Which is more cost-effective now, pursuing a higher degree or taking the risk to enter a new industry?

In the university study room at three in the morning, Xiao Zhang stares at the yellowed "Macroeconomics" textbook, his eyelids constantly drooping. This is his seventh month preparing for the postgraduate entrance exam, but last year's employment report from senior students stating "Master's graduates earn 8,000 a month" makes him want to throw the book after memorizing every term. At the same time, in a shared office space in Bangkok, 19-year-old Thai youth Noparat is using Python to scrape on-chain data. He dropped out of high school but earns 30,000 Thai Baht a month by writing strategy reports for DeFi protocols—equivalent to the salary of an associate professor at Chiang Mai University.

These two scenes are fictional, but the salary data is absolutely real, which I believe resonates with everyone. This precisely reveals the most perplexing dilemma for today's youth: both human resources and energy are limited, and one can only choose one path—should they bet their youth on the traditional track of educational competition or take the risk of diving into new and unstable industries?

1. The Era of Degree Inflation: Academic Credentials ≈ Buying Fixed Deposits

Ten years ago, a master's degree from a 985 university could negotiate a down payment for a house in a first-tier city; today, graduates from Tsinghua and Peking University are scrambling for street office positions with a monthly salary of 12,000. The economic logic behind this is simple: once any asset is in oversupply, marginal returns must decline. In 2023, China had 11.58 million university graduates, with the number of master's and doctoral enrollments increasing by 210% since 2013, but the number of master's job openings only increased by 17%. Data from Zhaopin shows that the median starting salary for master's graduates is 6,019 yuan, only 24% higher than that of undergraduates, but they invest three more years and over 100,000 yuan. Even more brutally, there are hidden costs: renting a house to gain internship experience, scheming for research recommendation spots, bribing advisors to pass papers… These costs have never been included in the return rate. Why is this happening? If I were in power, with the economy getting worse and unemployment rising, what would I do? I would encourage young people to extend their time in school, thus avoiding the need to provide more jobs while preventing youth from being idle and disturbing society. As for how to solve the employment issues of these young people who should be unemployed but are still in school? That will be a problem for a few years down the line; at least I have significantly reduced the employment pressure on society, right?

When "stability" means enduring low salaries, high pressure, and promotion bottlenecks, it is merely another form of poverty. In 2022, 35% of graduates from a 985 university's finance master's program entered bank counters—positions that belonged to second-tier university graduates five years ago. As the wave of salary cuts and layoffs sweeps across civil service jobs and the competition ratio for teaching positions exceeds 100:1, the "stable returns" of degrees are crumbling.

2. New Industries Are Unstable, But There Are Pioneer Bonuses

In contrast, new industries resemble a primitive jungle erupting with gold mines: chaotic, dangerous, but indeed full of opportunities. When I explain to some traditional industry bosses that the risk-free interest of stablecoins is about 10%, and that some DeFi operations can yield 20%, their first reaction is disbelief, thinking, "This must steal my principal; I’d rather invest in a 3% annualized financial product."

Anyone with a bit of crypto knowledge knows that earning 10% interest on stablecoins is virtually risk-free and easily achievable; those truly in the circle might not even regard this profit as significant. So, are these bosses foolish for not believing in what we see as the most basic profit methods? Of course not. They have also crossed classes through personal ability in their own era and industry. The reason they are unwilling to participate is that they have already achieved success and can earn stable, sustainable benefits in their fields, while they seek extreme stability, so there is no need to wade into the murky waters of new industries. This precisely becomes an opportunity for young people.

If you really want to compete in the same field as these seasoned veterans in their forties and fifties, you won't win. You must find a new and emerging industry that they are either too afraid or too lazy to enter and become the new generation of them.

Thus, new industries will always be an opportunity for young people, and we can look at some specific data.

According to the Cryptocurrency Jobs 2023 report, the median annual salary for blockchain developers is $180,000, which is 2.3 times that of traditional software engineers; compliance positions at leading exchanges like Coinbase and Binance generally require "3 years of experience + legal/financial background," offering $250,000+ plus equity; even those transitioning from zero experience can earn a starting salary of $80,000 after mastering Solidity programming or on-chain data analysis—exceeding the salary ceiling of most 985 master's graduates.

This may be the last field where "heroes do not ask about their origins." Ethereum founder Vitalik dropped out of high school, and the Chinese trader "Shen Yu" transitioned from a coal miner to a top mining pool founder, with his education stopping at a college diploma. The only two criteria for judgment are: can you understand the economic model behind the code, and can you validate your understanding with real money?

Most industry bonuses are concentrated during the explosive period when penetration rates rise from 10% to 30%. In 2000, the internet penetration rate was 8%, and early practitioners created Alibaba and Tencent; in 2010, the mobile internet penetration rate was 15%, leading to the rise of ByteDance and Meituan; in 2024, the number of cryptocurrency users is approximately 560 million, with a global penetration rate of 6.8%, on the eve of an explosion. While your parents are still asking, "Is Bitcoin a scam?" giants like BlackRock and Fidelity have already made significant investments—this is reminiscent of 2005 when white-collar workers mocked Taobao shop owners for being "unprofessional."

3. Beware of Two Cognitive Traps

The first trap is "the risk of crypto is too high." This is a typical fallacy of static thinking. In 2008, civil servants and state-owned enterprise employees were seen as having "iron rice bowls," but now, under the wave of salary cuts and layoffs, their risks are no lower than those of entrepreneurs. I graduated from a well-known institution that supplies talent to state-owned enterprises, so I may have a more direct understanding of these matters and thus a greater voice. The real risk is not volatility, but misallocation—forcing those who excel at taking risks to pursue stability while compelling those who seek stability to gamble.

The second trap is "waiting for the industry to mature before entering." History has proven that all excess returns in any industry occur during the wild growth phase. When cryptocurrencies appear in elementary school textbooks, their era of exorbitant profits has long since ended—just as you cannot replicate Jack Ma's success by opening a Taobao store in 2024.

In 1992, a cement worker on a construction site in Shenzhen earned 10 yuan a day, while a state-owned enterprise employee earned 200 yuan a month. Thirty years later, the former may still be a migrant worker, while the latter has long been laid off, but those grassroots who took the risk to cross the sea and venture into the special economic zone have become shareholders of Vanke. The crypto industry is today's "Shenzhen Special Zone"—chaotic and dirty, but full of gold. You can choose to finish 1,000 exam questions in the study room and switch to a position with a monthly salary of 6,000; or you can study 10 protocol documents every day and achieve class mobility in the next bull market cycle. There is no right or wrong in these two paths; it only depends on what you believe: the stable illusion of a saturated society or the chaotic reality of an incremental market.