What Makes a Degree?
Let’s talk about the benefits of a college degree. Outside of a credential and the corresponding letters to go after your name, presumably the major benefit is an increase in knowledge.
But what is the increase of knowledge comprised of, exactly?
Meaning, if you take someone and baseline their knowledge and skill in a subject, then send them to college for two years to get a masters degree in that subject, we assume their knowledge and skill would increase. But what activities are the specifically responsible for that change?
For example, maybe we say this:
- Reading the required texts: 25%
- Attending the lectures: 20%
- Doing the assignments: 15%
- Completing a practicum: 15%
- Talking with professors: 15%
- Networking with other students: 10%
Would that be fair? I don’t think there’s a clear answer here, and I’m sure it varies from institution to institution, student to student, and subject to subject. But, I think I’m somewhere in the ballpark.
My question then becomes: can we replicate this outside of a formal university?
If you wanted the knowledge that came with a degree, but didn’t care in the slightest about the formal credential, could you create a structured program to give you the same knowledge and skill as if you had completed the degree program? Now, I don’t mean random, haphazard reading and watching YouTube. I’m talking about sitting down and developing a multi-year learning plan in advance based on your research of what formal programs offer, then faithfully and genuinely executing on that.
I would like to get a masters in something, for no reason than to complete a course of study and to have learned the material. The formal credential means nothing to me – I don’t care about it personally, and at this stage of my career, it wouldn’t have any practical impact on me professionally.
For example, I’ve been thinking about city planning a lot lately. I’ve always been interested in how cities evolve, and I’m re-reading Jane Jacobs right now, which is fascinating. Just the other day, I was driving through Long Island to the Hamptons, which got me thinking about Robert Moses and The Power Broker, and my mind started to drift to the idea of what it would take to get a masters in city planning…
…but I quickly snapped back to reality and acknowledged that a masters in city planning would serve no practical purpose for my career, and so my wife would have some serious questions about what I was spending our money on.
So, I don’t want the degree – I want the knowledge. I want to know the same things that someone with a masters in city planning knows, and I feel like the state of information today should make that possible.
I went looking, and found a degree program at the University of Cinncinati. Here are the classes you have to take:
- “Planning in Urban Communities”
- “Introduction to Geographic Information Sciences”
- “Transportation Planning”
- “Graphics and Communication for Planners”
- “Structure and Dynamics of Human Settlements”
- “Methods of Planning Systems Analysis”
- “Foundations in Economics”
Additionally, there’s a capstone and some electives.
If we revisit our list from the start of this post, we can ask ourselves, what comprises the knowledge differential for each class? Assuming I’m a different person after completing “Foundations in Economics,” why? What contributed to that difference, and could I replicate that without a formal class?
So, outside of the actual credential, what does an institution provide and can this be replicated?
Reading. They clearly provide the list of things you have to read, but this can be discovered and replicated. It’s not like you can get access to those same things.
Lectures. A lot of lecture based content is online now, published by the institutions themselves. Additionally, what is a lecture other than rich media information? There are probably a lot of YouTube videos that explain things better than a professor droning on about it.
Practicum. This is a tougher one. As a student of an “official” program, you would have access to internships and residencies. These are given with the expectation that you will be a future practitioner in the field. These aren’t going to be handed out to random people. (Consider medicine: my daughter-in-law just graduated from a three-year residency. Good luck trying to replicate that.)
Consultation. Another tough one. At a university, you have access to professors. But, outside of the lectures (covered above), how much will you actually use this access? I imagine lots of people never have conversations with their professors, so this becomes irrelevant.
Assignments and Testing. The benefit here is threefold: the work that goes into completing the assignment, the expectation and accountability that you will do the work, and feedback you get from it. You could replicate the assignments themselves pretty easily – no one can stop you from researching and writing an essay – but you wouldn’t have the accountability to do any of it, nor would you have an expert reviewing it.
Networking. Being surrounded by other students is harder to do on your own. However, with an online degree, do you get much of this anyway? And if you decided to embark on this effort with a cohort of friends, could could replicate this environment?
Clearly, an institution of higher learning is going to say “No, these reasons are why you go to an actual institution, because we provide a unique combination of experiences and advantages that are otherwise unattainable.”
But is this true? Here are the two extremes:
- Informal: In today’s information environment, you can learn anything you want to, and all the institution is doing is leading you through the subject matter and giving you the credential.
- Formal: Truly learning something requires access to things that only the institution can provide and anything else is substandard. Outside of the credential, you will learn more in an institution.
I want to believe the former: that I can learn whatever I want to at the same level as an institution. However, there’s a very slippery slope there that ends with some dude explaining that he’s “done his own research” and that’s why he doesn’t vaccinate his kids or take them to the doctor.
Where do we draw the line between what you can do on your own and what you need external help and validation for?
Postscript: What Claude Said…
I asked Claude to develop a plan for me. I pushed all the sliders to 11 – Opus 4.8 Max in “Thinking Mode.” I gave it this prompt:
If I wanted to get the knowledge benefits of a masters degree in City Planning, but didn’t want to go to a formal university, could you design a structured learning program for me that would give me the same level of educational rigor? Develop a list of areas of emphasis and give me a reading and assignment list that would achieve this goal.
It delivered a plan, but had some advice for me:
The rigor lives in the doing, not the reading. A planning master’s isn’t a book club – it’s a studio. So every one of the seven areas pairs a curated reading list (about what a single graduate seminar actually assigns, not everything ever written) with concrete assignments that produce tangible work: a zoning memo, a demographic projection, a McHarg suitability map, a walkability audit, a critique of a real adopted plan. By the end you’d hold a portfolio, which is the closest self-taught analog to a thesis.
Use Sioux Falls as the laboratory. Almost every assignment runs on real public data for your own city – its zoning code, the comprehensive plan, ACS data, county GIS, livestreamed planning commission hearings. That’s more grounded than the generic studios many programs run, and you end up with genuine local expertise as a byproduct.
I was honest about the two things self-study can’t fully give you: the studio critique-and-defense loop, and the AICP credential. The credential you’ve already scoped out. The critique loop you can partially recover through a mentor planner (your state APA chapter is the easy route) – and the capstone is built around simulating that defense.
The plan is very long, so I will link to it here.