I think this highlights the true question. Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers?

According to PEW, Americans believe colleges are for work training:

"Americans are split on the main purpose of college, with 47% saying it is to teach work-related skills and 39% saying it is to help a student grow personally and intellectually."

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/06/02/purpose-of-c...

When college cost in the US what it did in the 1960s this sort of little bit false-dichotomy, little bit navel gazing question was at least fairly harmless. Now it's just fucking ridiculous even for most public schools.

There’s no jobs for people.

Therefore people try to get college degrees, even if they aren’t suited for it or going to be happy with it.

This drives up the demand for college, and specifically for degrees that lead to jobs.

This degrades the image and purpose of college (students aren’t here to expand their mind. They’re here so that recruiters won’t ding them.)

All of which leads invariably to Downstream issues, like credential inflation and growing student debt.

Eventually, college = jobs, and one of the greatest achievements of America, its liberals arts education, will tarnish and crumble.

Economic value now comes from fewer roles, which require specific skill sets to perform.

With more lopsided reward structures (few people corner most of the gains), there is increasing pressure for people to move into the few places where rewards collect.

This ties into the issues like " History majors can't get a job that will help them hold down a house or family".

The societal cost of it is that society becomes a monoculture of a few degrees and sources of information.

The greater advantages of a modern first world society in terms of societal achievement, art, culture and so on weaken.

There's something very broken with our modern society.

We also should make it easier for those academics to bring those massive gains, because academia isn't organized for that.

I still think this is not the real goal, but maybe it was at some time. (Is there more than one goal? The system appears to not be optimized for any reasonable goal.)

On top of that, it can be difficult to separate the people who are actually intellectual elites and the people who are good self-marketers.

I kind of think we should just be committing a lot more funding to those interested, who meet some reasonable, objective level of expertise.

I'm not saying either of these are the case, but it is worth exploring before we outright dismiss.

The other point I think worth adding isn't that many of these humanities and arts fields are unemployable, but largely that they are some of the most popular majors and in turn their economic value is diminished as such. If there were twice or three times as many graduates per year in Computer Science, I'd expect the perceived economic value of a CS degree to decline as well.

I don't really think the teaching part at most universities oriented toward training workers. If they were oriented toward training workers, then the administration would be worried about what skills are in demand by employers...probably training students on particular software, computer languages, jargon and techniques that are common. There would be more emphasis on getting various certifications while still in undergrad. I can't speak to promoting "intellectual curiosity" because it seems hard to define and if you did I bet it would depend mainly on the nature of the student...probably his/her genes, peer group and childhood role models...not on the actions of someone the student sees three hours per week during adulthood.

As it is, a professor can (very often, though not always) be totally incomprehensible and irrelevant to work, as long as they are not offensive, without any repercussions nor even any gentle communication that he/she explain things clearly. Humans tend to craft stories favorable to themselves, so even if the student evaluations are negative, the professor can just blame e.g., short attention spans in the era of marijuana and fortnite...or the professor just might not look at the student evaluations if they don't want to. Over time, some professors even develop a sort of perverse joy at confusing students...their confusion being the sign that the professor is very smart and that he is "challenging" them, when in all likelihood he is just asking them things he never explained clearly in the first place. In my undergrad, an EE professor bragged that the class average was a 23%; he also used his TA as a translator because he could not speak english.

It is expected most everywhere that students will learn work skills on the job and in internships...not at school. Professors at research universities spend all their time thinking about hard frontiers of a topic, and that frontier might have little to do with what you do on the job.

And taking classes also means giving up time wise something else. Opportunity cost is also a thing.

So yes, liberal arts are the higher forms of education, which are also further from the rest of us who need a credential because of credentialism so we can merely live. (Food, water, electricity, housing, medical, internet are effectively all required to live these days. )

Also your characterization of community colleges only being for those too poor to attend a 4 year school is totally out of touch and frankly a little stigmatizing towards an important pieces of public education.

I know many people who graduated with 4 year degrees after getting an AS at community college, which requires the exact same core liberal arts + math and science course requirements that state schools require. These people didn't do it because they were poor, they went because their high school GPA didn't let them get admitted to the schools they wanted right away. The fact that they got to save a ton of money, pick schedules conducive to part time work, amd get a real credential after 2 years (I know many employers who prefer an AS degree holder to someone who dropped out of a 4 year degree 2 or 3 years in) is just icing on the cake. And it didn't hurt long term prospects for career or education either, one of them even has a graduate degree from a school that is extremely respected in the field he studied.

