It seems, at best, we have people trying to compare the worlds best prodigies with people who suffer from severe disabilities that prevent them from going to college and conclude that because the prodigies breezed through college that college is the reason for them being more successful people, but that is obviously a horribly flawed methodology.
It's kind of like looking at the Olympics to see how it has shaped the athletic ability of the athletes compared to the ability of the population who have never been to the Olympics. You are bound to find outliers[1], but observing that Olympic athletes are usually stronger athletes might leave you to believe that going to the Olympics makes one a significantly better athlete. However, in reality, those same people would still be among the best athletes even if they never went anywhere near the Olympics.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/winter-olympics/...
But, to stick with the comparison, many countries have programs to help out athletes who are economically disadvantaged as well to allow them to make it to the Olympics, assuming they already have demonstrated sufficient athletic ability to justify the funding. Just as sufficient academic ability is required for any college subsidy I have ever come across.
Although I'm not sure ability to pay ends at economic disadvantage. I don't feel that I can pay for college at this point in my life, with many preexisting financial commitments that need to come first, and I have a developer's salary. Nobody is going to pay my way. Not being poor doesn't mean money is readily available for such luxuries. There is a very real opportunity cost there.
What about academically disadvantaged students? Are there any studies to show how people who couldn't possibly graduate from college if they tried to the best of their ability fair by being given access to the entire course load and awarded a degree even with their technical failure? That would be very interesting and a way to start to control the variables.
Another way to think about it is whether you need to be told explicitly what you do for a job or whether you are given a field of problems to solve for (implied tasks). One of those is far more limited in risk and potential while the other is far more benefited by higher education.
I wonder if just working in a corporate setting and learning these skills as an intern or junior employee might be far more effective.
If it did not. Employment would not require it. Because as most have stated above. It was not about preparing for the workforce. It was for all these other reasons, or the theory of the subject. Why would we want a MS if all they did is meet people and learn how to cook a meal for themselves because they're no longer under their parents thumb?
I would say not too far into ones career. Education matters very little. As in diminishing returns. The best you'll get after attending 'University of X' 5-10 years into your career. Is a high-five because the hiring manager went there too. Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals. This is mostly true in all but the very specialized jobs in Tech. For the specialized few that went to top universities.
That's not so clear. Other theories I've heard include "college is a good proxy for being reasonably intelligent and able to complete a difficult task" (mostly from employers themselves) and the more cynical "college education is a class signifier." I personally would say that college is worthwhile, from a purely work perspective, because it provides the student with the tools to encounter a new problem or concept, learn about it, and teach himself how to solve it, but that there's something to the other two explanations I mentioned too. My Japanese degree taught me nothing about programming, but the experience of learning Japanese in a university was useful when I decided I wanted to learn how to program.
Of course there are exceptions (if you're a doctor your higher education materials were obviously directly relevant), but to me this helps explain why so many employers care about a college degree, and not necessarily a degree in a particular subject.
> Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals.
A computer science program that has courses devoted to stuff like .NET frankly doesn't sound like a very good one, since the idea of learning comp-sci is to understand underlying principles rather than memorizing how to use a particular tool.
What I mean is the things you mentioned while I do not dismiss them and I believe you. That being learning an unrelated major helped you with learning something else.. Is not actually enough for tech companies to want to hire you. But because we place so much emphasis on the paper. You're over-looked. So what you feel is a higher-education strength is actually a weakness in the market.
Most of the hard-luck stories I've heard related to degrees were people who'd had decent careers and then weren't able to get a promotion because of a company policy saying managers all needed a bachelors, or something to that effect, where the subject wouldn't really be what's at issue. If I'm really being shut out from interviews because my degree is in the wrong thing I have not noticed the effect -- even at tech companies.
To function as a person, a parent, a community member, a citizen, a consumer, a producer ...
This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program.
Higher education exists to provide the educational background necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving. It is a difference between a job of solving for implied tasks versus a job where everything is a directed task and nothing more is expected.