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It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs. In other words, many of us seem to view universities as machines that ta

It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs. In other words, many of us seem to view universities as machines that take in undergraduates at one socioeconomic level and graduate them at a higher socioeconomic level. If this is how we come to view "higher education," we should be careful because that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it. And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs.

x87678r 6y ago
> that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it True but originally it was just a small subset of people that went to university.
- debacle 6y ago
  Starkly, incredibly small.
macspoofing 6y ago
>It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs What else would it be for the vast majority of people? You're investing thousands of dollars (either directly, or through opportunity cost) and huge chunk of time. If you can't make back that investment, then it just isn't worth for most people. The number of people that could make a living from pure research is always going to be miniscule. The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule. > that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it Right. Because originally universities were for the ruling and religious class that could justify the expense of education for its own sake. In modern world, many more people could make that calculation too, but lots of people could not justify the expense ... especially if you put this in these kinds of stark terms. >And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs. They could not. And that's a good thing. Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Many of these universities would state the point: university education enriches the mind, introducing students to a broad range of topics, perspectives, and readings that were pivotal to human history and human civilization. For example, at UChicago, the Core Curriculum has most of the students reading Das Kapital by Marx, a text with profound implications for the history of the 20th century. I'm agnostic about the value of this: on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically. On the other hand, we need practical skills and we don't need a massively indebted younger generation. The DIRE push for undergraduate education in many K-12 schools has probably undervalued solid vocational training. What does it say that I'm now into woodworking and making things, but in my entire 22 year education, no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    Or teaching that math is racist... If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. For STEM, completely different story, it is very hard for someone who hasn’t been trained formally to pick it up later in one’s career.
    - jimbob21 6y ago
      >in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read I don't know what college you went to, but at mine, reading was the homework, and the discussion on the books (even with the professor's inherent biases) in the class with my peers is what developed the profound thoughts and ideas that I still carry with me. Humanities might not contribute to jobs, (I'm STEM) but I don't for a second regret the philosophy classes I took.
      - malandrew 6y ago
        A lot of this is dependent on class size and class level. It's not until you get to class sizes of less than 20 and at the 300 level and up classes that you get actual discussion instead of lecturing and leading questions. And even smaller class size and higher level isn't a guarantee of good critical dialogue. I went to a large well ranked public university class in the United States, have both a STEM and non-STEM degree with over 200 credit hours over 4.5 years and I can think of exactly two humanities classes that had real discussions that weren't just being assigned books, largely uncritically accepting their contents and being lectured. Both classes with real dialogue were higher level classes with just over 10 people in them. One class was about the intersection of art and technology and the other was a philosophy of science class. There was way more critical thought and dialogue on average in my STEM classes.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'd argue that universities as we recognize them are already an unstable hybrid of their original purpose with jobs programs. Institutions of pure academic curiosity are valuable, but not so valuable that the US needs thousands of them, so a return to the original vision would probably mean closing most colleges.
autocorrect26 6y ago
This sort of thinking that “universities are only a function to get jobs” is the sort of thinking that can allow other countries to supersede the technological and scientific advancements of that particular country, because so little emphasis is put in higher learning and research. This dismissal of higher education and research is a bit troubling. Sure, this country with that thinking might be able to attract the best talent from other countries to innovate and do research, but politically it might not be wise to always count on it. When a populous has the mindset of dismissing universities and education to just get a job, then don’t be surprised when they fail to keep up with the latest advances in AI and science.
- seg_lol 6y ago
  The human mind is one of the most wonderful things in the whole known universe. That we have saddled most of them with meaningless toil and vapid entertainment is disappointing. The shift to the right coincides with a decades long attack on academia and intellectualism. Change incentives, allow the structures to corrode and the weight to shift and the bridge will come down on its own. If one is only outcome based and based on simple linear line of sight, we will never make the discoveries. But if that statement is outcome based, we should be settings these minds free to discover everything they can, not just STEM advancements.
