Online delivery doesn't work well for seminars or labs, but basic proficiency with lecture material before enrolling and taking out a student loan would boost the graduation rate. Currently only 59% of students enrolled in a college program in the US complete their four-year degree six years down the road https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

I can certainly think of examples at earlier stages of US education, like the (effectively) compulsory daily pledge of allegiance.

There is a disturbing trend of mob rule where student activists become increasingly obsessed with the silliest things they perceive as "opression" and try to silence every voice at university campuses that doesn't toe the line with their worldview of intersectional feminism, cultural marxism and postmodern power games.

Points in case:

The idea that Yale students are smart enough to choose their own Halloween costumes made a mob of activists feel "unsafe" and they threw a fit, bullying two professors (who voiced this idea) for days until they resigned. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new...

A transgender candidate (masculine-of-center genderqueer) for the position of "multicultural affairs coordinator" at Wellesley college had to pull out of the race because his opponents accused him of having become a white male and that's not "diverse" enough. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/when-women-becom...

Then there's Evergreen College. I'm at a loss of words to describe the level of crazy that went on there, but here's Jonathan Haidt's take on it: https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/05/27/this-weeks-witch-hun...

I'm not sure anyone is actually convinced by it, but it sure does seem we are convinced we can't implement an alternative.

Money doesn't matter when you're 21, and rich in health, family and friends. Money matters soo much when you're 56, tired, boring, and have a bad back.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I wish I wasn't so late to the party, I could have had my house paid off my now.

Still, I dream there was a less stressful way of going about it all.

Basically you're trading the freedom to choose to go in debt for a personal decision, for going in debt for the average decision in your country. I'm ok with it, but I think it's a very different philosophy. A similar thing when I see single payer health care proposals in the US where they say it's too costly. Well d'uh. You gotta charge health care tax. It's not free, it's just that everyone is paying into the same pool. I'm paying almost 700€ a month for my socialized health insurance. Mostly because it's adapted to your income. But it's really not low cost or free. Just that everyone is paying together.

In the US, I can't 100% defend our universities (of which I am a product...both engineering and MBA) of achieving this (which would be a fine) goal.

In fact, in the US, it's proabably easier to be skeptical of "The Ivory Tower", where one hears what will work and should be done, only to go into the field, and find out it's a bunch of non-practical garbage from a textbook some prof wanted to sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark Under the Danish tax system, it is possible for a high-wage earner to pay up to 51.5% of their total income after gross tax, giving a total of 57% of total income.

The actual number, as a percentage of your income, that you pay in the US is very likely around - if not higher - than 50%.

And... there's a weird hump, because capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate. in that bracket, you have the very top end of those who work as employees, and small business owners who end up having to pay income tax on their profits. Much above that and most of your income is usually in the form of capital gains, and thus taxed less.

No, it is because they have marketable (in demand) skill(s).

If the whole country received a degree in history, would Denmark be as rich as it is today? They have an "education" right?

I think focusing on "marketable" is not a good governmental policy. It seems to me that education is the correct level of focus in terms of governmental policy.

IME academia absolutely does not teach that, most academics wouldn't know how to determine that. What tool to apply for a given situation is something I'd say is only learned with and can only be learned from industry experience.

For example, my day to day work would be much more pleasant of academia didn't go overboard making students create OO hierarchies for everything.

Cannot speak for non-STEM though.

I also highly doubt that he "had to hire" swedes. And if he did that would be an indication that something besides education was the reason. Education is in many countries if swedes are special, it must be something else.

So he says, but I have yet to see roles in Tesla's core business units that don't require post-secondary education.