If I wanted to be a lawyer from the outset, I'd say the 8 years I spent in post-secondary school was about 5 years too long. That's not how they do it in England, for example, where law is a 3-year undergraduate major. I'm pretty critical of the fact that legal education has been taken over by academics--there is large and growing disconnect between the three years of mandatory schooling and anything you need to actually know as a lawyer. Shortening law school to one year plus a few years of apprenticeship would be vastly preferable.

My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering, and you do really need a 4-year degree to do that. You can't learn aeroelasticity on the job. But the traditional engineering disciplines (aero, chemical, mechanical, etc.), along with medicine and pure sciences are the exception. The vast majority of people don't need 4 years of post-secondary education, including many "professionals" (bankers, lawyers, etc.).

How is that amusing? If he wanted to be a lawyer, he didn’t have a choice. Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be than someone who has it? I think I have more credibility to state that taking 6 courses of Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, etc. was a waste time for co outer science as someone who has been in the industry for years than someone who has not gone to college.

>"Also, who better to have the opinion that a “well rounded” education is not all it’s cracked up to be"

Which is a very different statement than saying pursing a well-rounded educational experience is nothing more than "trying to ape the leisure classes."