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He somewhat address this in the article. Would as many people pay the substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment".

by mrestko 11y ago

pjscott 11y ago
His argument on this point is short enough that it's worth just quoting entire: > (Yes, it is nice to have college for non-economic reasons too, but let’s be honest – if there were no such institution as college, would you, totally for non-economic reasons, suggest the government pay poor people $100,000 to get a degree in Medieval History? Also, anything not related to job-getting can be done three times as quickly by just reading a book.)
- rnprince 11y ago
  Personally, I'd say yes to his question - and indeed, this is a question, not an argument; and it's a question that presumes a knee-jerk reaction against Medieval History majors... Gross world product has been growing along an exponential function for some time, and machines are threatening to allow us to be comfortable even if we don't work as much as we physically can. Maybe giving everyone some years in their youth to enrich their lives would be a good way to organize the economy once it's a viable option. Maybe a lot of people agree with this, and in wealthier nations it's ~just~ now close to being within reach, but it isn't quite there, so what we're feeling would be considered friction in the transition.
nmrm2 11y ago
> Would as many people pay the substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment". "Life enrichment" isn't (just) an ends unto itself. Coming to terms with the magnitude of one's own ignorance is well worth a year or two of sunk opportunity cost. Read through the failed startup post-mortems posted here yesterday. And there's also real value in the ability to polish a piece of writing (for technical people) or a cursory understanding of the technical work that goes into the product (for business/marketing people). Edit: In general, conflating students with customers leads to messed up conclusions and backwards priorities.
- SilasX 11y ago
  >"Life enrichment" isn't (just) an ends unto itself. Coming to terms with the magnitude of one's own ignorance is well worth a year or two of sunk opportunity cost. Read through the failed startup post-mortems posted here yesterday. So then it is possible to learn about your ignorance without college? Edit: more broadly, I don't think it's wrong to say "college teaches you what you don't know!", but it is misleading. Life teaches you unknown unknowns. The structure of a university is not uniquely suited for teach you that; its comparative advantage lies in teaching knowledge that you just can't learn in practice because because of the theoretical background needed to piece together the big picture. That's not the same thing as unknown unknowns, and to whatever extent it teaches those is not because it's uniquely optimal to teach them.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    Of course. In another thread I called this the Einstein fallacy, and in pervades discussions of higher education in the US. It's far more likely that you'll know what you don't know (and how to learn it) if you invest two years of time learning enough about other fields to know where you need to consult an expert. (as an aside, the portion of my post you quoted has nothing to do with what you're saying? I'm willing to bet many of those people both had college degrees and also "wasted" a hell of a lot more VC capital than the cost of a degree. College is not a panacea for unknown unknowns (it's not a panacea for anything), but those are illustrative examples of how not knowing something can cost a tremendous amount of money and opportunity.) edit re your edit: I don't think the value of depth in a technical area is really up for debate (except for maybe in CS where some people seem to think there's nothing more to software engineering than low-throughput CRUD apps). Even the article concedes that point. The question is whether the rest of college is useful. We'll agree to disagree on studying fields in which you don't have expertise being a good mechanism for learning when you're over your head.
    - SilasX 11y ago
      >(as an aside, the portion of my post you quoted has nothing to do with what you're saying It was a case of people learning unknown unknowns outside of college. >We'll agree to disagree on studying fields in which you don't have expertise being a good mechanism for learning when you're over your head. I didn't say that it's a bad mechanism, just that it's not especially better than the kind of learning your pick up in life normally (eg the startups you cited), without blowing $50k in opportunity costs per year.

He somewhat address this in the article. Would as many people pay the substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment".

by mrestko 11y ago

He somewhat address this in the article. Would as many people pay the substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment".

pjscott 11y ago

His argument on this point is short enough that it's worth just quoting entire: > (Yes, it is nice to have college for non-economic reasons too, but let’s be honest – if there were no such institution as college, would you, totally for non-economic reasons, suggest the government pay poor people $100,000 to get a degree in Medieval History? Also, anything not related to job-getting can be done three times as quickly by just reading a book.)

rnprince 11y ago
Personally, I'd say yes to his question - and indeed, this is a question, not an argument; and it's a question that presumes a knee-jerk reaction against Medieval History majors... Gross world product has been growing along an exponential function for some time, and machines are threatening to allow us to be comfortable even if we don't work as much as we physically can. Maybe giving everyone some years in their youth to enrich their lives would be a good way to organize the economy once it's a viable option. Maybe a lot of people agree with this, and in wealthier nations it's ~just~ now close to being within reach, but it isn't quite there, so what we're feeling would be considered friction in the transition.

nmrm2 11y ago

> Would as many people pay the substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment". "Life enrichment" isn't (just) an ends unto itself. Coming to terms with the magnitude of one's own ignorance is well worth a year or two of sunk opportunity cost. Read through the failed startup post-mortems posted here yesterday. And there's also real value in the ability to polish a piece of writing (for technical people) or a cursory understanding of the technical work that goes into the product (for business/marketing people). Edit: In general, conflating students with customers leads to messed up conclusions and backwards priorities.

SilasX 11y ago
>"Life enrichment" isn't (just) an ends unto itself. Coming to terms with the magnitude of one's own ignorance is well worth a year or two of sunk opportunity cost. Read through the failed startup post-mortems posted here yesterday. So then it is possible to learn about your ignorance without college? Edit: more broadly, I don't think it's wrong to say "college teaches you what you don't know!", but it is misleading. Life teaches you unknown unknowns. The structure of a university is not uniquely suited for teach you that; its comparative advantage lies in teaching knowledge that you just can't learn in practice because because of the theoretical background needed to piece together the big picture. That's not the same thing as unknown unknowns, and to whatever extent it teaches those is not because it's uniquely optimal to teach them.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  Of course. In another thread I called this the Einstein fallacy, and in pervades discussions of higher education in the US. It's far more likely that you'll know what you don't know (and how to learn it) if you invest two years of time learning enough about other fields to know where you need to consult an expert. (as an aside, the portion of my post you quoted has nothing to do with what you're saying? I'm willing to bet many of those people both had college degrees and also "wasted" a hell of a lot more VC capital than the cost of a degree. College is not a panacea for unknown unknowns (it's not a panacea for anything), but those are illustrative examples of how not knowing something can cost a tremendous amount of money and opportunity.) edit re your edit: I don't think the value of depth in a technical area is really up for debate (except for maybe in CS where some people seem to think there's nothing more to software engineering than low-throughput CRUD apps). Even the article concedes that point. The question is whether the rest of college is useful. We'll agree to disagree on studying fields in which you don't have expertise being a good mechanism for learning when you're over your head.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    >(as an aside, the portion of my post you quoted has nothing to do with what you're saying It was a case of people learning unknown unknowns outside of college. >We'll agree to disagree on studying fields in which you don't have expertise being a good mechanism for learning when you're over your head. I didn't say that it's a bad mechanism, just that it's not especially better than the kind of learning your pick up in life normally (eg the startups you cited), without blowing $50k in opportunity costs per year.