The Deification of the University Clock Tower
At the heart of every university campus, one building withstood the test of time, 900 years and counting, longer than any civilization or government to date: the almighty clock tower. Every noon, the famous tune of Westminster Chimes reverberates all across campus. Hundreds of thousands of students magically coerced into submission toward this silly, man-made invention.1
This is the deification of the university clock tower (my original tweet).
1: The Deification of Time
Have you wondered why a typical bachelor’s degree requires 4 years of college, or 120 credits? Why a master’s requires 2? Or why there are 12 grades you have to complete before you’re supposedly “ready” to head to college? So many of us naturally drift through our education years without ever questioning why formal credentials are supposed to take the set amount of time it does.
All systems are faulty, to an extent. The education system, while attempting to provide equal opportunities for all, actively suppresses those who are far ahead or behind and moves everyone along a single, standardized track. Some find alternatives within the system — homeschooling, graduating in 3 years instead of 4, etc. But the gravitational pull of the clock tower is too strong. It’s the ultimate equalizer.
Knowledge acquisition is by nature a timeless activity. You can’t quantitively measure how much you’ve learned by course credits or how many years you’ve been in school. For example, to conflate a 4-year bachelor's degree with, “I’m now an expert at ___ subject” is completely BS. The same thing with the 10,000-hour rule. You’re not going to magically become a professional once you hit the 10,000 mark.
For example, taking a course and counting that as college credit - no matter how uninformative it may be - is more socially approved as a form of learning compared to reading books. I’ve been obsessed with East Asian history lately and learned so much (highly recommend Concise History of Hong Kong and On China), but my parents are questioning why I’m not taking a course instead. “You’ll learn more,” they insist.
What does time measure then, in colleges?
“Time became a measure of sacrifice, of how much someone was willing to give up in order to complete a task. Keeping the promise of time demonstrated how reliable a person was. And in turn, on university campuses, time sacrificed became an indirect measurement for commitment and knowledge acquisition. Four years spent in school marching around a clock tower is four years not doing something else.” – Paper Belt on Fire, Michael Gibson
A 4-year degree isn’t about how much you’ve learned; it’s about how willing you are to sacrifice 4 years of your life to obtain a socially approved credential. If you got the piece of paper at the end, that’s all it matters and you’ll automatically receive the benefits of being a leg up than those who don’t.2 College dropouts, no matter how knowledgeable, will always be disadvantaged compared to college grads.
A college degree signals information about its holder, but not what most people think. It doesn’t say all that much about the skills they acquired or what they learned. Instead, it’s telling employers information about a graduate’s ability to keep the promises of time, the willingness to sacrifice four years in the pursuit of a grueling, even if useless, series of tasks and projects. It should be said that only university bell tower clocks have this magical property.” – Paper Belt on Fire, Michael Gibson
2: Turning the Hourglass
If you want to truly take education into your own hands, stop relying on schools and relentlessly pursue subjects that pique your interest. Reach out to people in the top 1% of that field and soak in everything like a sponge. Students from top universities who went on to do great things aren’t successful because of the university they went to; they’ve already positioned themselves to be winners.
“Employers rarely pay graduates for what they studied over four years. No, what employers pay for are the preexisting traits students reveal by sacrificing the time and showing they can master the - oftentimes - useless coursework. There are many different types of people in this world. But who we are is not obvious, and people lie. Character is revealed in action. The clock tower is a sorting mechanism that tells employers the differences among those who can circle it and those who can’t.” – Paper Belt on Fire, Michael Gibson
Stop mistakingly conflating the amount of time spent with how much you learn.
Break free,
Jeston
From Winston Churchill: “First we shape our tools; then our tools shape us."
Earnings are not linearly reflective of how many years you stay in college. Completing senior year and graduating allows an average student to make significantly versus someone who studied up to junior year and dropped out.