Take a look at a degree in education.

It's surprising that out of 170 studies,

only 9 % found that teachers with higher university education

were better at teaching.

The majority of them found no effect,

and some of them even found a slightly negative effect.

This means that both bachelor's and master's degree

don't do much to improve the quality of teachers.

Sure, there are exceptions.

For example, teachers who 've had more maths related coursework,

are better at teaching maths.

You can see this because their students score higher in math tests.

But, the same paper that said that, found no such evidence for English,

history, or science.

So, while this degree might teach some skills,

by and large it's quite useless.

Now, I 'm not going to go on and say that a medical degree

is also completely useless, but unfortunately with the way that the course is set up,

a large portion of it is.

Specifically, that undergraduate degree you must complete before you enter medical school,

this degree can be in any field you want,

but to make the most of it, most students study biomedicine,

so they have some sort of foundational knowledge.

Some students though, who get a degree in something completely unrelated,

like film studies or political science,

but in the end whether you choose biomedicine or film study,

it makes no difference as research shows both groups of students

will score equally on their clinical exams by third year.

Both groups will also be scored equally by their supervisors during internship.

In fact, getting a high GPA in undergraduate years is barely predictive

of a student 's later clinical skills in hospital.

And yet, medical schools won't let you in unless you have one.

So, once again, if these degrees are n't teaching you anything,

what gives degree holders their huge advantage?

The answer lies in signaling theory,

a theory which won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics.

It states that while a degree itself isn't worth a lot,

what it signals to others is.

See, a good recruiter knows that degrees are hollow,

and don't really prepare graduates for the job.

But, with potentially hundreds of applicants,

they need a quick way to separate a good employee from a bad one.

They can't use IQ unless they want to get sued.

So, they use the next best thing, a degree.

Because even if they're useless, people who choose to attend university

tend to be smarter in the first place.

They're also probably more motivated for their career,

more accustomed to deadlines, less likely to do drugs,

harder working and so on.

And while this filter works, it creates a deeply flawed system.

For the employers, one day an outstanding candidate is going to apply for the job

and is going to get rejected simply because he didn't fulfill this superficial criteria.

As for the employees, well, they 're now forced to get a degree to stay competitive.

Regardless of whether it's useful or not.

And this is no easy sacrifice either.

For some it costs their whole life 's saving and for all, it wastes our most youthful years.