In January 2005, Donald Trump kicked off the third season of his reality TV show "The Apprentice" with an intriguing twist. Eighteen candidates were split into two groups: those with university degrees and those without. Trump revealed a surprising fact: Candidates without a degree earned three times more money than their degreed counterparts. This season’s storyline pitted “book smarts” against “street smarts,” raising a perennial question: How valuable is a university degree?

The TV show's narrative offered a microcosm of the broader debate. The street-smarts team initially triumphed, outsmarting their degreed opponents in a fast-food marketing challenge. But, as the season progressed, the book-smarts team prevailed, with—spoiler alert!—University of Florida graduate Kendra Todd winning the final showdown.

This juxtaposition of success stories both with and without degrees is mirrored in the real world. Icons like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Dell dropped out of prestigious universities yet soared to unparalleled heights in their industries. However, these outliers should not overshadow the broader trend: For each of these dropout success stories, there are countless other stories of degree holders achieving remarkable success.

As I have described in the first post in this series, deciding whether or not to get a university degree is usually your first “big” life decision. It’s huge because it will determine not only what you will be studying for the next three or four years but also who you will be socialising (and potentially partnering up) with, as........

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