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In a surprising demonstration of not burying the lede, it's given away by the subheading: "Earning a degree is about signalling, and not just learning."

• danans 9y ago
  > "Earning a degree is about signalling, and not just learning" This is nothing new. It was this way since the beginning of higher education in religious institutions. Higher education was a social signal that gave clerics power over many aspects of society in their roles as religious leaders and advisers to rulers. In Europe it was common for non first-born sons of aristocrats to go into the clergy via the academic route. They didn't do this to give up power, but to associate themselves and their families with powerful religious/academic cultural institutions. Even during the post WW2 broadening of higher education access, it served as a bridge to upper social classes. You can't get rid of the class signalling aspect unless you can get rid of class as a cultural phenomenon, which is unlikely. Being broadly educated will always be a signal of class, no matter how it is achieved, simply because it implies that you had the resources to study things that are not of immediate vocational value. But many aspects of higher education that don't have vocational value have a lot of value in creating an informed, adaptable citizenry. You can, however, reduce the degree to which higher class association via higher education is needed in order to learn skills needed to achieve a decent livelihood. One way to achieve this is to reverse the trend of large cuts to public higher education funding, which is the largest factor in the increased costs of those institutions [1] (not fancy buildings). [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...