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For generations, the path to success seemed clear: graduate high school, go to college, get a degree, land a good job, climb the corporate ladder. But what happens when that formula stops working? When the degree doesn’t lead to the career? When AI disrupts entire industries overnight? When companies value credentials over competence? The rules of education and career advancement are changing faster than ever before. Whether you’re a student planning your future, a professional mid-career, or an employer setting hiring standards, it’s time to rethink everything we thought we knew about education, success, and what really matters.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. This is episode 689, “Does College Matter. I’m Darrell Darnell, I completed my bachelors degree via an online university, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
I graduated high school thirty-something years ago, and I knew for several years before then that I would be going to college right away. I had a dream of drawing cartoons for a living, and my path to getting there would require an art degree.
Except that’s not what happened.
I mean, I did in fact go straight to college, but it was not what I dreamed it would be. I’d actually never taken a formal art class before enrolling in college, and once I got into that environment it became clear that pursuing a career in art was not for me. So I dropped out of college.
I’ve mentioned before that I wish I’d had the wisdom or foresight to talk to other people before making my decision. I still don’t think I would have pursued an art degree, but I’d like to think that seeking wise counsel would have led me to figuring out a different degree path and staying in college.
But I chose a different path instead.
I’d started working at a regional bookstore chain about the same time I started college, so once I dropped out, I simply turned my focus to advancing at the bookstore. And that’s exactly what happened. Five years after joining the store I was relocated to Texas to help open a new store in a new market, and a year later I was promoted to manage my own store.
I did well at managing the store. It paid well, came with a nice Christmas bonus, and gave me the opportunity to earn a few performance-based bonuses as well, which I did. After two years of that, the corporate office offered me a job as a buyer, which I was horrible at. Eighteen months later I was moved back to the store and into a sort of limbo position.
One day my boss sat me down and we had a heart-to-heart. It ended with him telling me my best course forward was to go back and finish my degree. Pick a field of study that would help me get the job I wanted within the company, and go get that degree.
So I did.
I graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s of Information Technology Degree in Programming. Our company used .NET as our primary programming language, so I’d made sure I pursued a degree that focused on that language.
But I didn’t get a job right away. I’ve told that story in previous episodes, but eventually I did get a call that was better than I’d hoped. Instead of joining our IT department as a junior programmer like I’d hoped, I’d been asked to head up a new department in the company that would become the e-commerce department. They needed someone who knew buying, store operations, and information technology. My deep knowledge of our company and our systems made me uniquely qualified for the role.
Here’s the thing. I held that role for the next eight years and I didn’t write a single line of code that entire time.
So was my degree useless? Not exactly. It did give me a deep understanding of IT systems. It allowed me to carry on conversations with vendors and developers, evaluate systems, and have a closer connection to our team who was actually writing code. So there’s that.
I’d say that while getting the degree most certainly made me qualified for the job in the eyes of my supervisors, it was fairly minimal in how much it actually helped me perform the duties of the role. My role involved managing people and creating systems much more than it did IT.
So does college matter?
Years ago my brother-in-law started working at our state sales tax department. He did really well there. He understood the role, got along well with his co-workers, had a great attitude, and did well on performance evaluations.
So it’s probably no surprise that he started working his way up the ladder and got promotions. Until suddenly the promotions stopped. Other people around him who had been there less time and didn’t know the business as well as he did started getting promoted over him.
Puzzled by this, he met with his supervisor to find out why. The answer was simple. My brother-in-law only had a high school diploma, not a college degree. If he wanted to be promoted any higher, he’d have to go get a degree. It didn’t matter what the degree was in. It could be ballroom dancing or underwater basket weaving.
It also didn’t matter that his performance reviews were higher and his understanding of the business was deeper than those being promoted around him. It didn’t matter that even without the degree he would be a better choice for the jobs above him.
The company had a rule that a college degree was required in order to advance beyond a certain point, and until he got that piece of paper, he was at the upper limit of what he could accomplish there. In the end, he got a job elsewhere and the company lost one of their best employees.
Does college matter?
Five years ago my daughter graduated high school. One of her best friends went off to college with a dream of becoming a programmer. So he enrolled at a great school and pursued a degree in computer science. At the time, computer science was a great field. For decades computer science had been one of the most sought-after degrees by companies all over the world.
Well-performing students could expect to graduate and have multiple offers waiting on them with the ability to negotiate great salaries and benefits. When he entered college as a freshman, that’s exactly what the landscape looked like.
But something happened within those four years he was at college. The AI revolution began. By the time he graduated a year ago, entry-level programming jobs were much harder to come by. Many companies had learned how to use AI to write code much faster and with nearly the same degree of accuracy as a junior programmer.