  - ta509258159 6y ago
    > The shift to the right coincides with a decades long attack on academia and intellectualism. This is a comforting narrative for leftists, but it's objectively false. The attacks on academia and "intellectualism" (isn't it interesting how progressives presume a monopoly on this, just as they do on progress?) are a reaction to the exploitation of the academy as a tool for political indoctrination. Individuals with openly right-wing beliefs are personas non grata on faculty, in administrations, etc. There's a reason for that. The left is desperate to maintain its stranglehold on one of the major sense-making organs of the culture - and its stranglehold on the ability to socially engineer the next generation of educated professionals.
hoorayimhelping 6y ago
>that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it. I get it when people say this, but at the same time, I don't. Why are you basing the effectiveness of the institution in modern times on what it was designed for half a millennia ago? The world has changed since universities were introduced. Do you do the same thing with other institutions that were around at the same time? Do you talk about how marriage customs were different in the middle ages and what we call marriage now is not originally in the spirit of marriage the way it was practiced in the middle ages? Do you talk about how the catholic church was run in the middle ages and how organized religion is different now, and how we should consider what religion was used for centuries ago? Why are universities some special exception that get to be downright reactionary and not move forward with the times?
michaelt 6y ago
That's because college-as-increasing-earnings-potential is the simplest way to rationalise taking on a lifetime of debt. Spending $100,000 to boost your income by $20,000 per year for life is a very simple argument. On the other hand, to argue a manual labourer with a $100,000 philosophy degree that didn't boost their income at all had nonetheless made a good investment requires much more complex arguments about the nature of human happiness and the inherent value of knowledge to the individual and society. Which in turn leads to a wealth of follow-on questions which can't be answered with any finality.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  Consider knowledge as a strict tradeoff against things like interesting vacations and buying a house N years earlier, and it's genuinely tricky. Would you trade buying a house at 30 with less knowledge of liberal arts for buying a house at 40 and knowing a BS worth of liberal arts? Luckily (unluckily) the decision is easier because to buy a house at 30, you likely need the degree too, so the question is flipped.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Philosophy majors are about the only humanities major with a marketable skill: actual skills in critical thinking and not largely an illusion of critical thinking As such they do better financially than other humanities majors: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors-out-earn-other-humanities/403555/ https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors-...
- dantheman 6y ago
  Yeah, I mean I'd say that a philosophy degree shouldn't cost 100k and that's the problem.
simonsarris 6y ago
If colleges are simultaneously marketed for the average person and carry large bills (not just in $$ but in taking 4 years of your life), they better be jobs programs at a bare minimum.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
You're right, but I'd say that the damage has been done. There was an ugly truth even to the ideal that it allowed scions of rich families to network - so even when it was a jobs program in neither practise nor theory it upped one's chances of success later in life dramatically. Once that game was known, the attendant success became desired and colleges were flooded with applicants. Colleges optimised for large numbers of undergraduates motivated by socioeconomic mobility, their marketing efforts and staffing levels are optimised for that reality. I'm not sure when you encountered universities, but I was never aware of them being marketed as anything but jobs programs, and I'm closer to an X'er than a Zoomer.
neutronicus 6y ago
The "ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it" is inherently aristocratic. If the financial investment in university doesn't provide social mobility, if it's a nebulous "preparation for citizenship," then you're essentially asserting, by default, that people who are blind to the financial ROI of university are better citizens.
tharne 6y ago
The ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it was tied to the fact that until very recently, the university was an intellectual playground for the wealthy. Most of these folks either didn't need to work for a living or already had good jobs waiting for them via well-established social connections among their fellow elite. The vast majority of people need to work for a living and need practical skills that others are willing to pay them for. The idea that the university should exist for "learning for the sake of learning", and the idea that "everyone should go to college" is incompatible. You can have one, you can have the other, you can't realistically have both. If you want to learn for the sake of learning (I know I do), there's never been a better time to do it. The average person with a $200 laptop and an internet connection has access to more and better information than a Harvard graduate student did 50 years ago. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that college == education and that education == college. At this point a college degree is mainly just proof that you are diligent and were able to follow directions for four years while meeting deadlines.
- Nbox9 6y ago
