The typical student spends more than four years in college to get a degree, spending a huge amount of money and accumulating debt, then leaves (with or without a degree) to face a labor market where many of them will earn little more than the minimum wage in jobs that high school kids can do.

How is this for an alternative? Instead of pursuing that BA in Whatever Studies, enroll in a school that teaches you how to program. For $12,000, you can take a 16 week course that prepares you for work in a rapidly expanding field. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a huge shortfall in programmers by 2020, and the compensation averages about $36 per hour.

All that is discussed in this piece on NCPA’s education blog, by Farhad Mirzadeh.

Moreover, he writes, “technology and the field of programming move at such fast paces that getting a degree will be almost worthless after receiving it. Instead, programmers stay up to date by being on the job and adapting to new advances within the field.”

The higher education sector mushroomed by selling low-grade occupational training along with a bundle of other courses that few students really wanted to take. With programming schools and other training options that cost less and don’t include lots of unwanted stuff in the bundle, the mushroom seems about to start its dessication.