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I might just be imagining it, but I seem to be getting an 'anti-college' vibe, or at least 'anti-traditional education' vibe from HN these past few weeks. Sure

I might just be imagining it, but I seem to be getting an 'anti-college' vibe, or at least 'anti-traditional education' vibe from HN these past few weeks. Sure, we probably can't afford to send 50% of the country to college. But why not try to send as many as possible, at least of those who want to go? Dominated by those whose parents can afford to send kids to college? Hasn't it always been that way? After all, if you can't afford it, no matter how bad you want to go, you won't. Not without assistance. I'm not sure I understand this negative bent on college education - or am I just reading things wrong?

cschneid 17y ago
Like everything else in politics, there is a nice gray area in education. The internet is very bad at gray areas, and tends toward extremism. The gray area here is between "pursuit of knowledge, become better citizens" and "career school, what is history for anyway". Universities used to be #1, and have shifted toward #2 over the years. Now people see it more as the default to be the career school, and laugh at people who are in favor of learning for the sake of learning. Then the problem is that while both approaches are relatively valid, they lead to different conclusions to the answer of "who should go to college".
- jrwoodruff 17y ago
  That makes sense, actually, since I definitely reside solidly in the middle of the two. Prior to college, I was definitely in the 'what is history for' crowd, but college broadened my horizons so much, and I enjoy learning to the extent that I could easily argue the 'pursuit of knowledge' reasoning these days. I went to a liberal arts college for an applied degree, so I guess that's a little of both worlds.