1/ So, yesterday I ran the following poll. I had several reasons for wanting to see the results, but almost more importantly, I wanted to see the discussions that the poll generate. 
2/ Here are the results:
3/ what I was looking for at first was the "brand quality" of the Ivy league schools, which I thought would come in fairly high, as, in fact, they did. I'd love @rorysutherland's view on this, as he knows more about brands than anyone I've come across
4/ But I also wanted to find out with how much conviction people who commented had in their choice. Turns out, a lot. One of my messages in various threads done here on @twitter is that we delude ourselves in thinking that A) we're right and others are wrong but also B) that our
5/ opinions are reasonably formed through thought and a marshaling of facts and evidence, which they almost certainly are not. Most are formed emotionally and then covered over with a thin veneer of "facts" and "evidence." Many of the comments in the thread on this
6/ proved that theory out. Those who picked Person A could hardly imagine a world in which the person without the credentials conferred by an Ivy League diploma could do as well as the person with them. But, my point is, who knows?
7/ I should have rephrased option C to read "I don't know" rather than same. (my bad) but indeed, on a complicated issue like this, there are so many factors at work (as many respondents mentioned) I think one of the smartest answers would be either "it depends" or
8/ "I don't know." Something like this respondent said:
9/ In his book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," Robert B. Cialdini PhD makes the point that many people have hard and fast rules wired into their brains such as "price=quality" when, oftentimes, that's not the case at all. But many of these rules or heuristics
10/ *are* valuable, so it's up to us to really continually question our priors. We often do things simply because that's the way they've always been done, and in many cases, that makes a great deal of sense. What made sense under one set of circumstances
11/ (reasonably priced university education) don't make as much sense under new circumstances ($500K in student debt at the start of one's working life.) And we must begin searching for reasonable alternatives. Given the resources available online, it's not crazy for people
12/ to begin thinking of what a new accreditation model might look like. It seems networking and interaction with peers is high on the list, so as we fashion what these new, much cheaper alternatives look like, they should be taken into account. Finally, the answer I was really
13/ looking for was "teaching people *how* to learn. In our current environment, knowledge doubles so fast that you could be out of school for as little as five years, and find that the majority of what you learned is obsolete and if you haven't "learned how to learn" your skill
14/ set is no longer valid. And in an environment where you owe $500K for something that no longer has any value, that's a very bad trade. Perhaps people like @peterthiel could turn their considerable intellects toward coming up with innovations that truly train young
15/ people "how to learn" and then the accomplishments of this group starts a mimetic effect where others wish to emulate. So, for now, student debt is a crisis for which we have no answer and I think we all need to work toward solving the crisis. Who knows? There might be
16/ a lot of amazing new things to come out of it. But our conditioning is our foe here, for as Max Planck said "progress happens one funeral at a time." We don't currently have the time to let that maxim stand.
