The Hillsberg Report

Quote of the week

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."

- Abraham Lincoln

The Role of Higher Education

For many years higher education has been directly linked to increased earning power. I am seeing a strong decrease in this correlation.


What you see in the chart above is the reduction in demand for top-of-the-line MBAs. When someone enters into an MBA at Harvard or MIT or Stanford, they are doing so with the idea that they're de-risking their future. Historically, these MBAs have always had high-paying, stable jobs waiting for them upon graduation. The reality is that many of the roles these graduates aim for are increasingly scarce or evolving beyond recognition.

What we're seeing now is a shrinking of middle management in corporate America, where AI is helping companies make a lot of the decisions that would have previously been made by humans.

The way employers assess talent is also shifting. Elon Musk, in a widely discussed post on X, emphasized that when hiring engineers for X, he prioritizes GitHub portfolios and project experience over formal educational credentials, encapsulating a sentiment that is gaining traction in tech-driven industries. You don't need to attend a university to code.

While there will always be a place for higher education, many of the majors and programs offered today no longer align with the jobs of the future. My opinion is that higher education needs extreme reform, and should be focused more on teaching social and soft skills at a much lower cost and higher volume. At the same time, there should be extremely targeted classes to teach hard skills that are actually useful in the new world of AI. This is an enormous challenge.

So what should companies do with middle management? I see the real value of middle managers as coaches and mentors, training their workforce to help rapidly improve the skills and competencies of their team. How do you retrain or replace your middle managers to align to this idea?

Meme of the week

Cool AI Tools

The AI tool I want to highlight this week is Deep Research from Google.

This product of Google's Gemini generates reports with incredible insights, very similar to reports you'd see from a big consulting firm, in 5-10 minutes.

It takes a prompt, breaks it down into components, generates its own follow-up questions, gathers relevant information from the internet, summarizes the findings, identifies correlations and causations, and delivers a comprehensive report in a Google Doc.

To learn more about Deep Research click here.

Where to Live?

The following chart from FEMA shows the disaster risk for each US locality. You see highest risk in red and lowest risk in dark blue. I want to emphasize that both the likelihood and the size of disaster-affected areas are growing. If you live in one of these red or yellow areas, are you concerned? Are you considering a move?

Good News

A lot of the content I've posted hasn't been very jolly, so this week I want to highlight something good.

China, one of the world's leading producers of terrible waste byproducts in many different forms, has achieved a 15-year emmission reduction in sulfur dioxide of ~67%. This means less acid rain and smog!

Tech Byte - How Starlink Works

Have you ever wondered how Starlink satelites provide internet to people all over the world?

Check out this technical video to learn how it all works.

Share with friends

Enjoying The Hillsberg Report? Share it with friends who might find it valuable!

Haven't signed up for the weekly notification?

Subscribe Now