I see a lot of HN comments on these issues treating college education as a commodity/investment, blaming students/society for making poor "choices" (I'd like to

I see a lot of HN comments on these issues treating college education as a commodity/investment, blaming students/society for making poor "choices" (I'd like to remind you of the cost and selective nature of STEM programs, not everyone is able to enroll in the highest valued degree due to circumstances beyond their control-- it's not always a choice), and using economic indicators like ROI to measure the "value" of degrees. Some commenters go so far as to even suggest letting the free market lower the price of education by restricting access to education [1] However, I'd like to propose that there's alternative value to education beyond short-term individual capital gains. First off, having a degree teaches you more than the hard skills promoted by the individual degree program, it opens up new pathways to learning that you can use to later-on learn new skills [2] This is increasingly important as the pace of technology changes, and skillsets will need to be adjusted multiple times in one lifetime. Also, the overall prosperity of the economy, as well as other indicators such as happiness, is tied to the number of college graduates in a particular society. [3] [4] To me it makes sense to invest in education as a whole, instead of targeting one specific area, or pitting individuals against each other to compete over education resources. I'm surprised by the number of well-educated people on this site who don't see the value of any degrees that aren't directly related to current economic trends, and who don't see the value of expanding access to education through society as a whole. To me, it seems like a case where having been given a certain set of privileges it's easy to dismiss other situations as being a result of poor decisions or poor societal structure. I just hope that people reading my comment will take a moment to step back and recognize that there may be much longer-term humanitarian reasons to support education as a whole, even if that means supporting degrees in 'underwater basket weaving' [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 [2] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 [3] https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosperity-relies-on-more-people-of-all-ages-going-to-university.aspx https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosp... [4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474904118770818?journalCode=eera https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147490411877081...