  I think university should exist for “learning for the sake of learning” and that “everyone should go to college.” I don’t think it’s incompatible. I think someone becoming more educated has a lot of positive externalities. I think the list of positive externalities is so great that we should provide free tuition, room, board, and even a stipend to anyone willing and able to attend college. This should be funded from tax dollars, and seen as an investment in people. All of the money _will_ be returned by increased tax revenue from a more educated populous but this is just a side effect. The real benefit comes from having a more educated community capable of a high level of critical thinking.
  - tharne 6y ago
    I think you're largely right, but it's a very tough sell, particularly because of the opportunity cost. It's easy to make the case that learning is valuable in its own right, but it becomes much tougher to say, "learning is valuable in its own right so we should spend more money on it instead of spending that money on pressing and immediate issue X".
JSavageOne 6y ago
So long as universities are charging tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for degrees that employers are requiring, university will always be a jobs program. It's very sad, particularly since it's not a very good one at that.
pratik661 6y ago
Higher education is seen as a means of both economic AND social mobility. I think most economic models fail to capture the latter. This explains why so many people get into debt to attend a “prestigious “ university for little apparent financial gain.
yowlingcat 6y ago
I always get a lot of pushback when I express this sentiment but I think you're spot on. To me, this situation is another symptom of the weakening social contract I see between societies and their citizens. The responsibility of a society to educate its populace extends beyond mere vocation. It's frighteningly naive and optimistic for societies to assume that flattening that responsibility to such a small fraction will not result in horrific second order consequences.
justinmeiners 6y ago
I agree with you, but unfortunately our government is using them for that purpose.
Digory 6y ago
The ideals -- "liberal arts" -- were agreements about what enabled people to live a "free" life. We've lost those as ideals. Instead, we interpret all the liberal arts through racialist-socialist lens, and find they required us to adopt norms outside ourselves. The ideal we do hold together is hating authority and norms outside ourselves -- whether that's racial, religious, political, sexual, biological, musical, literary, fashion, filmmaking, etc. Just Do It. Have It Your Way. Think different. So, the jobs part is the part we hold in common. The ideals dispute is leading to violent protests in the streets.
okprod 6y ago
Responses to your insightful post demonstrate why we'll never achieve Roddenberry's dream of a post-scarcity economy. Because in my day I walked 100 miles in the snow so I could get to school to study and become an engineer to pay the bills.
zcw100 6y ago
Care to elaborate on how football and basketball fit into your view of "higher education"?
quicklime 6y ago
What's interesting to me is that so many people believe that tertiary education should be nothing more than a jobs program, but they're happy to let students "waste" time in secondary and primary school on useless (for an office job) activities like sports, camping and reading fiction books. The vast, vast majority of high school graduates aren't going to be professional athletes. But everyone (I hope) understands that we don't have PE in schools just so that schools can supply professional sports leagues with athletes. We have it because it helps people live better lives, even if it doesn't prepare them for a job.
jldugger 6y ago
I mean, universities were born out of the need to train Christian ministers in the faith. Even the earliest American universities were of that form; Harvard was founded by the Massachussets colony to train clergymen. So in a sense, they were always jobs programs. If today they seem secular, it's because society was able to reshape the institution over time. For example, the Morril Act, which established the land grant universities, made it's utilitarian purpose explicit: > without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life. But it's not clear to me that universities _should_ exist as we commonly imagine them. Why are the worlds top researchers presumed to be the worlds top educators, when we have all the evidence in the world they are not and generally believe being recognized as a good educator is a career curse? And even if they were at least good at the job of educating, why are there 100+ courses independently designed without meaningful comparison?
gwbas1c 6y ago
In the late 1990s my school sold itself mostly as a way to get a high paying job. There was a clear disconnect between admissions (the salespeople), the professors, and the students. The salespeople: College is a way to get a high paying job. The professors: College is about exploring academic subjects. The students: College is a rite of passage to be part of the upper-middle-class. IMO, the only way to fix the system is to be stricter about who gets into college, and more lenient about who's hired for professional jobs. Also, we need more trade schools.
sushshshsh 6y ago
Then don't charge 60k per year LOL
sushshshsh 6y ago
Then why do jobs say "BACHELORS DEGREE REQUIRED"
mcavoybn 6y ago
It shouldn't surprise you, public schools and universities sell themselves as jobs programs. Ignorance is not an excuse, and I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that your surprise comes from arrogance and not ignorance. "We need to be careful" is not a solution. The article itself is about the fact that universities are dying out, so you being "unclear" on the abstract nature of western education itself doesn't add anything to the conversation.

x87678r 6y ago

> that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it True but originally it was just a small subset of people that went to university.

debacle 6y ago
Starkly, incredibly small.

macspoofing 6y ago

>It's interesting to me that most people in this thread view colleges as jobs programs What else would it be for the vast majority of people? You're investing thousands of dollars (either directly, or through opportunity cost) and huge chunk of time. If you can't make back that investment, then it just isn't worth for most people. The number of people that could make a living from pure research is always going to be miniscule. The number of people that could justify the expense (or opportunity cost) to just learn something for pleasure, is miniscule. > that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it Right. Because originally universities were for the ruling and religious class that could justify the expense of education for its own sake. In modern world, many more people could make that calculation too, but lots of people could not justify the expense ... especially if you put this in these kinds of stark terms. >And so it's not clear to me whether universities as we recognize them will continue to exist if we continue to view them as a jobs programs. They could not. And that's a good thing. Humanities are a mess just for the reason that they take tuition and time from students and leave them hanging out to dray, after they graduate with no direct job prospects (i.e. a way to make a living).

WhompingWindows 6y ago
Many of these universities would state the point: university education enriches the mind, introducing students to a broad range of topics, perspectives, and readings that were pivotal to human history and human civilization. For example, at UChicago, the Core Curriculum has most of the students reading Das Kapital by Marx, a text with profound implications for the history of the 20th century. I'm agnostic about the value of this: on the one hand, we need informed citizenry who can dissect media and think critically. On the other hand, we need practical skills and we don't need a massively indebted younger generation. The DIRE push for undergraduate education in many K-12 schools has probably undervalued solid vocational training. What does it say that I'm now into woodworking and making things, but in my entire 22 year education, no one ever showed me how to use a single power tool.
- cm2187 6y ago
  Or teaching that math is racist... If you want to learn humanities, you can pretty much read any book anytime in your life (in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read). I would say that there the value added of a college over an online reading list is marginal. For STEM, completely different story, it is very hard for someone who hasn’t been trained formally to pick it up later in one’s career.
  - jimbob21 6y ago
    >in fact most of the teaching in humanities is just assigning books to read I don't know what college you went to, but at mine, reading was the homework, and the discussion on the books (even with the professor's inherent biases) in the class with my peers is what developed the profound thoughts and ideas that I still carry with me. Humanities might not contribute to jobs, (I'm STEM) but I don't for a second regret the philosophy classes I took.
    - malandrew 6y ago
      A lot of this is dependent on class size and class level. It's not until you get to class sizes of less than 20 and at the 300 level and up classes that you get actual discussion instead of lecturing and leading questions. And even smaller class size and higher level isn't a guarantee of good critical dialogue. I went to a large well ranked public university class in the United States, have both a STEM and non-STEM degree with over 200 credit hours over 4.5 years and I can think of exactly two humanities classes that had real discussions that weren't just being assigned books, largely uncritically accepting their contents and being lectured. Both classes with real dialogue were higher level classes with just over 10 people in them. One class was about the intersection of art and technology and the other was a philosophy of science class. There was way more critical thought and dialogue on average in my STEM classes.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I'd argue that universities as we recognize them are already an unstable hybrid of their original purpose with jobs programs. Institutions of pure academic curiosity are valuable, but not so valuable that the US needs thousands of them, so a return to the original vision would probably mean closing most colleges.

autocorrect26 6y ago

This sort of thinking that “universities are only a function to get jobs” is the sort of thinking that can allow other countries to supersede the technological and scientific advancements of that particular country, because so little emphasis is put in higher learning and research. This dismissal of higher education and research is a bit troubling. Sure, this country with that thinking might be able to attract the best talent from other countries to innovate and do research, but politically it might not be wise to always count on it. When a populous has the mindset of dismissing universities and education to just get a job, then don’t be surprised when they fail to keep up with the latest advances in AI and science.

seg_lol 6y ago
The human mind is one of the most wonderful things in the whole known universe. That we have saddled most of them with meaningless toil and vapid entertainment is disappointing. The shift to the right coincides with a decades long attack on academia and intellectualism. Change incentives, allow the structures to corrode and the weight to shift and the bridge will come down on its own. If one is only outcome based and based on simple linear line of sight, we will never make the discoveries. But if that statement is outcome based, we should be settings these minds free to discover everything they can, not just STEM advancements.
- ta509258159 6y ago
  > The shift to the right coincides with a decades long attack on academia and intellectualism. This is a comforting narrative for leftists, but it's objectively false. The attacks on academia and "intellectualism" (isn't it interesting how progressives presume a monopoly on this, just as they do on progress?) are a reaction to the exploitation of the academy as a tool for political indoctrination. Individuals with openly right-wing beliefs are personas non grata on faculty, in administrations, etc. There's a reason for that. The left is desperate to maintain its stranglehold on one of the major sense-making organs of the culture - and its stranglehold on the ability to socially engineer the next generation of educated professionals.

