Scholarships Work As Hiring Contracts For Those Who Already Excel

If you are exceptional in something, a school will pay for you. The cost-benefit analysis for the school dictates that you will probably offer more to the school rather than the other way around.

A school hires an individual that has already excelled. A piece of Art or a Grant proposal or a thesis is often all a school needs to acknowledge value. The individual has little to gain from the teachers and rather a lot to offer to the rest, much like a professor. We know this acknowledgment best as scholarship or fellowship. This is also the reason schools offer honorary PhDs to those who dropped out (or didn't bother to go to school altogether) and rather excelled in a particular field of study nonetheless. They even get to teach, if they want to.

If you have to pay for school then you probably don't have much to offer. The school has to invest resources in hope you will learn. Thus, a degree is fine for getting a regular 8-hour job, a promotion in the government or for elitism within academia. It's function is much like a limited warranty you see in products. "The owner of this degree has the basic skills to work or teach for you but we don't promise anything."

A degree will do you nothing in navigating or even succeeding in life. People who get scholarships don't need degrees to have a job because they are already exceptional at what they do. They don't even search for schools. Schools search for them.

Thus, those who parade their purchased degrees and titles are often those who don't deserve to have them. Anyone can buy a degree today. Shops are literally everywhere and for every level. Someone who borrows money to buy a car they can't afford in order to raise their status carries a similar attitude.Earning something due to competence is quite different than resorting to buy something due to lack thereof.

Scholarships, fellowships and honorary degrees clear out this confusion.