Why I'd say no to Harvard

Start with the question I never answered in university: why memorize anything if you can look it up? The answer is speed. A baker with the recipe in his head ships bread in minutes; with the recipe on a screen, hours ▸ 14:49. A paramedic doesn’t get to look anything up at all ▸ 15:26. Knowledge is compressed transmission speed, and you become competitive by producing the same value in less time ▸ 17:04.

Now apply that to the institution that sells knowledge in four-year units. In technology, the tools released today beat yesterday’s. Someone who starts building on day one, collecting real feedback from day one, is a senior in four years. The person who spent those years in lectures graduates a junior ▸ 35:36. That’s entry 1-2’s wave, hitting the diploma itself. So, said plainly: offered another degree today, even at Harvard, I’d decline ▸ 36:09.

cuatro años de latencia →

The honest exceptions

Logged with care, because the thesis has borders. University still wins where skills are motor and mistakes cost bodies (medicine, surgery), where equipment access is the product, and where credentials are legally load-bearing (my civil-engineer friend needs twenty years of titles to sign a bridge). And one thing my degree genuinely taught that the internet doesn’t: discipline, fifty deadlines a semester, delivered anyway ▸ 24:11.

For everything else, Julia’s prediction feels right: the future looks like Brazil’s technical courses and Germany’s apprenticeships, one or two years, feedback from month one, credits that transfer ▸ 28:18. Learn like the machines learn: shorten the loop…