As technology cycles rise and fall, the value we assign to college degrees shifts with them.

As an employer, I never specifically put “college degree required” on any of my job listings. A college degree adds value, but not in the way most people perceive it to.

They definitely teach you how to manage your deadlines, workload, and responsibilities. You learn how to advocate for yourself and interact with colleagues, superiors, and subordinates. You gain valuable insight into living on your own. But does someone who went to college know more about project management or strategic planning than someone who didn’t? Not based on going to college alone.  

I graduated from high school during the Dot-Com Boom. It was a transformative and prosperous time and one I don’t think the United States had seen in a while. Age-old institutions like colleges and universities could not keep up with the fast pace of technology development and trade schools or certifications that claimed they could mostly fell flat. Most of the knowledge gained at that time was due to the self-innovation and motivation of individuals. I myself learned HTML, PHP, ASP and Flash by downloading WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) coding programs and comparing what I created to the code, very similar to what we’d now call “vibe coding”.

Companies began to hire not on your university credentials, but on what you could do. Recruiting was done mostly through networking, roles were fluid, and speed was valued over process. Huge bonuses, usually in the form of stock options, were given if you could keep up and those who did became the superstars we know today and set a precedent for what we expect from a tech job.

As someone who lived through this time, there wasn’t a family function you could attend where a relative would not tell you a tale of some child of a friend who was only 13 and designing webpages and pulling in $100k a year. At the same time, the internet was seen as a fad and “technology stuff” was still considered a hobby. You were advised to go to college or a trade school and hey, if something worked out with the internet then you could quit once you made it big.

Most of the high school and college-age people at the time rejected that idea. When the internet was new it was fascinating. Things we take as commonplace nowadays were novel back then. Many people saw that and dropped out or skipped college altogether to pursue some sort of technology-based career. I think this mindset felt like a betrayal to the institutions and corporations and even to some parents.

After the bubble burst and the internet began to stabilize during Web 2.0, there was a backlash against the lack of structure in the early internet – and maybe some “I told you so”. Investors wanted better security for their investments, corporate leaders wanted a structure and hierarchy, and learning institutions wanted to increase enrollment.

Backend technologies were agreed upon, requirements and interview standards for specific roles became commonplace, and colleges and universities updated their curriculum to match. Not only did a college degree become necessary for job seekers looking to set themselves apart, but many tucked it away as a parachute in case the bubble ever popped again.

But the bubble did pop, it was just a different one, and not directly tech-related. As the internet and technology in general continued to boom, companies grew to fill the need. The technology field held (and still holds) an almost mystical hold over people. I believe this to be driven by those early success stories, the current day unicorns, and the dream that the next one could be any one of us. This leads to an abundance of applicants and although hiring standards were stricter, the growth during this time was so great that companies were hiring hundreds of kids from colleges across the country every year.

Technology was growing and growing quickly – I think this is when Moore’s Law was most obvious – but that also meant that most of the money went back into the business and any venture capital (VC) funding was based on future profitability. So, when the housing bubble burst, the technology sector was directly affected.

VC funding froze, enterprise IT spending stopped, and hiring stopped almost overnight and the college degrees that many thought would break their fall did not. Once again, the applicant pool was flooded with too many job seekers for too few jobs. The applicant pool was so large that it flowed over to other industries causing many to have to work well below their skill and education level just to make ends meet.

Even during the recession, technology continued to grow and the internet ingrained itself in our daily lives. Tech mostly matured and stabilized as an industry and infused with the entrepreneurial spirit of its founders continued to grow and innovate. Driven by a large available workforce (thereby reducing the value/cost of workers), and the advancements in cloud computing, SaaS, and cryptocurrency speculation, the tech industry once again bloated its workforce.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit it first seemed like a boon for the tech industry. Not only did remote collaboration tools explode overnight, but it showed most office workers didn’t need to be in a traditional office to work which is an idea Silicon Valley had been playing with since the beginning. Workers could be at home, in a coffee shop, or travelling cross-country in an RV. Productivity soared, people were happier and it was a time of novel innovation that I hadn’t resonated with since the early days of the internet.

It seemed like the best of both worlds until that bubble burst as well. Once the pandemic dragged on and interest rates started to rise, money became expensive. Companies had to start cutting costs to survive, even healthy companies were correcting for over-hiring and overcompensating employees. It was bad, but as long as we could still work from home, it wasn’t all bad. Then, for a variety of reasons, the call to return to the office was made and those workers who refused were fired – college degrees be damned. Even those that did return to the office were still on shaky ground as the excess of the previous years continued to correct itself.

As disillusioned workers once again found themselves unemployed with a college degree, many started to question why. This huge investment of time and money that was supposed to guarantee stability wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

Which brings us to today. AI is the newest tech sensation and hiring is off the charts. Students are being advised to learn AI and I can hardly scroll social media without being bombarded with ads for one AI program after another. But what we are also seeing is the younger generation once again shunning college degrees. Whether this is a consequence of seeing it fail their parents so often or the general economic conditions of many not being able to afford a college degree, enrollment is at an all-time low.

Instead people are taking it upon themselves to learn the skills they find useful. Some do it for fun, some to support a side hustle, some as speculation for future marketability. Whatever the reason the previous boom of remote and SaaS tools makes access to information and learning on your own easier than ever. This results in a highly skilled, specialized labor force but one without credentials. How do employers rectify that?

During the Dot-Com Boom, they didn’t need to. They were the new renegades on the block and didn’t need to follow the rules. But we know how that ended so how does a company tie up the loose ends? By developing roles with titles like “Vibe Marketer” or “Vibe Coder”.  This is the term being applied to roles where instead of writing code line by line, users simply describe what they want, and an AI-powered platform generates the result for them.

Don’t let this new term distract you – this is similar to me utilizing WYSIWYG tools for website coding back in 1999. Experts in “vibe” roles are simply people who have past experience, are self-taught or have otherwise applied old skills in new ways that colleges and universities aren’t teaching (such as influencers).

Currently, corporate leaders and investors are willing to invest big in AI and want to move fast so they are willing to accept vibe roles and pay big for them. Does this indicate that companies have accepted that skills and experience are an acceptable substitute for a formal education? How will this change the interview process and role requirements for future job seekers?

Colleges are once again facing low enrollment due to the decreasing importance of a college degree and rising costs. It is difficult to visualize what circumstances in the current economic environment could reverse this. Will we once again see the rise of technical colleges and weekend boot camps to fill the gap that institutional education can’t fill?

Finally, what about the job seekers themselves? Does that mean these vibe workers will fare any better when the AI bubble eventually pops as we can expect it will? What can workers do to insulate themselves against recession and high unemployment?  It’s something that everyone should consider because it’s clear a college degree alone is probably not the answer.