Is college worth it? What can replace the degree? How do you build a credential employers can trust? Each answer starts with the short version, then gives the reasoning, the numbers with their sources, and where the argument falls short. Written by Trenton Rich, founder of Maxwell Rich Certification, the independent skills certification body.
The answers draw on the named ideas in Four Weeks, Not Four Years. Each one links to the idea pages behind it. Free to quote and reuse with credit.
On average, yes: full-time workers with a bachelor's degree earned a median of about $1,578 a week in 2025, against $966 for those with only a high school diploma. But the average hides a wide spread, and about 31 percent of students are in programs that don't pay back what they cost.
No. AI is taking scripted busywork first and leaving the work of people who know a field deeply, so the answer is to learn faster and go deeper, not to stop.
Mostly that a person can turn up, focus and finish something long. That's worth knowing, but it can be shown directly in about a month, and the degree says much less about what a person can do.
Around 1906 a foundation defined the standard unit of education as time, not skill, and the money has followed the hours ever since. Once time is the unit, a school paid by the hour is built to produce hours.
The book argues that universities return to what they were meant to be, places for discovery and for people who love learning, once they stop being the toll booth for the job market. Schools that live on tuition from students who would rather be somewhere else will have to shrink or change.
Proof of skill that an employer can check: real work, done under real conditions, watched by people who do the job and recorded so anyone can look it up afterward. Taking the degree off a job posting isn't enough, because the employer is left with nothing to put in its place.
Because the change touched the job posting and little else. The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School found that fewer than one hire in seven hundred went to someone who got in because a degree requirement was dropped.
Test the work itself: give each candidate a real task under real conditions, have someone who does the job watch and score it, and keep a recording. Work sample tests are among the strongest predictors of job performance in the hiring research.
Because a degree is a fast, cheap way to shrink a pile of applicants when an employer can't see what any of them can do. It's a poor judge of skill, but it's quick, and nothing better has been on offer.
Do real work, and have someone who does that job watch it, record it and put their name on the result. The closer your proof gets to a pilot's check ride, a person who knows the work watching you do the work, the less anyone needs to take your word for it.
Keep the tester apart from the trainer, pay examiners the same whether a candidate passes or fails, and record every exam so results can be appealed and checked. The international standard for certifying people, ISO/IEC 17024, treats offering training and certification under one roof as a threat to impartiality.
Accreditors recognized by the federal government decide which colleges count, and the colleges they review fund them. Federal student aid flows only to schools a recognized accreditor has approved, which makes accreditation the gate to the money.
Get two things right: what is tested, and who is paid. Test real work that is watched, recorded and judged by people who do the job, then keep the tester apart from the trainer, pay examiners the same for a pass or a fail, and let anyone check the result.
Medicine shows it can be done. Health care is moving from paying for each service to paying for whether patients get healthier, and about 45 percent of U.S. health care payments in 2024 were tied to arrangements accountable for quality and cost.
Maxwell Rich Certification is an independent skills certification body, founded by Trenton Rich, that certifies people by in-person exam instead of by courses. It's in beta and hasn't certified anyone yet, so judge it by its design.
It's the title and central idea of Trenton Rich's 2026 book on how proof of skill is replacing the college degree. The one useful thing a bachelor's degree certifies, that a person can learn, focus and be trained, can be shown directly in about a month instead of four years.
Trenton Rich is an education reform advocate and writer. The author of Four Weeks, Not Four Years and of the homeschooling book Sui Learning, Trenton Rich argues that proof of skill, judged in person by people who do the job, should replace the four-year degree as the way into work.