Professor Elam

Wednesday April 11, 2018

The market may be solving  the problem of the high cost of higher ed.

Read on eyear alternative to a university.

If employers will buy into this concept, the traditional university degree may well become victim to a Black Swan Event.

Before 1976 one did not need a college degree to become a CPA.   We might be returning to this reality.

From wikipedia

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist – a saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after black swans were discovered in the wild.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3. The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs.