help. You can prod. You can pay. But in the end, it comes down to the initiative, intelligence, and sheer will of the individual person. Strangely, that realization is the hardest thing for most parents. How Important Is College? How much damage can a bad college education do? Look around at some of the most dominant and powerful institutions in our society, namely large tech and government. They are now controlled almost completely by people who were educated in institutions of higher learning over the last 15 years. During this time, a gradual revolution has happened. It can be documented empirically. The “conservatives” have been almost completely marginalized in most mainstream institutions while the “woke” crowd has come to dominate all the soft sciences and some of the hard ones too. They are relentless and unforgiving toward dissent. The old slogans about academic freedom and diversity are no more. In fact all the old slogans have died, including “my body, my choice” (see vaccine mandates). The students of these institutions have been farmed out to all the large tech firms and corporate giants. They want to act on the ideology they learned in college, and they are using their power to do so. We have discovered the degree of their hegemony this year and last in ways that have shocked us thoroughly, but the revolution has been brewing slowly for a decade and a half. People generally underestimate the importance of ideas in the shaping of history, and almost always overlook the influence that universities have over the ideas and attitudes of the ruling class. It is as true in the US today as it was in the middle ages in Europe and China. The ideas taught to future leaders exercise a huge influence over the rise and fall of nations and civilizations. Counter-Cultural Institutions When I want to feel optimistic about the future of higher education, I think about the smaller institutions that are less dependent on government money, tend to hire faculty with conservative and libertarian values, keep classes small, and don’t put so many resources into buildings, sports, and administrative staff. I know so many young students in their 20s who are on a solid career path from their experience in such places. They are less famous, less prestigious, and less able to guarantee immediate hiring in high-profile firms. But credentialing through such institutions can create the basis of a happy life, and that is ultimately what parents should be going for. Americans in the last 18 months have awoken to a new realization. Many of our once-stable and wonderful institutions are irretrievably broken. It is time to build new ones, while there is still time. Some of the most revolutionary and visionary investors are doing just this. For example, Peter Thiel was among the first to see the merit of dropping out of school and getting into a career right away. He was pilloried for paying students to do just this but his experiment was generally successful. The mass exodus from mainstream universities keeps being pushed farther into the future, but it is surely coming. Events of the last year and half make that outcome more sure now than ever before in our lifetimes. Regards, [Jeffrey Tucker] Jeffrey Tucker Copy of Official Approval Enclosed (tech) July 2020, the U.S. Government approved a tech project that potentially disrupts a $2 trillion industry. One financial analyst has been gathering critical data – and he’s making his boldest prediction yet. Every shred of evidence that points to what lies ahead, including a copy of the official approval, [can be found here.]( To see how you can take advantage of this breakthrough tech, before Wall Street catches on, [Click Here.]( [Three founders Publishing]( To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, feel free to [click here](. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy](. Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read [our Privacy Statement.]( For any further comments or concerns please email us at GildersDailyProphecy@threefounderspublishing.com. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. 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