>>2) College educates you not just for your first job I agree largely with your points but I would point out that if #2 on your list is true in some regard, it

>>2) College educates you not just for your first job I agree largely with your points but I would point out that if #2 on your list is true in some regard, it's highly ineffective. People with college degrees start unnecessary wars. People with college degrees ruin economies with finance schemes designed for maximum personal profit over the interest in a healthy society. People with college degrees beat their partners and children. People with college degrees abuse substances, and they fall prey to the ravages of induced mental health issues and poor physical health choices like obesity or sedentary lifestyles. In addition I've found many Americans with college degrees to be incurious about the world outside their own life and often outright hostile to intellectualism. Not all people with college degrees are like this of course, but enough to make me think that if #2 is an intended and assumed function of post-secondary education then these institutions are not very effective in that mission when you compare the credentialed population with the rest of us. And yes, I have no college degree. Despite high-test scores, AP credit in math, sciences, history and English, sports and other activities I was only accepted to my State Schools' Engineering program out of my applications, and only begrudgingly, which meant I had to actually write a lett er to the Dean's office about how very very much I wanted to be an Engineer. When I got there I realized how much of the 'education' offered was ridiculous nonsense. I had to drop out after a year to attend to some family issues and was forced to enter the workforce immediately doing tech support and clawed my way into professional software development. It's been a struggle most of the time not having a degree I can simply point to, but that's been mostly due to having to overcome the biases of the credentialed versus those of us with no formal credentials. I consider myself incredibly fortunate in life though, as for example I'm composing this post from Kolkata after taking an amazing and profound trek through the Himalayas. None of my friends with college degrees have done this ;)