He calls this discrepancy a significant misallocation of capital.
Elon Musk#74
Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
Imagine what you could do with $300k of tokens instead... you'd learn far more and acquire higher quality custom knowledge *and* learn by building.
It's time to refactor the education stack entirely for the era of AI
Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
Elon Musk#74Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis posted on X that universities charge up to $300,000 for degrees covering skills now accessible through free large language models, framing the expense as a potential historic misallocation of individual capital and calling for an open discussion on the value of higher education.
No specific institutions, degree programs, or cost-of-attendance data are linked in the post, so the number functions as a round estimate rather than a verified average or maximum drawn from enrollment records or tuition reports.
The post does not name particular models, benchmarked competencies, or curriculum elements that free tiers currently handle at scale, leaving open how widely the substitution might apply across fields or career stages.
Positive users endorse Diamandis's claim that costly university degrees are mostly signaling replaceable by free LLMs, while negative users reject it as nonsense that ignores education's non-informational value.
LLMs do not kill universities because they teach skills cheaply.
They kill the illusion that skill, credential, judgment, and status need to be bundled inside one $300k institution.
The degree was a compression layer for trust.
AI forces everyone to ask what part of that trust was real.
@PeterDiamandis We hope our tuition-free model, now licensed by the Florida Department of Education and internationally accredited by @ASIC_LTD will help change the conversation. http://degrees.saylor.org
Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
Hotter take: Universities have curriculum put together by entire organizations of experts.
At some point we need to understand that self guided learning, while important, has it's limits and it's no substitute for a rigorous and complete education program.
If your strategy doesn't meet or exceed what that program provides then it's not good enough to supplant the universities.
@PeterDiamandis you overestimate people's ability and desire to learn on their own in an age of infinite distraction and entertainment
@PeterDiamandis @elonmusk Maybe.
But if there's one thing AI can't replace, it's compassion.
That's part of why the WISH mission resonates with me.
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Imagine what you could do with $300k of tokens instead... you'd learn far more and acquire higher quality custom knowledge *and* learn by building.
It's time to refactor the education stack entirely for the era of AI
Hot take: Universities charge $300,000 for a degree that teaches you skills any LLM can do for free. At some point we need to have an honest conversation about whether higher education is the greatest individuals misallocation of capital in recent history.
@PeterDiamandis this is what @grok thinks:
@PeterDiamandis AI can not conduct psychological or even STEM research. It can help with writing - but not the research.
You need humans.
We dont have data that says stick your kids in front of computer and let them only learn from technology.
Absolute malarky.
You’re not really buying “education” anymore you’re mostly buying an expensive signal that says “I can show up and follow rules.” Meanwhile the actual skills are commoditized, the admin bloat is insane, and half the departments are basically turning kids into activists with debt instead of employable adults. Sure, real STEM still has value. But the rest? It’s starting to look like luxury consumption financed by loans we all end up paying for one way or another. We’ve been gaslit into thinking this is “investment.” Nah. A lot of it’s just delayed adulthood with a fancy receipt.
Trade skills, self-taught portfolios, apprenticeships… they’re quietly eating the old model’s lunch. The bubble’s gonna pop eventually. Might as well start talking about it honestly now.
@PeterDiamandis if you are in college now definitely finish your degree, if you are 15 or younger I would just accept your fate as never having to get a real job
@PeterDiamandis @elonmusk In my opinion, it's long overdue to consider why such drastic prices are charged for, say, some paid services in the Education and Health domains. These price lists are so detached from reality as to be unrealistic.
I have a doctoral degree and $90K in loans to prove this point.
The credential opened doors. The actual knowledge I use daily came from patients, and mentors…not professors.
There are fields where the piece of paper still matters.
But the $300K question is whether what's behind it does too.
@PeterDiamandis @elonmusk The function of universities is to teach discipline. The only thing a degree certifies is the ability to persevere in something for a sufficiently long period of time.
@PeterDiamandis @elonmusk Charlie Kirk wrote a book it!
Hotter take: Universities don’t just charge for the information; they charge for the network, peer-to-peer collaboration, and social proof. An LLM can teach you the code, but it can't give you the late-night hackathon roommate who becomes your co-founder. The content is free, but the curation and community are what costs $300k
@PeterDiamandis The degree is not dead. The lazy degree is. Any program that cannot explain what it provides beyond content delivery is about to have a very bad decade.
That being said, I think about this a lot now that I have a 4 year old.
No real change here, to quote Will Hunting: “You spent $150 grand on an education you could have gotten for a buck fifty in late fees at the public library.”
Here’s the single greatest thing written on the nonsensically of college degrees: Against Tulip Subsidies by Scott Alexander
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Fafzj3wMvoCW4WjeF/against-tulip-subsidies
As someone who has a degree (but didn't pay $300k for it) I am a believer in learning.
Sadly certain professions still require that actual piece of paper that didn't require it a century ago.
No matter how skilled you are as a teacher in your subject, you can't teach without a degree. How do we get around this credentialing baloney?
@PeterDiamandis @elonmusk I'm starting to see my kid's education savings fund as a Kickstart to their financial independence instead of something to use to get a degree from a ideologically captured institution. 🙃
