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One of the most expensive degrees in America just went on sale.
In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that certain business schools are slashing tuition to fill seats. Purdue's MBA is about 40% off, roughly $36k now instead of $60k, and other schools cutting up to half with Johns Hopkins handing 50% scholarships to in-state grads.
What you see here is playing out across multiple industries.
As interest wanes and attention goes elsewhere, prices are getting slashed.
Meanwhile, legacy institutions can lean on “exclusivity” to continue inflating costs.
But I want you to focus on the MBA flash sale, because when a product gets marked down that hard, that fast, the market is trying to tell you something.
So listen up:
Education used to run on a simple trade.
You give it 4 years and a pile of money in exchange for a stable career with a decent salary.
But the degree was never really about what you learned.
It was just a permission slip, a foot in the door, a note that let an employer skip some of the hard, expensive work of judging you for themselves.
The diploma said: Safe to interview.
That's the actual product. Not knowledge — permission.
And right now, the market is repricing that permission slip in real time.
But why?
Because the market doesn’t care about your doctor’s note anymore.
Just watch how the schools are responding.
They're not rebuilding the product, they’re cutting prices and pasting the letters "AI" onto the syllabus.
If the one of the most prestigious, most expensive credential in the country gets moved to a 40%-off rack…
What exactly is the advice you're about to give your 17-year-old?
There was a time, not that long ago, when you could skip the line for a lot of jobs if you had a degree. Or at the very least, start a little further up the ladder.
An MBA was basically a golden ticket to Deloitte.
Now… not so much.
Now, instead of asking “What’s the best school?” parents are asking “What major is AI-proof?
And I get it, it’s a scary time to be choosing between college and… something else.
So let’s strip it down.
Education has only ever really been about 3 things:
WHAT you learn.
WHERE you learn it.
WHO you learn it from.
Thanks to AI, 2 of those matter less and less.
WHAT is basically free now.
Universities no longer have exclusive access to the newest studies and information.
Now, the machine in your kid's pocket knows more about pretty much any subject than a single professor ever could.
WHERE matters less every year.
Now that remote work and AI have created a digital world that feels almost as real as the physical one, going to frat parties and moving across the country for an education doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If you really need a degree for your career, no one’s checking if you attended online or in-person.
Which just leaves us with WHO.
And WHO still matters.
Maybe more than ever.
I call it the Proximity Premium: as learning gets cheaper, the one thing that gets more valuable is getting direct knowledge from someone who can help shape your work in real time.
Look back at that WSJ story, specifically the workers skipping their degrees because they'd rather learn on the job.
They might be reacting to an uncertain world, but they aren’t wrong.
The future of business isn’t going to ask where you went to college, it’s going to ask you to show your past work.
And the people spending 4 years in an ivory tower aren’t going to have much, if any, tangible evidence that they can do xyz job.
Proof > Theory
So how do you tell a real education from an expensive permission slip?
Run any education choice through the Proximity Test.
5 questions:
Add up the yeses and check below.
4–5 yeses, it's a real education — go.
2–3, it's thin — worth considering.
0–1, you're buying a permission slip.
Fine.
Just know that's all it is.
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Let’s see how the Proximity Test plays out in real life:
Person A wants to skip the student loans to learn Japanese Joinery from an accomplished master carpenter.
There’s a cost, but nowhere near what a 4-year degree would be.
In about 18 months Mr. Carpenter is going to have his 10,000 hours, hundreds of projects under his belt, and probably a decent amount of cash saved up from his job as an apprentice.
At this point he could even start his own furniture business.
That’s a 4-5 on the Proximity Test.
Now let’s look at Person B.
She’s wanted to be a lawyer her whole life.
After getting incredible grades and a few recommendation letters, she gets into Harvard.
Even with some scholarships, she’s going to end up in some debt nearly a decade of schooling.
But she’ll graduate with the golden ticket of permission slips.
You might be surprised, but this still passes the test with a 3-4. Harvard still has pull, and if you want to be a lawyer, there’s no skipping the school part.
Okay, how about Person C.
This guy wants to go to Arizona State and party his butt off for a few years before graduating with a degree in basket weaving.
After taking on a massive amount of student loans, Mr. Party Pants is gonna have his permission slip, but whatever job he ends up in is probably going to start at around $50K/ year.
Not the end of the world.
But he’s giving up 4 years of his life for what is, effectively, a minimum wage job.
That’s if he can even GET a job.
Ouch.
The opportunity cost is huge! So no, this fails the test.
Here’s what I think parents need to hear:
You've been treating this like it’s just your kid's problem. It's yours too.
If you do have a degree and you’re still climbing the corporate ladder, the value of that piece of paper is going down in the eyes of the market.
Meaning if you change jobs or you’re up for a promotion, your degree probably doesn’t pull the weight it used to.
I’m not telling you this to scare you, or even convince you that college is dead. It isn’t.
But the future is changing, and you need to be aware of it.
The best thing you can hand your children isn’t pushing them into the right school.
It's getting them the right education for a changing world.
And it starts with doing the same thing for yourself.
So who do you need to get close to? And what are you waiting for?
— Codie
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The information contained here is educational, may not be typical, and does not guarantee returns. Background, education, effort, and application will affect your experience and the profitability of any business. Individual results may vary.
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