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The argument that "most kids don't need to go to college" is the same argument that British intellectuals were making at the end of the 19th and early 20th cent

• la6472 5y ago
  Question is - is college education in current form really useful? I feel we get more practical education from the internet than from the structured courses in traditional college education.
  • postingposts 5y ago
    Yes, it is. But not as education. It’s just an expensive stamp of approval one must receive to work with certain institutions. You pay the institutions for the stamp, fill out worksheets for children and write papers for no one for 4 years and then bravo! You did it! You didn’t do anything! Now it’s time to learn the actual job. But this process is time-tested. The only fault is the parents lying to the kids attending that they’ll learn something. They won’t. But they’ll start understanding how to show up (without their parents waking them up) and do tasks (without their parents making them) which is really what college is these days.
  • codingdave 5y ago
    The "current form" is changing. I'm hearing more and more schools who integrate their curriculum with real-world projects, and who encourage travel and international study to expose the students to wider perspectives. I've seen some programs that almost make me envious of current students, and feel like my own education from 30 years ago was fairly lame in comparison. I think college is getting better and more valuable with time, at least in some programs. I doubt the programs that are not evolving will fare as well in the future. But the costs are the true problem. If the evolution of higher education continues and becomes available to all, we could really have something.
  • wolverine876 5y ago
    Perhaps what you find on the Internet is not nearly the same quality as what you find at college, and much it is misinformation, having a negative impact - you are better off not reading it. You could always try to learn from books you found at the library, and those were much higher quality on average than what you find on the Internet! Personally, it's hard to imagine a worse idea that 'learning' from 'the Internet'. But if we throw out the values of truth and knowledge, then the Internet is filled with stuff! > practical education College isn't supposed to be practical, only to transform your understanding of the world and your thinking skills. Go to a vocational school for practical information.
    • la6472 5y ago
      You seem to know it all but here I am with 20 years of fruitful employment with all of my learning , that is needed to do my job , learnt from the internet. Thank you Wikipedia and hyperlinks. So yes I have a strong opinion that traditional college education is obsolete now.
• tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  > The main reason that the United States became the dominant superpower of the early-mid 20th century and eclipsed its European peers was that many more kids in the United States had been going to high school This glosses over two World Wars and a massive haul of natural resources and confiscated land.
  • ceejayoz 5y ago
    Yeah, it seems quite a bit easier to become the dominant power when most of your potential competitors have had their cities and industry flattened for half a decade.
    • adhesive_wombat 5y ago
      That's the pledge and turn, the prestige is lending them the money to rebuild it.
  • postingposts 5y ago
    And that the USA stole a TON of Nazi scientists and then brought them to the US, giving them new identities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip 1600 is the official number, in practice it was a lot more and their identities were concealed.
  • adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    > massive haul of natural resources and confiscated land And the pick of scientists and engineers from most of the world (handily snuck some of them in before adding "have you been a member of the government of Nazi Germany?" to immigration forms)
  • whakim 5y ago
    See my citation above; the US was well ahead before WWI. And while the economic damage wrought by the wars was not inconsiderable, it simply exacerbated an existing trend.
    • 5y ago
• native_samples 5y ago
  > The main reason that the United States became the dominant superpower of the early-mid 20th century and eclipsed its European peers was that many more kids in the United States had been going to high school for a long time. Citation definitely needed on that one, as I think most casual observers would assume that being destroyed by the most catastrophic war the world ever saw ... twice ... would have more to do with it than some long forgotten fashion amongst British intellectuals.
• oneoff786 5y ago
  The MAIN reason the US did better in the early 20th century was high school? Not, say, two world wars in Europe?
  • meetups323 5y ago
    Well maybe if the European kids had gone to school they wouldn't have so much free time to go around starting wars. (\s...)
    • pilsetnieks 5y ago
      He tried but it was the art school that rejected him.
      • oneoff786 5y ago
        This spurred some research. Everyone knows he got rejected from art school. But prior to that he basically failed out of high school too. He attended two of them.
• twobitshifter 5y ago
  I went to an elite university on fully paid financial aid. I don’t think the university made me much wiser than I would had been at a less expensive public school. And I think I could have learned many things on my own based on my abilities at the time. However, having a degree from an elite university is an effective signal that you made it through the filter of their college admissions process. This is what companies like to see. Since those admissions were based on SAT and other metrics, the students they select are among the brightest and regardless of the quality of education, they will do well in the world. This reinforces the value of attending an elite university and feeds more competition for the spots. This is similar to a shoe company sponsoring an athlete. The custom shoe might be better than what the athlete had before and maybe they even provide training from world class coaches, but they’re not just sponsoring anyone. You’re not getting that shoe without already proving something. My earnings have benefitted from the school network and at the price charged the network is probably still a net benefit for me, without accounting for the financial aid. So overall, it’s a game, but worth playing. There’s likely a better system we could devise to signal intelligence and ability that didn’t rely on diplomas from 4 year schools. However, the network effects of colleges cannot be replaced in the same manner. For that we have to consider whether these effects are disadvantaging others and worth perpetuating.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    Would this "less expensive school" have paid you to attend? Otherwise, I don't see how it beats your fully paid elite school experience. --someone else who went to their cheapest college option: an elite private school in New England.
