the uni Gold Rush is over but we're still buying shovels if you've just got your atar or haven't finished uni yet then you need to watch this we've been prescribed a lie that's leaving us with unpayable debt a useless education and garbage chances for finding a job I'm going to explore how we end up in uni and how little it actually does for us half of today's high school grads end up funneled into the university system you probably hadn't even consciously re realized what was going on before you were signing up to spend $65,000 on some YouTube video lectures and a guy to read your assignment for 10 minutes let's look at the moment you're forced into deciding what to do for the rest of your life let's be honest that's a bloody hard decision to make one not many 17 and 18 year olds are probably qualified for but luckily for you Society your parents and Friends narrow this decision down for you here are the three three doors in front of you that each represent a path your life can go down let's take a look at door number one and that's to get a job how does she look O Okay so there's a job at Mac is available yeah we can do better than that ooh okay digital operations assistant that could be fun job description says all I got to do is update website info and order any mistakes oh actually that requires a bachelor's degree for some reason reason okay then let's sort by no degree required and see what we can find okay yep tutoring yeah I just finished studying 1984 I ain't going to go back what else uni retail mhm receptionist with a fake flashy title okay Mac as it is well that was depressing wasn't it let's move on and check what's behind the next door okay T all right let's see what they got it's free all right not going to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt oh they've got decently well paying jobs it's practical and teaches me usable skills I think no what sorry who who said that there's no other way choosing is the only way what but but why surely I should at least consider no that's it okay all right so that leaves me with door number three then what's going to be in here oh uni oh my God it is gorgeous here I'm going to make a heap of friends oh that's awesome oh I might even have my first relationship hell yeah learning skills that employers need that sounds great hang hang on what's [Music] that oh but I'm going to get a high paying well-respected job when I graduate wait as what you're basically told to go to UNI before you've even figured out why you need to it's the only way if you don't go to UNI you're seen as a fa right off the bat but maybe that's not far off it seems that any white college job worth getting mandates a degree whether it's a necessary for the work or not it didn't used to be this way I know someone's mom who's currently a VP of a major Bank she got a job there after dropping out at 16 and just working her way up but that's impossible now if you don't go to unior tap your only options seem to be stocking shelves serving coffees or sending emails or if you really hate brown people then you can join the military so you need to get some further qualifications so it's between ta and uni except ta is seen as such a low blow to someone's status that they'll never even touch the catalog so now that you've made the society back decision to go to UNI let's figure out what four I hope you can see the Ridiculousness in this straight away the whole thing is backwards people don't decide I want to be a lawyer or a doctor and to do that I have to go to UNI they decide I have to go to UNI and then you got to find something which you're vly interested in and tell everyone including yourself that you want to be that thing to those who actually wanted to be what they studied and didn't arrive there entirely through parental and societal pressure congrats you are in the privileged few let's see how most people pick their vaguely interesting degree I think there are three main motivations behind picking certain degrees it actually aligns quite well with the Japanese iyy framework which helps people find their purpose and the first motivation is here comes the money here we go money talk here [Music] the honestly it worries me whenever I ask someone why they're doing their degree and the first answer they give me is because it pays well like I understand we live in a capitalist Society but I thought people got exposed to enough content that talks about excessive consumerism that they would understand that it is not a guarantee of Happiness wanting to make a decent living is admirable but in light of the fact we spend essentially the majority of Our Lives working and a substantial chunk of our Leisure Time doing chores or traveling to work I would hope you'd put more thought into how you'd want to spend such a high proportion of your life but also I don't believe people when they say this why because 90% of the time there are far easier ways of making money than a decade of training and dozens of hours of overtime each year working in these careers which leads me to think that what these people really want is look we're social creatures and with that comes social ladders everyone just wants to be able to say what they're studying or where they're working and not get a quizzical look or an abruptly ended conversation you're guaranteed to be left alone by societal judgment if you pick being a lawyer or doctor plus if you did well there's a pressure to not waste your atar it may feel like it's a rule of nature that some degrees in careers are better than others but look it's all a social construct why are nurses dismissed so easily in this country but doctor's hailed are you really saying my GP who just referred me to a specialist after a 5 minute chat deserves triple the wage and 10 times more praise than the nurse that supports me after an intensive surgery but also I get the allore of studying something socially respectable I spent years doing a law degree despite never wanting to do law your family will Pat you on the back and strangers will say you should be prime minister it's nice but is it all that [Music] matters this combines something one is good at and what they love doing I feel like like these always come together I've never met someone who's really passionate about art for example who is also utterly terrible skill is a product of time and effort and love provides the motivation to schedule the time and make the effort this in my life is precious minded brain is the best way to choose your course I understand that you don't need to love your work and instead you can love your hobbies but I'm an idealist so I want both I feel like if you do what you love that's how you'll achieve your highest level of success anyway you're hardly going to climb the corporate ladder if you're dragging yourself out of bed every day anyway unfortunately though most passion Industries are for that reason highly exploited and unprofitable Industries but if you unironically love Investment Banking then man enjoy your Millions but there's one last part of this diagram I do see a lot of people who aspire to this at least at some level many of my law friends wanted to work for NOS government in human rights and the like I love seeing people of embodied altruism I think it is essential for a good life if you can see the fruits of your labor and how they meaningfully impact others you feel more connected to the world rather than watching the hours tick away for no seeming purpose as you make dollars for a millionaire so that you can survive on the sents they give you back but then there's a whole other group who haven't even broken into the iy guy V diagram that's the people who have no idea what the hell they're doing or why these are the people that are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their life when asked why they picked their degree they'll give you one of the aformentioned reasons but that's just to meet the social expectation