hoorayimhelping 6y ago

>that's not the ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it. I get it when people say this, but at the same time, I don't. Why are you basing the effectiveness of the institution in modern times on what it was designed for half a millennia ago? The world has changed since universities were introduced. Do you do the same thing with other institutions that were around at the same time? Do you talk about how marriage customs were different in the middle ages and what we call marriage now is not originally in the spirit of marriage the way it was practiced in the middle ages? Do you talk about how the catholic church was run in the middle ages and how organized religion is different now, and how we should consider what religion was used for centuries ago? Why are universities some special exception that get to be downright reactionary and not move forward with the times?

michaelt 6y ago

That's because college-as-increasing-earnings-potential is the simplest way to rationalise taking on a lifetime of debt. Spending $100,000 to boost your income by $20,000 per year for life is a very simple argument. On the other hand, to argue a manual labourer with a $100,000 philosophy degree that didn't boost their income at all had nonetheless made a good investment requires much more complex arguments about the nature of human happiness and the inherent value of knowledge to the individual and society. Which in turn leads to a wealth of follow-on questions which can't be answered with any finality.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
Consider knowledge as a strict tradeoff against things like interesting vacations and buying a house N years earlier, and it's genuinely tricky. Would you trade buying a house at 30 with less knowledge of liberal arts for buying a house at 40 and knowing a BS worth of liberal arts? Luckily (unluckily) the decision is easier because to buy a house at 30, you likely need the degree too, so the question is flipped.
malandrew 6y ago
Philosophy majors are about the only humanities major with a marketable skill: actual skills in critical thinking and not largely an illusion of critical thinking As such they do better financially than other humanities majors: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors-out-earn-other-humanities/403555/ https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors-...
dantheman 6y ago
Yeah, I mean I'd say that a philosophy degree shouldn't cost 100k and that's the problem.

simonsarris 6y ago

If colleges are simultaneously marketed for the average person and carry large bills (not just in $$ but in taking 4 years of your life), they better be jobs programs at a bare minimum.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

You're right, but I'd say that the damage has been done. There was an ugly truth even to the ideal that it allowed scions of rich families to network - so even when it was a jobs program in neither practise nor theory it upped one's chances of success later in life dramatically. Once that game was known, the attendant success became desired and colleges were flooded with applicants. Colleges optimised for large numbers of undergraduates motivated by socioeconomic mobility, their marketing efforts and staffing levels are optimised for that reality. I'm not sure when you encountered universities, but I was never aware of them being marketed as anything but jobs programs, and I'm closer to an X'er than a Zoomer.

neutronicus 6y ago

The "ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it" is inherently aristocratic. If the financial investment in university doesn't provide social mobility, if it's a nebulous "preparation for citizenship," then you're essentially asserting, by default, that people who are blind to the financial ROI of university are better citizens.

tharne 6y ago

The ideal that gave birth to the university in the form that we recognize it was tied to the fact that until very recently, the university was an intellectual playground for the wealthy. Most of these folks either didn't need to work for a living or already had good jobs waiting for them via well-established social connections among their fellow elite. The vast majority of people need to work for a living and need practical skills that others are willing to pay them for. The idea that the university should exist for "learning for the sake of learning", and the idea that "everyone should go to college" is incompatible. You can have one, you can have the other, you can't realistically have both. If you want to learn for the sake of learning (I know I do), there's never been a better time to do it. The average person with a $200 laptop and an internet connection has access to more and better information than a Harvard graduate student did 50 years ago. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that college == education and that education == college. At this point a college degree is mainly just proof that you are diligent and were able to follow directions for four years while meeting deadlines.

