Reason for Living Newsletter No. 3 | Do You Need A Degree to Be an Expert?

Reviewed in this issue: The Art of Living Consciously by Nathaniel Branden

Thomas Walker-Werth

Apr 11, 2024

Issue no. 3, 11 April 2024

Welcome to the Reason for Living newsletter!

In this issue:

Feature Article: Do You Need A Degree to Be an Expert?
Book Review: The Art of Living Consciously by Nathaniel Branden
From the Archive: How Star Trek Primed Me For Rational Philosophy

Feature Article: Do You Need A Degree to Be an Expert?

Almost all of my friends went to university after they finished high school. Virtually none of them now work in the field they studied. Twelve years after I graduated, out of the twenty-one people who were in my music production class at university, only one now works in the music industry.

Why do we go to university, if not to gain the skills necessary to work in a particular field? Does becoming an expert in a particular field require a college degree?

In past generations, going to university was a rare thing. You only did it if you either planned to work in a highly specialized field requiring advanced training, such as the sciences or medicine, or if you planned to become a professional researcher. People who planned to work in other fields, even such technical areas as mechanical engineering or architecture, typically didn’t get a college degree. Rather, they undertook apprenticeships in the workplace and got hands-on experience in their field.

The purpose of university was to provide an research-oriented education for people planning to pursue scientific or academic careers. But, since the 1960s, there has been a growing attitude that everybody should go to university in the name of equality. As a result, huge numbers of people now study a wide range of subjects to degree level, starting their careers with an academic education despite the fact many of them are not interested in an academic career.

This has had two effects. On the one hand, in subjects that traditionally required a degree to demonstrate academic excellence in the field, there are now so many graduates that more advanced qualifications such as master’s degrees and PhDs are required to differentiate those with real academic chops—leaving many graduates with degrees they will never use and the high achievers stuck spending years in extra study. On the other hand, there is now a multitude of people entering the world of work every year with no practical experience in their field and an academic education they can’t put to use.

In short, a degree no longer means you’re an expert in a given field.

Understandably, many young people are now opting out of the system and self-teaching or using alternative forms of education, but most still feel pressured by school, parents, and peers to go through the process. They throw away years of their lives and saddle themselves with debt out of fear of not getting a job or the second-handed desire to impress others, only to emerge with a qualification they’ll never use for anything more significant than appearing a bit smarter than another candidate in a job interview.

But the devaluation of the degree has had another dangerous side effect: It has created in many people’s minds the impression that becoming an expert in a given field is much easier than it really is. Becoming an expert in something requires years upon years of dedicated work, both studying and practicing that subject. The great scientists, engineers, and businessmen of the past became so after decades of working under other practitioners. Sure, occasionally a youth genius might come along, but for most of us, three or four years writing assignments at university isn’t enough to create a real, integrated understanding of a subject.

In today’s world, you can pretty much match the level of understanding you get from a college degree program in your spare time using a good library and the internet. But that won’t make you an expert either. Becoming a real expert in a subject requires a much deeper level of familiarity. You can achieve that on your own too, but you have to put in a corresponding level of work first—years and years of intense study and practice.

The last part is crucial, and it’s what’s badly missing in today’s post-high-school education system. I have learnt far more about music as a self-taught guitarist than I ever did studying it at college. I have learnt more about philosophy from working as a fellow at a philosophy institute than some of my friends who hold degrees in the subject. But these things only became possible when I started committing the majority of my time to studying and practicing those subjects—and it leaves me with little time for much else. To really understand a subject, you need to study it, then put that knowledge into practice, learn from your experiences, and keep that cycle going constantly. It can’t be a side gig.

My essential point is: You don’t need college or university to be an expert, and a modern degree program won’t make you one. What you need is rigorous study and practice. Choose the field you value enough to devote the majority of your time to it, and dive in. Don’t let anybody tell you that you need a degree—or that you can become an expert without hard work.

Book Review: The Art of Living Consciously by Nathaniel Branden

Do you ever feel like you’re drifting through life without a clear direction? Do you ever make choices you end up regretting because you didn’t think them through fully in the moment? Can you honestly say you know what your deepest values are, and why you’ve chosen them?

Finding your purpose and achieving your potential require a high level of awareness, not just of the choices facing you, but of the larger context in which they exist, which includes your own ideas and motivations. In the words of psychologist Nathaniel Branden, “living consciously entails being in the present without losing the wider context.” It means bringing full awareness to every decision you make and action you take. In his excellent book The Art of Living Consciously, Branden details how to achieve such a state of consciousness and why it’s so important for living a purposeful, successful life.

One of Branden’s recommendations for doing this is looking out for the times when you—consciously or unconsciously—avoid acknowledging the reality of the situation you’re in. Maybe you get reminded of an embarrassing memory and avoid thinking about it, thereby never learning the lessons it could teach you. Maybe you get into an argument and avoid considering the possibility you’re in the wrong because it might hurt your self-image. Bringing full consciousness to our daily lives, according to Branden, includes “learning to manage the feeling that pulls us away from where we want to look.” That is often exactly where we need to look. “Often,” he remarks, “a flight from reality is a flight from the reality of our inner state.”

This is just one of Branden’s many observations about living consciously, all of which return to a fundamental idea: that true mindfulness is about connecting your mind to reality. That includes recognizing the difference between your feelings and the actual facts of the situation. It includes knowing when you need more information to make a judgment, and when you need to make it immediately. It means knowing when somebody else’s advice, compliments, or criticisms correspond to reality, and when they don’t, so that you can form objective judgments about yourself based on reality, not on your emotions or the opinions of others.

Nathaniel Branden’s books are among the most helpful I’ve ever read for clarifying my thinking and bringing my thoughts under rational control, and The Art of Living Consciously is one of the best. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

From the Archive: How Star Trek Primed Me for Rational Philosophy

Most of us have some major influence in our lives that started us down the road toward a rational philosophy. Perhaps it was a parent, a mentor, a book, or an event. For me, it was a TV franchise: Star Trek.

In this article, originally written for my old blog, “Technological Optimism,” I explain how Star Trek set me on a path toward rational philosophy, giving me a fascination with the world around me and a deep reverence for science, curiosity, and logic. Check it out here.

This Week’s Reason for Living Quote:

“Do you cease to be who you are if you change your character? No. Even if you chose to change every aspect of your values and character, you’d still be the same entity you were.”

Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life will be available for preorder in mid-late 2024.

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