College Education, Featured, Life on Campus

The Evolution of the College Degree and Its Worth

Grace Bower

Higher education was historically reserved for men from wealthy, well-connected or clerical backgrounds. It wasn’t a milestone most people worked toward, as it is today, and that remained the case for centuries. In fact, many key thinkers of history, whose works are studied in lecture halls all around the world, never attended college themselves or dropped out early. From Rousseau and Faraday to Dickinson and Orwell – each left formal education early, if they pursued one at all.

But that’s not to say a prerequisite to intellectual achievement is forgoing higher education (HE) altogether. Many of history’s great minds did pursue and complete college degrees, and a college education has always carried real worth. What’s changed is the meaning of that worth, and how it gets measured, now that HE has opened its doors to the rest of the world. The numbers paint a clear picture: in 1900, only about 1% of college-age people worldwide were enrolled in higher education. By 2000, that figure had risen to roughly 20%, and by 2026, to 44%. So how exactly has this rise reshaped the worth of the degree itself?

College for the Few – A Brief History

The roots of higher education trace back to Plato’s Academy in 387 BC, alongside a handful of other institutions scattered across the ancient world, from China’s Imperial Central Academy in Nanjing (258 AD) to the Buddhist monastic learning centre of Nalanda in eastern India (472 AD).

Today, the oldest continuously operating university in the world is the University of Al Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, founded in 859 AD. Although it began as a mosque, it evolved into a major learning hub in the Middle Ages, teaching a mix of religious and secular subjects. In Europe, Italy’s University of Bologna followed in 1088 as the world’s second oldest university. Oxford and Cambridge came soon after, holding a strict duopoly over England for more than six hundred years, actively restricting other towns from opening competing schools.

A common thread that ran through nearly every institution founded in these early years was their exclusivity, particularly for men from privileged backgrounds. In Europe, only the clerical and administrative elite trained for professions in theology, law and medicine, with instruction conducted entirely in Latin; ruling out anyone without a grammar-school education. At Oxford and Cambridge, admission also required clear ties to the Church of England.

That started to shift in 1826, with the founding of the University of London (now University College London), which opened its doors to students regardless of religion or social class. This welcomed Roman Catholics, Jewish students and other nonconformists previously shut out of English HE entirely. Famously, historian Thomas Arnold dismissed it as “that godless institution in Gower Street”.

The University of London later became the first UK university to open all its faculties – except for medicine, initially – to women, granting full degrees in 1878. Around the same time and across the pond, Cornell became the first Ivy League school to do the same, admitting women in 1870. It seemed then that a system that had stood mostly unchanged for centuries had finally begun to crack.

The 20th Century Boom

Unlike the more incremental expansion of the previous century, university attendance after around 1960 grew, not gradually, but explosively. Institutions worldwide transformed from elite circles into mass systems, driven by a range of factors, from the post-war economic boom’s demand for specialized skills, to a broader societal shift in how education itself was viewed.

A landmark study in 2005 by sociologists Evan Schofer and John W. Meyer mapped this expansion in detail, analysing the growth of HE worldwide from 1900 to 2000. They linked it in large part to what they called a “new model of society” taking hold globally. As political participation spread to the masses, HE became increasingly seen as a human right rather than a privilege reserved for the elite. Two further drivers, they argued, were “scientization” – the growing faith in science – and the rise of state-led development planning, which treated HE as a universal public good and a marker of a “modern” nation. At a fundamental level, the worth of the degree shifted alongside this new model, spreading with it across the globe. And the numbers defined that spread, with around 200 new universities established worldwide between 1961 and 1970 alone, including across the Americas, Asia and newly independent nations in Africa and Oceania.

Eventually, this period of rapid growth paved the way for curriculum diversification as well, with programs expanding well past the traditional classics and theology into the sciences, business, engineering and a range of niche subjects that arguably now cover anything and everything under the sun (including, yes, the cultural impact of Beyoncé at Yale University). What had once been rare was suddenly everywhere.

Worth Today

With that history in mind, we return to the question of worth. At first, it was measured by rarity, a mark of status held by the few. But as HE expanded, that worth shifted from scarcity to utility. Nations needed more specialized workers, and as governments invested heavily in HE, the degree became something valued on a national, then global, scale.

The 1960s boom saw people pursue degrees largely to get hired, because the job market was calling for qualified workers, and a degree was what made candidates stand out. Fast forward to today, where 43% of college-aged people worldwide are enrolled in higher education, and standing out isn’t quite as seemingly simple. Across many fields, a degree functions more as a baseline requirement than a unique advantage. Some argue practical or part-time work experience is the real standout now. And that’s the heart of the modern debate over HE’s worth. One that goes hand-in-hand with rising tuition costs and growing loan debt.

Economists call this “credential inflation,” and it works a lot like inflation in an economy. Rarer resources hold more value, but the more of something there is in circulation, the less each individual unit is worth. As more people enter the job market with degrees in hand, the credential itself becomes less distinguishing in an oversaturated pool.

But an oversaturated market isn’t a worthless one. UCLA sociology professor Jennie Brand argues too much of this debate fixates on the short term – the entry level job right after graduating, or the student loan balance – when it’s the bigger picture, over a lifetime, that actually matters. Two people can earn the exact same degree and still end up on entirely different paths, based on how they choose to build on it. From internships chased to skills sharpened outside the syllabus.

Worth, it seems, is no longer inherent to the degree itself. It’s shaped by how it’s used, and the path each person chooses to take with it. Curiosity and purposeful effort have always been what drive real achievement. It took centuries for higher education to open up to more people. But just getting in was never the finish line. It’s what you actually do with it that is.