Nbox9 6y ago
I think university should exist for “learning for the sake of learning” and that “everyone should go to college.” I don’t think it’s incompatible. I think someone becoming more educated has a lot of positive externalities. I think the list of positive externalities is so great that we should provide free tuition, room, board, and even a stipend to anyone willing and able to attend college. This should be funded from tax dollars, and seen as an investment in people. All of the money _will_ be returned by increased tax revenue from a more educated populous but this is just a side effect. The real benefit comes from having a more educated community capable of a high level of critical thinking.
- tharne 6y ago
  I think you're largely right, but it's a very tough sell, particularly because of the opportunity cost. It's easy to make the case that learning is valuable in its own right, but it becomes much tougher to say, "learning is valuable in its own right so we should spend more money on it instead of spending that money on pressing and immediate issue X".

JSavageOne 6y ago

So long as universities are charging tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for degrees that employers are requiring, university will always be a jobs program. It's very sad, particularly since it's not a very good one at that.

pratik661 6y ago

Higher education is seen as a means of both economic AND social mobility. I think most economic models fail to capture the latter. This explains why so many people get into debt to attend a “prestigious “ university for little apparent financial gain.

yowlingcat 6y ago

I always get a lot of pushback when I express this sentiment but I think you're spot on. To me, this situation is another symptom of the weakening social contract I see between societies and their citizens. The responsibility of a society to educate its populace extends beyond mere vocation. It's frighteningly naive and optimistic for societies to assume that flattening that responsibility to such a small fraction will not result in horrific second order consequences.

justinmeiners 6y ago

I agree with you, but unfortunately our government is using them for that purpose.

Digory 6y ago

The ideals -- "liberal arts" -- were agreements about what enabled people to live a "free" life. We've lost those as ideals. Instead, we interpret all the liberal arts through racialist-socialist lens, and find they required us to adopt norms outside ourselves. The ideal we do hold together is hating authority and norms outside ourselves -- whether that's racial, religious, political, sexual, biological, musical, literary, fashion, filmmaking, etc. Just Do It. Have It Your Way. Think different. So, the jobs part is the part we hold in common. The ideals dispute is leading to violent protests in the streets.

okprod 6y ago

Responses to your insightful post demonstrate why we'll never achieve Roddenberry's dream of a post-scarcity economy. Because in my day I walked 100 miles in the snow so I could get to school to study and become an engineer to pay the bills.

zcw100 6y ago

Care to elaborate on how football and basketball fit into your view of "higher education"?

quicklime 6y ago

What's interesting to me is that so many people believe that tertiary education should be nothing more than a jobs program, but they're happy to let students "waste" time in secondary and primary school on useless (for an office job) activities like sports, camping and reading fiction books. The vast, vast majority of high school graduates aren't going to be professional athletes. But everyone (I hope) understands that we don't have PE in schools just so that schools can supply professional sports leagues with athletes. We have it because it helps people live better lives, even if it doesn't prepare them for a job.

jldugger 6y ago

I mean, universities were born out of the need to train Christian ministers in the faith. Even the earliest American universities were of that form; Harvard was founded by the Massachussets colony to train clergymen. So in a sense, they were always jobs programs. If today they seem secular, it's because society was able to reshape the institution over time. For example, the Morril Act, which established the land grant universities, made it's utilitarian purpose explicit: > without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life. But it's not clear to me that universities _should_ exist as we commonly imagine them. Why are the worlds top researchers presumed to be the worlds top educators, when we have all the evidence in the world they are not and generally believe being recognized as a good educator is a career curse? And even if they were at least good at the job of educating, why are there 100+ courses independently designed without meaningful comparison?

gwbas1c 6y ago

In the late 1990s my school sold itself mostly as a way to get a high paying job. There was a clear disconnect between admissions (the salespeople), the professors, and the students. The salespeople: College is a way to get a high paying job. The professors: College is about exploring academic subjects. The students: College is a rite of passage to be part of the upper-middle-class. IMO, the only way to fix the system is to be stricter about who gets into college, and more lenient about who's hired for professional jobs. Also, we need more trade schools.

sushshshsh 6y ago

Then don't charge 60k per year LOL

sushshshsh 6y ago

Then why do jobs say "BACHELORS DEGREE REQUIRED"

mcavoybn 6y ago

It shouldn't surprise you, public schools and universities sell themselves as jobs programs. Ignorance is not an excuse, and I'm going to go ahead and venture a guess that your surprise comes from arrogance and not ignorance. "We need to be careful" is not a solution. The article itself is about the fact that universities are dying out, so you being "unclear" on the abstract nature of western education itself doesn't add anything to the conversation.