    • twobitshifter 5y ago
      No, it would not have beat the cost in my case. I did know others who got academic full scholarships to state schools but little financial aid to private colleges.
• usrn 5y ago
  Yeah and they were right. We keep inflating the time children spend in school but don't proportionately scale the content. People are taking Calculus the second year they're in college now. People are graduating high school practically illiterate and innumerate. This isn't a call to educate fewer people. It's to educate more efficiently which, when done right, will reach more people.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rcoveson 5y ago
  > So "most kids don't need to go to college" seems historically shortsighted. High school was proven important (if we just take that part of your argument as a given), so therefor college must be? By that reasoning, I don't see what makes the highschool cutoff "shortsighted" and the college cutoff correct. Why not four more years for a postgraduate degree?
• apsec112 5y ago
  The US was the world's largest economy even before WWI: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history... Plenty of countries (Germany, France, Japan, etc.) are only slightly poorer than the US per capita, but have much smaller land area/population and therefore smaller GDP. Size matters!
• Zigurd 5y ago
  This does not play to the anti-college sentiment on this site. But there is good evidence that secondary and university education is a large part of a nation's ability to support a strong economy. China, for example, is limited by quality education being concentrated in first-tier cities and substandard education being widespread in the countryside: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-03/poorly-educated-workers-threaten-china-s-growth https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-03/poorly-ed... That's not how most people think of China. The questioning of the value of university education also coincides with an ageing cohort of men with university educations they got when men dominated university attendance being replaced by women who now dominate university graduating classes. Hmmm.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    > That's not how most people think of China. Really? It's exactly how I think of education in China. Indeed, this is the case for most of the developing world, the only difference being that their Tier 1 cities are much larger and the education quality better (based on my experience interviewing people, students from top (Tsinghua, other C9) universities in China are basically equivalent with the Ivies + Stanford + MIT)
    • polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > based on my experience interviewing people, students from top (Tsinghua, other C9) universities in China are basically equivalent with the Ivies + Stanford + MIT Your experience may be further confounded by the fact that you are only interviewing people who emigrated out of China. I am not an expert in this, but from some of my friends' experience of going to college in South Asia, I have seen that only the top students would be able to make it "out of there."
      • whimsicalism 4y ago
        Oh yeah, I'm not claiming that there is no selection/emigration bias there. I think it is probably even stronger for China than India.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  Which way round are cause and effect? The US was economically ahead already as you say, but being rich also means you send more kids to college. It's not clear that going to college lets you win wars.
• randomdata 5y ago
  > The main reason that the United States became the dominant superpower of the early-mid 20th century and eclipsed its European peers was that many more kids in the United States had been going to high school for a long time. The data from the time shows little difference between Canada and the USA in high school attendance. Canada might have even had a slight edge. And now Canada is considered most educated nation on earth, according to the OECD, approaching 70% of the population having a tertiary education, compared to just 40% stateside. If high school was the significant factor, why has Canada never really become all that significant of a power? Several European powers are more powerful than Canada despite their supposed lack of education. It is questionable if Canada would even be strong as it is if it weren't America's neighbour. > I think if we want to educate more people we need to take a long hard look at how tertiary education works in the US. I guess the first question is: What is Canada getting out of it? Certainly the top promise the tertiary education system likes to trumpet – higher incomes – hasn't materialized. Canadians make far less money than their American counterparts in almost all cases, not to mention that incomes have been stagnant as far back as the data goes.
  • whakim 5y ago
    I don't know much about Canada, but I'd be very interested in looking at census data for primary and secondary education in Canada for the whole of the 19th century. Do you have a source? Remember, the argument goes that the U.S. maintained a large educational gap for over 100 years which allowed it to overcome the productivity leads that the advanced European nations had built up. I also question whether "making money" is the best way to judge education. Without opening up the philosophical Pandora's Box or determining a correct answer, the US is also far more unequal than Canada, a much worse place to be poor, etc.
