The old "college is about being well rounded/learning how to learn" narratives made sense 50-100 years ago, when people were going to university as more a "cultural elite" thing. The rich 20-generation legacy who attends to build his social network, mixing with the top-5%-of-his-class scholarship student and social-climbers powering their way through school, had a different set of needs. Yeah, let them study Latin and great thinkers so they can schmooze in the corridors of power. It was fine when only a few percent of the population went on to university, and the actual degree content was less important than that you got a degree.

However, the kids signing up today-- especially in well-known high-revenue programs (CS, EE, etc) are in it because they either 1) love the subject matter or 2) are bootstrapping their careers. These kids have neither use nor interest in becoming cultured or well-rounded. They'll go further referencing Dennis Ritchie than William Blake.

There might be a case for a writing course or two, but all those 100-level survey humanities or "fun sciences" classes you're taking to hit general studies requirements? I doubt it. Or the requirement some programs have of "at least NNN total credit-hours" even if you can technically hit all the content requirements on fewer.

I'm surprised you aren't seeing legitimate universities responding to the market and producing a 2-3 year BSc program, stripped of almost all general-studies courses. You want to fight tuition increases? Get kids out in 2.5 years!

I assume the endgame of this would be that a lot of literature and philosophy professors will be out of work, but this surely leads into some sort of punchline about them working at Starbucks..

Funnily enough this is how it works in the UK. All BSc/BA degree are 3 years long without any GenEd requirements.

Except it's a pretty common lament that most people who major in CS/EE/whatever don't actually learn the skills in college that they use daily on the job. Honestly, the most important thing I got out of my EE degree was comfort reading research papers and confidence that I can learn whatever I want with time and effort.

It's always a little off-putting when I see people suggest that higher education is just for a job, and discount the importance of the above. Education that teaches you how to work but not how to think is part of how you get people believing things like vaccines are bad.

Trade schools are awesome, not arguing that, but so is critical thinking.

I don't know about others, but for me university was an important experience as a place where I could grow as a person. It's a time where you get a few years to figure it all out before you spend the next 45 years working. Even if I could've done a 1 year course and then jumped straight into working full time, I wouldn't want to do that, and I don't think people should necessarily do that. There's more to life than getting a good qualification and getting a job that pays well.

I earn more than practically everybody in my friend group, yet I'm no happier than they are. I'm not more fulfilled in my life because I have a piece of paper that says I'm good with computers.

Did you need the university framework to grow as a person, or maybe it was the independence, that allowed that growth?

It sound super fucking corny, but when I left home at 18, I didn't really know who I was as a person. University really helped me find that.

It's not just the independence, but the fact that at university you have a lot of free time, and you have a lot of opportunities to meet and interact with people from different backgrounds, who have different interests to you. I don't want to spend my days hanging out with a bunch of software engineers. I'm actually proud of the fact that in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who's a software engineer. I actually hate talking about software or computers outside of work, I spend 40+ hours a week doing that shit, I want to do anything that doesn't involve software engineering for the other 128 hours of the week.

Would you only know software engineers if you hadn't gone to university? I did not attend university and did not know another software engineer (outside of interacting with some online like on HN) until about 15 years into my career when a good friend started dating one. It does not really seem like the norm to only know software engineers. We're a pretty small segment of the population (~0.8% of the workforce).

But I do know people who's entire circle of friends is programmers and tech people. I guess if they're happy, then they're happy, but it's not for me. I enjoy my job, but there are other things I enjoy more.

> no happier

The other side isn’t better. I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.

> I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.

I'm not really in the "money is irrelevant" bucket but this doesn't look like a monetary problem you're facing here.

Seems like you overtuned things and hit a lot of diminishing returns, where you worked hard but didn't see much for it, but now you assume people who work less hard have seen even less, but that's not actually always the case because well we are told the world is unfair quite often, yet in cases like work we for some reason decide not to believe it.

I know for a fact people who have worked less hard have more...but again, mostly at better schools, or have wealthier backgrounds or are just plain luckier than me.

I guess the real problem is I'm still a failure no matter how much effort I put in.

Everyone else I know was in the same situation. We spent 4 years partying, hanging out, and having a good time.

I'm aware that it is a position of privilege to be able to say that university is a place to find yourself, but it's not a position of immense privilege at all in New Zealand, or most of the western world for that matter.

These days, I earn enough that I generally don't worry about money. I check my bank balance on payday to see how much I've got, and don't worry about it for the next month. I'm no happier than I was when I had to check my balance every time I went to the shops, when I had $5 to last me 2 days to payday. Sure, I'm less stressed, but I'm not happier.

Spending an extra year or two on growing personally and intellectually costs comparably to a luxury car. It'd also be nice for everyone to literally drive a luxury car, but for most people it makes sense to drive something cheaper and more practical, rather than borrowing and spending that much resources on it; and in a similar manner for most people it makes sense to get practical education instead of "buying" in addition to that a year or two of self-improvement that you can't really afford.

Do you mean elementary school? Historically, that is the level of schooling that was provided to all citizens to learn how to think and allow them to become active participants in a civil society. Although it is debatable of how successful it has been at that in modern times.

Historically, college was reserved as a finishing school for the wealthy to learn the social graces of upper-class society. It was only after people started noticing a correlation between wealth and completion of a college degree that the lower members of society started pushing for affordable access, believing that they would also be able to join the upper-class with that experience.

If you go back far enough you are absolutely correct, and there certainly is a history of elitism in colleges (and a legacy of discrimination).

However land grant colleges, the higher education act, Deweys ideas on pedagogy, all were premised on the idea that people needed more then rote learning and instruction in the trades to succeed.

I think you are also ignoring the influence of the Progressive educational movement and the G.I. Bill.

Is it after my freshman year, going into my senior year, or only once I have that holy piece of paper (a college degree).

Regarding history...well historically colleges were for wealthy white men/the upper class.

But trades are results-driven. The critical thought, business-mindedness, etc have all developed without the 4 year degree precondition for all successful trades.