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I agree with you in principle, but it's very easy to have this attitude when the education isn't obscenely expensive. Which is why the "I'm never going to use

I agree with you in principle, but it's very easy to have this attitude when the education isn't obscenely expensive. Which is why the "I'm never going to use this, what a waste of time" feeling among American undergrad students is so common. If you fix the affordability problem and bring it back to where is was in the mid 70s (inflation adjusted) I think things would be a lot better.

duped 3y ago
My point is that higher education isn't job training and doesn't pretend to be, and people who think it is or should are the ones that need education the most because they don't seem to get it.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >My point is that higher education isn't job training and doesn't pretend to be, and people who think it is or should are the ones that need education the most because they don't seem to get it. That was true 50 years ago, but employers turned it into job training. My father in law retired a well off businessman with a History degree from Yale he got in the 50s. You know what a History degree from Yale qualifies you for today? Teaching History and maybe writing some books. The degree didn't change and Yale didn't change.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  > and doesn't pretend to be I'm not sure about this part... A very common pattern in my conversations with working class friends and family from my parents' generation is: "we were told that if we sent our kids to college, they'd have better lives than we did, but instead we all just ended up with more debt than we could handle". It's tricky! If you tell teenagers and their parents the truth - this purely academic program will not train you for any job besides pure academia, which, while it can be a fantastic career, is a super risky hits business in which only a few will truly succeed - then that's only going to sound like a reasonable risk to take for wealthy families. But then you've badly limited your pool of academic researchers to this extremely small and honestly often not as promising set of rich kids. Maybe one solution (which is not workable in the real world) would be: any academic program that does not have a viable "job training" component should only accept students on academic scholarship, regardless of their own means. If some neutral party thinks they are promising enough in that field to pay their way, they get to go for free, otherwise they don't get to go at all. The programs that do graduate people with directly marketable job skills could keep working the current mercenary way. The reason this wouldn't work in reality is that the wealthy would still just game the scholarships in some way. Alas.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    There is a big difference in value between different degrees in the real world. Yet the costs are similar. What someone studies is very important and universities do not do a good job of telling people that. There is nothing wrong with art/music/history. If you are interested by all means take a lot of courses in them. You can learn a lot of valuable skills which is why good universities required a diverse background of "generals" that these (and many more) fit into. However they give far more degrees in these things than are needed. (even physics gets more degrees than the world needs - but most getting a physics degree can better pivot to something else well paying).
  - duped 3y ago
    > I'm not sure about this part... If you want to know what a university will teach your kids, ask them. They'll even tell you without asking them - it was pretty obvious to me as a dumb high school kid on campus visits what the emphasis of one program or another was going to be.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      What I'm saying is: universities are incentivized to mislead people (including themselves!) about this. If you are a working class family with a kid who is very talented at math, and you go sit down with the counselors and ask them: If my child studies pure theoretical math, will that open them up to a life full of possibilities? they will say "yes, it absolutely will". But that's not true. It might be true, but it's a big risk. It's a risk a wealthy family can very easily absorb. But if this child from this working class family takes on this risk using student debt, it might go poorly. They might very well be good at pure math but not be good enough to go into academia. Then they might be unsure what else they can do with that degree, unable to get their foot in the door at the kinds of employers where just a general proof-of-being-smart degree is enough. And now they have debt and uncertainty about what to do. It also might work out great! But it's a risk. And I know a number of people who feel they ended up on the wrong side of that risk.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
No, I don't think that's it. I think it is simply that you have to put an awful lot of people through the explore part of the learning loop, to get a handful who will reach the exploit part of the loop, for any given subject. 99% of what we all learn in college is a waste of time for us. But we all have a unique 1% that is vital to who we become. Over time I expect that 1% to become 0.1%, then 0.01%, and for that vitality to become ever more concentrated in that sliver.

duped 3y ago

My point is that higher education isn't job training and doesn't pretend to be, and people who think it is or should are the ones that need education the most because they don't seem to get it.

Clubber 3y ago
>My point is that higher education isn't job training and doesn't pretend to be, and people who think it is or should are the ones that need education the most because they don't seem to get it. That was true 50 years ago, but employers turned it into job training. My father in law retired a well off businessman with a History degree from Yale he got in the 50s. You know what a History degree from Yale qualifies you for today? Teaching History and maybe writing some books. The degree didn't change and Yale didn't change.
sanderjd 3y ago
> and doesn't pretend to be I'm not sure about this part... A very common pattern in my conversations with working class friends and family from my parents' generation is: "we were told that if we sent our kids to college, they'd have better lives than we did, but instead we all just ended up with more debt than we could handle". It's tricky! If you tell teenagers and their parents the truth - this purely academic program will not train you for any job besides pure academia, which, while it can be a fantastic career, is a super risky hits business in which only a few will truly succeed - then that's only going to sound like a reasonable risk to take for wealthy families. But then you've badly limited your pool of academic researchers to this extremely small and honestly often not as promising set of rich kids. Maybe one solution (which is not workable in the real world) would be: any academic program that does not have a viable "job training" component should only accept students on academic scholarship, regardless of their own means. If some neutral party thinks they are promising enough in that field to pay their way, they get to go for free, otherwise they don't get to go at all. The programs that do graduate people with directly marketable job skills could keep working the current mercenary way. The reason this wouldn't work in reality is that the wealthy would still just game the scholarships in some way. Alas.
- bluGill 3y ago
  There is a big difference in value between different degrees in the real world. Yet the costs are similar. What someone studies is very important and universities do not do a good job of telling people that. There is nothing wrong with art/music/history. If you are interested by all means take a lot of courses in them. You can learn a lot of valuable skills which is why good universities required a diverse background of "generals" that these (and many more) fit into. However they give far more degrees in these things than are needed. (even physics gets more degrees than the world needs - but most getting a physics degree can better pivot to something else well paying).
- duped 3y ago
  > I'm not sure about this part... If you want to know what a university will teach your kids, ask them. They'll even tell you without asking them - it was pretty obvious to me as a dumb high school kid on campus visits what the emphasis of one program or another was going to be.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    What I'm saying is: universities are incentivized to mislead people (including themselves!) about this. If you are a working class family with a kid who is very talented at math, and you go sit down with the counselors and ask them: If my child studies pure theoretical math, will that open them up to a life full of possibilities? they will say "yes, it absolutely will". But that's not true. It might be true, but it's a big risk. It's a risk a wealthy family can very easily absorb. But if this child from this working class family takes on this risk using student debt, it might go poorly. They might very well be good at pure math but not be good enough to go into academia. Then they might be unsure what else they can do with that degree, unable to get their foot in the door at the kinds of employers where just a general proof-of-being-smart degree is enough. And now they have debt and uncertainty about what to do. It also might work out great! But it's a risk. And I know a number of people who feel they ended up on the wrong side of that risk.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

No, I don't think that's it. I think it is simply that you have to put an awful lot of people through the explore part of the learning loop, to get a handful who will reach the exploit part of the loop, for any given subject. 99% of what we all learn in college is a waste of time for us. But we all have a unique 1% that is vital to who we become. Over time I expect that 1% to become 0.1%, then 0.01%, and for that vitality to become ever more concentrated in that sliver.