Michigan said it will cover first-semester grades, and the internet answered in a day. Some replies were careful, most were not, and nobody could tell them apart without doing the work. That is a market failure with a Nobel Prize behind it. It explains why good arguments go unread, why I chose to argue without standing anyway, and what anyone with an audience can do about it in about a minute.
Michigan’s College of LSA will stop putting first-semester letter grades on transcripts, to help students explore and to curb a mental health crisis. The pressure is real. The evidence on hiding grades mostly runs the other way, and the university kept the measure for itself.
Bryan Walsh’s Vox piece says college is still worth it, and he is right that the panic is overblown. But his “yes” leans hardest on one number, the Fed’s 12.5 percent, which is the return for the students who finish. Count everyone who starts and most do worse than that number. Then look school by school and major by major, and the answer is not yes or no. It is that “is college worth it” is the wrong question.
Forbes reported LinkedIn’s ranking of the “most versatile” college majors. But LinkedIn defines versatility as the share working outside their major’s top two industries, counted only among graduates employed full time who keep a profile. For the majors at the top of the list, it is praising underemployment and calling it a skill.
I audited the numbers that say college pays. The million dollars is not a return at all, and even the careful 12.5 percent skips taxes and hides a wide spread.
Palantir didn’t drop its standards when it dropped the degree. It started judging what people can actually do. Families weighing college should make the same move.