Why Your Degree Is Worth Less Than a YouTube Channel
And I Run a University Admissions Platform
I’ve got a number of Youtube channels, and I also run Global Admissions a leading platform for international students to apply to universities.
That’s why you might not expect me to say this.
This isn’t anti-education. It’s a sober look at where credibility, income, and opportunity are actually moving- and what that means for anyone making decisions about their future right now.
The Changing Nature of Degrees
For most of the 20th century, a degree was the only ticket into the room. It signalled intelligence, discipline, and social proof to employers who had no other way to evaluate you. It worked because there was no other signal.
That monopoly is breaking down fast.
Employers increasingly care about what you can do, not what certificate you hold, and they even find it hard to verify your certificate is real.
AI is compressing the time it takes to learn almost any skill. And platforms like YouTube have created something the degree never could: a live, public, monetisable record of your thinking, your communication, and your ability to build an audience.
What is a Degree Worth?
A degree still has real value - but it’s worth being honest about what that value actually is.
The best thing about university isn’t the curriculum. It’s the people and the experience. The friendships, the networks, the exposure to smart, ambitious peers who will go on to do interesting things. That’s real and it compounds over decades.
Beyond that? The signal is weakening. More and more of the education is happening by students by themslves online with AI accoding to the curriculum.
And as more and more students graduate with the same credentials, hiring managers are increasingly looking past the qualification to the portfolio, the project, the proof of excellence, the proof of agency, and something that differentiates you.
What is a Youtube Channel Worth?
More than most people think - and in ways that go well beyond ad revenue.
Let’s start with the money.
If you build a channel to 10 million views, you can expect to earn around $27,000 USD in ad revenue depending on your niche. That’s not life-changing on its own, but it’s tuition money.
It’s runway. And it scales - unlike a part-time job, a video keeps earning after you stop working on it. It makes money while you sleep.
But the financial upside is actually not the most interesting part.
Building a YouTube channel teaches you a set of skills that are extraordinarily hard to learn anywhere else:
Communication - You learn to explain ideas clearly, hold attention, and make complex things simple. This is one of the most valuable skills for the future.
Distribution - You learn how platforms work, how audiences grow, and how content spreads. This is what most businesses desperately need and struggle to find.
People - By learning about distribution, you are also learning about people, what they think, why they like your video, what their needs are, and how to satisfy them.
Presentation - You get comfortable on camera, in front of an audience, under pressure. Most people never develop this.
Market Dynamics - You realise that when you do something really excellent, that is the best in the field, you get outsize results. That being the best in a specific niche, and being different, is far more valuable than being the same as others. You learn about the niches and the market.
It Teaches You Grit and To Learn from Failure
It teaches you how to learn
Self Improvement - You publish, you get feedback in the form of real data instantly, you improve. This is the same loop that builds great products and great companies, and by building new products you are improving yourself immediately, daily, you don’t need to wait for your homework to be returned or your exam results.
Proof of Work - Every video is a timestamped, public record of what you know and how well you can communicate it. No CV needed.
That last point matters enormously. In a world flooded with credentials, a body of work that anyone can watch is one of the most powerful things you can have. You can just send your video to an employer, or you can even start your own business up.
The Real Shift: Proof of Work Over Proof of Study
We are moving from a world that rewards time to one that rewards results.
A degree says: “I completed a programme and dedicated time and effort” A YouTube channel says: “Here is evidence of what I can actually do, at scale, in public, over time and these are my results.” One of those is increasingly verifiable. The other increasingly is hard to verify and can’t be applied.
This doesn’t mean degrees are useless. Medicine, law, engineering - there are fields where the qualification is the point, and rightly so. But for anyone going into business, media, tech, marketing, entrepreneurship, or any creative field, the calculus is shifting.
Why You Should Do Both
Here’s the thing: this isn’t either/or.
The smartest move is to treat your YouTube channel as a business you build alongside your education - not instead of it.
Use university for the network, the structured thinking, and the experiences that only come from being around other ambitious people in person.
Use YouTube to build leverage, income, and a public record of your capabilities at the same time.
Publish your work and your points of views online.
By the time you graduate, you won’t just have a degree.
You’ll have an audience, a portfolio, transferable skills, and potentially a revenue stream. That combination is nearly impossible to compete with.
The question isn’t just whether to go to university.
The question is: what are you building while you’re there?
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If you found this useful, consider sharing it with someone who’s trying to decide what to do with their future.
And if you want to explore more ideas like this, the Superhuman Curriculum is where I write about how to thrive in the Intelligence Age.