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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 p
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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".
- Nbox9 6y agoLet me sell it to you. On average a college graduate will have one million dollars more of lifetime earnings than a high school graduate. This one million dollars will be taxed at at least twelve percent federally. Twelve percent is a very conservative estimation on the federal tax rate of that money. This means the federal tax revenue of a college grad is at least one hundred and twenty thousand dollars more than a high school graduate. The average net price of a public college education with room, board, fees, and tuition is fifteen thousand four hundred dollars a year, or just under sixty two thousand dollars for four years. In four years the federal government spends $62,000 to send someone to college. Over their lifetime the federal government receives $120,000 back. Today we create jobs for staff, professors, admins, etc at university. Tomorrow we have a more educated and skilled workforce. Of course, what I really want is for my fellow citizens to be more well read, better critical thinkers, and better informed citizens. Sometimes the best way to sell someone on something isn’t to focus on what you want out of the deal.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago>On average a college graduate will have one million dollars more of lifetime earnings than a high school graduate. Does that statistic account for greater starting wealth of college entrants?
- CincinnatiMan 6y agoIs going to college the cause of someone earning more? Or is the type of person that goes to college someone who inherently will earn more money regardless of the education level they receive? Seems to me if you took Harvard students (and not the legacy/donor admits) and had them stop at a high school education, they'd still do way better than other non-college graduates.
- T-hawk 6y ago> On average a college graduate will have one million dollars more of lifetime earnings than a high school graduate. This does not scale. Adding more college degrees does not make that many more productive jobs exist. It just moves the education bar higher for the jobs that do. College degrees quadrupled since the 1960s. Productive jobs haven't. We already have an oversupply of degree holders working at Starbucks. The stark reality is that the human race doesn't and can't have enough aggregate demand to productively employ everybody. The necessities of life - food, housing, medical - really only take about 10% of the population to produce and supply. Maybe another 20% in productivity-adjacent areas like finance and government services and other administration. Everything else is leisure and service economy, and there isn't infinite demand for that.
- CincinnatiMan 6y agoHow many people did you know in school who were there for the education? Everyone I knew in my engineering program was there for the degree to get a good job, only 1 or 2 people I ever met genuinely wanted to understand the material, and it was kind of strange upon first realizing that. This was in a top state university.
- Nbox9 6y agoI studied computer science at a state university. It is fully accredited, but otherwise has very little prestige. Maybe 25% of the students in the program were there to learn how to make video games. They weren’t there to get a job in making video games. They weren’t there because there is money in making video games. They were there because they wanted to know enough about computer programming to make video games, and everyone had ideas about what type of game they wanted to make.
- officehero 6y agoDisagree on the "playground" historical note students hundreds of years ago would probably not agree at all, basically since life back then was tougher for everyone including elite compared to tosay. Somewhat agree with 2d and 3d paragraphs though