I really sympathise with the point made about allowing yourself (at least) a year to "mature" and/or figure out, even to a small degree, what direction you want

I really sympathise with the point made about allowing yourself (at least) a year to "mature" and/or figure out, even to a small degree, what direction you want to take your life in before going to University. I think if I'd done that I would have been a lot less susceptible to upvoting all the recent "HE is a waste of time" articles. Philosophically (and practically), not so sure about trying to fix higher education through purely economic/business terms, but then I'm no expert on it.