3 ms·

That is the aspirational purpose, not the functional purpose. Universities have long advertised job placement rates for the majors in their departments- I recal

That is the aspirational purpose, not the functional purpose. Universities have long advertised job placement rates for the majors in their departments- I recall a lawsuit against a university I was going to by alumni with the allegation that the numbers were artificially padded to the point of false marketing (I don't recall the outcome, though). Even if we were to accept the premise that universities exist to feed society with educated people, we should then question the value of the education students are getting, given the significant grade inflation over the last 20 or so years.

Juliate 2mo ago
That’s not aspirational, that’s their very original purpose, which lands in their name.
figassis 2mo ago
"Universities have long advertised job placement rates for the majors in their departments" - they shouldn't have, this was actually never their purpose but it was easy to make that promise when jobs were easier for college graduates, so they used it to sell more seats. No one can give you a formula to get a job. You're competing with everyone for a scarce resource. That formula is self defeating. Let's enroll 10000 students and promise all of them that if they are on the top 500 they will be employed at one of the 100 available jobs? And really, if universities wanted to feed the entrepreneurship engine, they should use their endowments to create funds within their programs, so innovative students could apply for, get some seed funding that is required to actually become a real business and generate a return on the fund. Then you not only create actual founders, you grow your endowment and you actually evaluate the university on their fund's performance. You democratize the YC model. I wonder why they haven't tried. Maybe bc they can't actually create founders?

3 ms·

That is the aspirational purpose, not the functional purpose. Universities have long advertised job placement rates for the majors in their departments- I recal

by zdragnar 2mo ago

Juliate 2mo ago
That’s not aspirational, that’s their very original purpose, which lands in their name.
figassis 2mo ago
"Universities have long advertised job placement rates for the majors in their departments" - they shouldn't have, this was actually never their purpose but it was easy to make that promise when jobs were easier for college graduates, so they used it to sell more seats. No one can give you a formula to get a job. You're competing with everyone for a scarce resource. That formula is self defeating. Let's enroll 10000 students and promise all of them that if they are on the top 500 they will be employed at one of the 100 available jobs? And really, if universities wanted to feed the entrepreneurship engine, they should use their endowments to create funds within their programs, so innovative students could apply for, get some seed funding that is required to actually become a real business and generate a return on the fund. Then you not only create actual founders, you grow your endowment and you actually evaluate the university on their fund's performance. You democratize the YC model. I wonder why they haven't tried. Maybe bc they can't actually create founders?