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Before the internet you needed a fully stocked library with excellent organization and archive retrieval, top quality professors who could (because of technolog

Before the internet you needed a fully stocked library with excellent organization and archive retrieval, top quality professors who could (because of technology) teach at-most an auditorium full of people, and the ability to meet in person with other people knowledgable of the subject which previously required a centralized meeting place (the university). All of this is now provided with superior quality by the internet. Now the only advantage of a university is signaling where you got accepted, networking with similar people for future jobs, becoming socialized by a culture of university-types, and showing you have the discipline to jump through 4 years of fairly arbitrary hoops. There is value to this, but is it worth $200k+? Additionally, the cost of education is so high that students are customers now. Expelling too many students is simply infeasible given the enormous debt issued by universities for their massive capital expansions (buildings, gyms, stadiums), and huge bureaucracies. Students are dictating the terms of who and what is being taught, and schools must cater to it or risk reducing their flow of new applicants, which is the death-knell of so many smaller liberal arts schools in recent years. Tenure threatens the ability to shape the school to match customer expectations.

colinmhayes 5y ago
> Now the only advantage of a university is signaling where you got accepted, networking with similar people for future jobs, becoming socialized by a culture of university-types, and showing you have the discipline to jump through 4 years of fairly arbitrary hoops. There is value to this, but is it worth $200k+? Yes this is absolutely worth 200k if you do it at the right school. Getting the signals and network is the only way to get a white collar job.
RHSeeger 5y ago
> All of this is now provided with superior quality by the internet. Now the only advantage of a university is signaling where you got accepted, networking with similar people for future jobs, becoming socialized by a culture of university-types, and showing you have the discipline to jump through 4 years of fairly arbitrary hoops. There is value to this, but is it worth $200k+? You are leaving out some of the main benefits of going to a university. Specifically, that you have people to guide you through the process of learning; to point out the things that are important to learn, to be able to talk to them about the topics, etc. The internet has a lot of useful information, but there are things you don't get from it. Just like you don't master the English language by owning a dictionary.

colinmhayes 5y ago

> Now the only advantage of a university is signaling where you got accepted, networking with similar people for future jobs, becoming socialized by a culture of university-types, and showing you have the discipline to jump through 4 years of fairly arbitrary hoops. There is value to this, but is it worth $200k+? Yes this is absolutely worth 200k if you do it at the right school. Getting the signals and network is the only way to get a white collar job.

RHSeeger 5y ago

> All of this is now provided with superior quality by the internet. Now the only advantage of a university is signaling where you got accepted, networking with similar people for future jobs, becoming socialized by a culture of university-types, and showing you have the discipline to jump through 4 years of fairly arbitrary hoops. There is value to this, but is it worth $200k+? You are leaving out some of the main benefits of going to a university. Specifically, that you have people to guide you through the process of learning; to point out the things that are important to learn, to be able to talk to them about the topics, etc. The internet has a lot of useful information, but there are things you don't get from it. Just like you don't master the English language by owning a dictionary.