I was in this category for a long time I jumped from ambition to ambition one day I wanted to work for the UN then in family law then as a journalist I think I finally found my calling but also who knows I spent months struggling and constantly self-reflecting I was lucky enough to at least enjoy my second degree even if it was unemployable but a lot of people I meet in this category seem to be Drifting by complacently getting just enough validation from marks and dopamine from Tik Tok to prevent internal collapse but they remained so terrified of needing to make the big decision of what they want to be rather than forging their own path I worry a lot of these people end up in a wagon that chooses their direction for them okay so I know I sound like a bit of a downer but is what I'm talking about really a problem isn't uni a guarantee for getting a higher salary anyway and doesn't it make you smarter but let me break down why what you've been told about uni is closer to good marketing than it is to inherent truth firstly let's look at the idea that uni is going to make you money you've probably seen a graph like this it shows how much more people with the degree earn compared to their degre less counterparts but let me break down some of the lies showcased in this graph the median for Bachelors here is about $90,000 but it comes from the median across all age groups and all degrees looking at one age group of those that just graduated we see the medium becomes only just above 60,000 but hang on that's actually below the 65,000 median income in Australia and this is for the middle uni student but okay you can't expect that high returns right out of uni so let's see salaries 9 years after graduation and for each discipline H I'm not sure this is what people were hoping for by the looks of things uni is great for getting a high income if you go for the traditional Med engineering law or it routes but let's focus on law it's the middle worker who's getting the very respectable 120k but if you're in the bottom 25% then 9 years after graduation you're only earning about 80k that's 9 years after graduation and you're still barely making over the medium but how does that make sense everyone knows the law pays well but what they don't tell you is that the bottom 25% are not working in law they are only 990,000 practicing lawyers in Australia but each year 15,000 law students enrolling courses basic supply and demand tells you that that ain't going to work a good proportion of law students can never break into law and a similar story exists for the burgeoning number of computer science students seems that at every event I go to half the people there study compy but if you pick to medicine or engineering then fear not there is plenty of work there just as there's plenty of work in nursing teaching And Trades occupations which make good money nowadays a bottom 25% teacher is making more straight out of uni than a bottom 25% Law grad is 9 years in but Australia still struggles teachers respect in Finland one of the highest status jobs is as a teacher the selection process is equivalent to the difficulty of getting into our Med schools and just like how law Works in America you can also only apply for it after finishing a bachelor their teachers are the best of the best here I'm honestly terrified for the kids that get taught by some of the people I've met studying teaching degrees it's certainly not everyone but uttering competence and a seeming disdain for children are unfortunately not uncommon but we'll never attract our brightest Minds to teaching while we continue to discourage and disrespect the profession but a lot of my criticism only applies if you're aiming for a specific job based on a degree if you just want a job that doesn't need specialized skills then you're probably in the right place at Uni everyone's been forced to squeeze into the Unis system pip work in 1989 only 8% of Australians had a bachelor today this is 32% four times the amount instead of standing out degrees have become the new arbitrary Baseline if you dream of the cushy office job with the increased use of AI resume readers without a degree your job application gets instantly dumped by the algorithm and once it's looked at you still need to stand out there's been an increasing arms race of qualifications it used to be that a bachelor was great but now the norm is two and increasingly a Masters on top of that but still isn't this more Highly Educated Society a good thing well it depends on what counts as education now want to burst the myth that uni makes you smarter I think one part of this myth is a case of confusing correlation with causation yes intelligence is correlated with University because any hardworking person who wants to achieve something in life is told that they have to go to UNI and these people of course as they study hard will learn more about the world and develop the critical thinking skills which leads to higher intelligence but not all learning is equal reading papers and doing assignments isn't like getting XP points so you can level up a lot of the time the content is highly specific and it's going to prove useless if you don't care about or work in a field knowing how to create a website doesn't have many applications outside that domain and do you really think all those Commerce courses were better than spending that time working in business the best you can hope for is developing analytical skills from the effort that you put into your studies but if you're messaging people during lectures and relying on chat GPT for assignments I'm sorry but you're not leveling up there are a substantial portion of people who are not built for or just weren't ready for uni when they started these people are told that they need to SLO through years of something they hate because a degree is useful discouraging them from reflecting on their own desires and capacities I cheed one kid who in no world should ever be attending University he had zero passion for the subject and nothing was clicking but his father was so adamant on him meeting the societal expectation he kept pushing him to pursue the exact thing he was hopeless at it looked like he never even considered what might be best for his kid I hate that uni is seen as a one-sized fits-all solution for some reason we have a culture that pushes us to jump right into University other nations like Norway have most of their students take a gap here After High School to give them more time to figure their [ __ ] out I know why we're in such a rush you've barely had a month since the most intense examination period in your life and now you have to make a decision that determines the rest of your life yes you can change things around and find yourself at Uni that's what I did but it can be a very expensive method of figuring yourself out but let's see what the finding yourself at Uni paath looks like so you either one Get Lucky pick something you're actually good at and interested in or two play degree Switcheroo and keep jumping around disciplines until something sticks or three just Sun cost fallacy your way through whatever 17-year-old you thought was a great idea until you get that piece of paper then you can finally go for that office job that you're not passionate for gives you a shitty work life balance ruins your health and doesn't pay anywhere near as well as you thought it would ultimately we live in a society where you need to get a degree to live a white color life if you want a death job then you're making the right choice I just think our society's over investing in universities which don't give as much returns as they'd like to make you believe especially when everything is free online so I want to encourage you all to pick something which genuinely interests you something that you would choose to research outside of class if we all by necessity must work to live let's at least try to find work that makes life livable