So there were no jobs waiting for him. He looked everywhere in the region and applied for the few job openings he could find. He interviewed for a couple, but didn’t get them. Eventually, nine months later, he was fortunate to find a job in a nearby state and started working there a couple of months ago. But I have to be honest. That field is under heavy threat of being replaced by AI. I hope he’ll have a long career, but I can’t be certain.
Does college matter? Will AI take all of our jobs in the next few years?
Here’s what I learned.
College absolutely still matters—but maybe not in the way we’ve been taught to think about it.
Look, there’s something genuinely valuable about the college experience that goes beyond what’s written on your diploma. It’s about pursuing formal education at a critical time in your life. It’s about transitioning into adulthood, learning to be independent, managing your own schedule, navigating relationships, and discovering who you are when nobody’s watching. Those are real skills that show up in ways you can’t always measure. Of course, college isn’t the only way to gain those skills and experiences.
And let’s be clear: there are fields where a degree isn’t just helpful—it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t want to go to a doctor who hasn’t been fully educated, trained, certified, and tested. I don’t want to hire a lawyer who skipped law school and just watched a bunch of YouTube videos about the Constitution. Engineers designing bridges, nurses administering medication, accountants handling complex tax law—these professions require rigorous formal education for good reason. Public safety and professional competence aren’t negotiable.
But here’s what’s also true: a college degree doesn’t have the same purpose or meaning it once did.
A generation ago, a bachelor’s degree was a golden ticket. It practically guaranteed you a good job, upward mobility, and financial security. Today? It’s more complicated. The world has changed faster than our educational systems have been able to keep up with. Some degrees lead to careers that didn’t exist when the program was designed. Others lead to fields that are rapidly disappearing.
And here’s something we don’t talk about enough: college isn’t the best path for formal education for everyone. Vo-tech programs, community colleges, and certification programs are equally valid educational pathways. A skilled electrician, a certified dental hygienist, or a trained HVAC technician can build a stable, lucrative career without spending four years and accumulating massive debt at a university. We need to stop treating these paths like they’re somehow “less than.”
In today’s high-tech world, the options for learning have exploded beyond anything previous generations could have imagined. You can take webinars on virtually any topic. You can read books written by the world’s leading experts. You can enroll in online courses from top universities for a fraction of the cost. You can watch YouTube tutorials that walk you through complex skills step by step. You can attend virtual conferences and network with people across the globe. You can go to in-person conferences and learn directly from practitioners in your field. You can join mastermind groups, participate in online communities, listen to podcasts from industry leaders, and take advantage of mentorship programs.
The knowledge is out there. The learning opportunities are everywhere. What matters most isn’t where you learned—it’s that you never stop learning.
Because here’s the thing: whether we have a college degree or not, whether we’re fifteen thinking about our future or fifty with a secure job, we should always be learning. Always.
The world is changing too fast for any of us to coast on what we learned ten years ago, or five years ago, or even last year. The person who stays curious, who keeps asking questions, who maintains a hunger to keep improving and growing—that’s the person who will find success regardless of what their resume says.
My programming degree didn’t teach me how to manage an e-commerce department. But my willingness to keep learning did. My daughter’s friend’s computer science degree didn’t land him a job immediately. But his persistence and willingness to adapt eventually did. My brother-in-law’s lack of a degree held him back at one company, but his proven track record and experience opened doors at another.
The degree matters sometimes. The learning matters always.
Now, if you’re an employer listening to this and you have the power to change the rules, I want to challenge you to do something. Take a hard look at your job requirements. Really evaluate whether a college degree is actually necessary for employees to advance in your organization.
Are you requiring a degree because the job genuinely needs that level of formal education? Or are you requiring it because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
My brother-in-law’s company lost an exceptional employee because they valued a piece of paper more than they valued proven performance. How many talented, capable, hardworking people are you overlooking because they took a different educational path? How many internal candidates are you passing over for promotion because they don’t check a box that may have nothing to do with their ability to excel in the role?
I’m not saying degrees don’t matter. I’m saying it’s worth asking the question: does it matter for this specific role? Because if the answer is no, you might be limiting your talent pool for no good reason.
Skills can be taught. Attitude and work ethic are harder to find. Sometimes the best candidate is the one who’s been showing up, learning on the job, and proving themselves day after day—even if they never walked across a graduation stage.
At the end of the day, here’s what I want you to remember: education matters deeply. Learning matters profoundly. But education and a four-year college degree aren’t always the same thing.
Find your path. Maybe that’s college. Maybe that’s trade school. Maybe that’s online courses and self-teaching. Maybe it’s all of the above at different stages of your life.
But whatever path you choose, never stop being a student. Never stop asking questions. Never stop seeking to understand more today than you did yesterday. Because in a world that’s changing this fast, the people who thrive aren’t the ones with the most degrees on their wall—they’re the ones with the most hunger to keep growing.
Stay curious. Stay humble. Stay hungry to learn.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag coming up in two weeks on March 30th! The submission deadline is Wednesday, March 25th. Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.