    • randomdata 5y ago
      > Do you have a source? The census, but the data starts to become a little sketchy going back as far as you're looking for. Admittedly, I was look at the period around the war, not the 100 years prior. Canada wasn't great at record keeping in its early history. I expect you won't find anything before the 1910s and even then it is not exactly great. However, in the 1910s it seems both countries only saw around ~10% of the population attending high school, as best as I can tell. More clearly, they both saw around 30% by the 1930s when we start to see much better data. Let's just assume it was 10% through the entire 19th century. If we attribute America's success in becoming a superpower to that small portion of the population attending high school, that still lends credence to the idea that most don't need to go to high school. Whether or not high school was significant, it is clear that America didn't need most in high school to reach superpower status. > I also question whether "making money" is the best way to judge education. I agree, but the industry doesn't. That is the number one feature pushed on students in the marketing. I sincerely doubt Canada or the USA would have such high attainment if people weren't lead to believe that they would make money by doing it. Some attend college because they truly have a love for education, but many more attend simply because they believe they'll be poor in the rest of their life if they don't.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  Employers want an underclass that they can exploit, and degree holders expect more than subsistence wages and dead-end jobs, creating a problem for companies that want cheap labor.
• candiodari 5y ago
  Maybe, but there is HOW it is being spent. The first 2 years of my university education could have easily, and frankly much better, taken place on something like Khan Academy. And high school would have made an even larger difference. I'm pretty sure at least half the time spent at high school worked against me rather than for me. I'm not advocating for switching schools 100% to such platforms, I see the problems, but I do believe that perhaps half on those platforms would be an easy and large win over traditional education.
• ARandomerDude 5y ago
  > The main reason that the United States became the dominant superpower... Favorable demographics, abundant natural resources, a relatively safe geographic position between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, culture, and two World Wars were surely greater factors than how many people went to high school.
• zozbot234 5y ago
  > I don't think educating fewer people is a good long-term strategy, but I think if we want to educate more people we need to take a long hard look at how tertiary education works in the US. As part of doing that, we should take a long hard look at primary and secondary education too. U.S. public school K-12 is a disaster, and modern educational trends are only making the picture worse and more unequal rather than less.
• throwawaycities 5y ago
  > The main reason that the United States became the dominant superpower of the early-mid 20th century and eclipsed its European peers was that many more kids in the United States had been going to high school for a long time. It definitely depends on how you are determining the dominate superpower, GDP is certainly important but it’s not determinative. If there were a single factor determining a single dominate superpower I think throughout history it is more closely related to the World’s Reserve Currency, and the US Dollar didn’t succeed the British Pound as the Reserve Currency. Though not official until Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 with 44 nations, it is generally understood this was a concession made in a backroom deal to get the US to enter the War in 1941 while Hitler was actively bombing London. There are a lot of people that believe, I’ll call them speculators but maybe fair to call them conspiracy theorists, that the economic impact of Covid is leading to a change in the Reserve Currency because the IMF called for "A New Bretton Woods Moment". I’m not sure that will happen, but if it does, I’m certain what that would mean is a passing of the torch of the dominate superpower.
• pgcj_poster 5y ago
  I'm not convinced that most kids need High School either. For smart kids, High School is basically just a grade-grubbing competition to determine who gets to go to the best college. This mostly gets in the way of actual learning. I think bright students would learn much more if, after 9th grade, they went directly to university, with admission determined by lottery. For all other students, High School is basically just prison. They already know how to read, write, and do arithmetic. They know that the earth goes around the sun and that America invented freedom and fought in half a dozen wars. They know everything that they're ever going to remember learning in school or that they'll use afterward. But, for some reason, they're forced to spend years doing stoichiometry and reading old books that they're never going to appreciate. A liberal arts education is valuable, even if it's not directly applicable to daily life, because it can elevate the spirit. But can you elevate the spirit by force? I think not.
  • blippage 4y ago
    > They know that the earth goes around the sun I'm in my 50's, my parents are in their 80's. Neither of my parents received any O levels (studied by 14-15 year-olds). I just don't think it was considered important. My dad did an apprenticeship after leaving school, though. When my turn came, it was standard to do O levels. I had a chance to look at a chemistry book and an electronics book, aimed at O level students. And, like you say, pupils who have had a secondary education know that the earth goes around the sun, matter is made from atoms, and will even have learned some calculus. That's actually a pretty good deal. The secondary education does, or at least /should/, give people a good general level of education. This leaves us with the question of what we think the purpose of tertiary education is. At least some of that answer seems to boil down to nothing more than "well, that's how we do things around here." My own answer is that I see tertiary education as providing two routes: an academic route, and a vocational route. The academic route has more kudos, but there is a great deal of practical benefit from the vocational route. I, myself, were always more academically inclined. The world only needs so many academics, or people with extensive training like physicians, architects or researchers. I would prefer to see more on-the-job training, like you see with electricians, and even lawyers and accountants. The real problem, as I see it, is too many people, not enough jobs. I have no solution to that problem, nor do I think that governments can concoct solutions that will necessarily make things better rather than worse. All I'm saying is that if the balance of supply and demand were to shift, employers would be less fussy about the academic qualifications of the job candidates, and the job candidates wouldn't be in an arms race to pile on more and more certificates.