> A lot of people have been tricked into going to general education and liberal arts college programs (the finishing school parts) without the money to pay in f

> A lot of people have been tricked into going to general education and liberal arts college programs (the finishing school parts) without the money to pay in full under the guise of "becoming a lifelong learner" or something This rush for everybody to complete a college education arguably wasn't caused by some kind of natural cultural phenomenon, but was an artificial intervention in the employment market. The Supreme court case Griggs v. Duke Power Company was a landmark employment discrimination case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, high school diplomas and intelligence test scores such as IQ tests were judged to be no longer allowed to be used as prerequisites for employment. In an environment where companies are scared of testing IQs and easily proving a job-seekers basic competency, it's easy to see how a "college degree" became the standard proxy for proving basic competency and somebody having the ability to be trained for a non-trivial job. And as a society, that's been a jaw-droppingly awful trade. Rather than take maybe a few tests when you start to look for a white collar job: we've compelled all of of our youth to attend at least 4 years of education that they usually don't need (wasting 4 years of income-earning potential), and to go deep into debt as the basic standard of life. This has many unbelievably negative second order effects on the world, including drastic consequences for the most responsible people starting families.