Community colleges are awesome things, both for people studying specific trades and careers and for eventual 4 year school attendees. The more we can destigmatize them, invest in them, and keep them affordable and accessible to working people - the more we'll all share in the benefits.

Colleges shouldn't be in the business of training people for jobs - that is what tech schools are for. If you just want to get a job, go to a tech school, don't go to college. College is (or should be) about expanding your mind, your horizons. It should be about exposing you to new ideas and thoughts you hadn't been exposed to before. There is a reason why University and Universe have the same root.

Even if we pretend that the majority of people attend college not for the purpose of increasing their value to employers and getting out of their parents' house, but for personal edification, colleges don't even accomplish this ostensible goal! Most students are more ignorant in most subject matter than the day they step foot on the campus - https://www.nysun.com/new-york/students-know-less-after-4-co... ; https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-c.... Often they're propagandized for four years, saddled with debt, and told that they got an "education", so it's nobody's fault but their own if they can't find a decent job.

Three cheers for the AWS certs and modern-day educational options and good riddance to the corrupt university system (propped up by taxpayer-subsidized monies, of course).

the motte being the liberal arts/wholistic focused learning (only a philistine would be against that) and the bailey being the economically useful learning salesmanship.

> I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

Nothing wrong with the arts, but the fact is very few can support a reasonable lifestyle on it. By burning the inheritance you can produce art but nothing remains for your children. Study art by all means, but make sure you have something to support yourself on without burning up the hard work of your ancestors first.

I imagine the answer to that question would be interesting and nuanced.

If we're doing our job as a generation we are moving the focus of human education from the gross to the subtle.

This is patently false. Colleges compete and advertise based on their job placement rankings. Just a few years ago, law schools were sued for misrepresenting their employment statistics.

Whatever ideal, romanticized version of university and college experiences are touted, the reality is that they are marketed to parents and kids as the way to a better lifestyle.

Sure, "Liberal Arts" are largely about enriching the mind, but that doesn't change the fact that very, very few people can afford the luxury of going to get a 4 year degree just to "expand your horizons".

But then you have to be clear-eyed about what we're talking about here: from the perspective of a college student, is it worth paying 1-200k[1] to become more worldly, with some auxiliary benefits to their income potential? I would probably still send my (future) kids to such a place, but then I'm in a pretty high income/wealth percentile. I suspect that many people (including my family when I was a kid), looking at this clear-headedly, would rationally decline this deal. If you think the pricing of college reflects the "broaden your horizons" aspect instead of the perception that it's "protection money for a middle-class career", you're sorely mistaken. Which means there are and can be far, far, far more cost-effective ways to broaden your horizons, particularly in the era of Internet communities, cheap travel, and all of humanity's knowledge at your fingertips at all times.

[1] I'm aware that there are ways to get through college more cheaply, like starting in community College. But a system in which the majority of people are going through ccs first is a very different system, so the thrust of GP's point still stands.

I don’t think programmers will be obsolete; but I think the skill set will shift away from the analytical and mathematical traits that set programmers apart today, towards the fuzzier knowledge of the humanities. (Though my personal belief is that liberal arts educations must include science and mathematics as a core pillar.)

Specialization in algorithmic and mathematical thinking will still be of extremely high value, but the level of achievement required to be successful in that area will likely be crushingly competitive.

But, this is just a fun guess — let’s check back in ten years so we can see how utterly off base I was :)

People thought the same thing in the 80s....

Also, given that computers can test stuff on billions of people, I would say there is a good chance that you could have popular pieces of music and art that are produced largely by algorithms in the very near future.

I keep seeing this on HN. Only the privileged can afford to go to college to “expand their minds”. The middle class and even the upper middle class are not spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to go to college to “expand their minds”. They are doing it so they can get a job.

Where are all of these students with “expanded minds” going to get a job? I specifically told both of my sons that I would not support them in getting a degree that didn’t have an outlook for a decent paying job. I specifically had them look at the starting salaries of graduates, the placement rates, and the five year salary averages for the school and the degree they choose.

Whatever it "should" be for doesn't really matter. The majority of people (in America) operate under the assumption that going to College helps you get a job.

https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/statistics/

Anecdotally, the college I went to, New College of Florida, is a public liberal arts school whose costs aren't too far out of alignment with other state schools in Florida. According to their fees page, in-state tuition fees, room and board would total $16K a year; for out-of-state students, that would be $39K a year.

https://www.ncf.edu/admissions/tuition-and-fees/

Actually, I'd like to gently question your figures: you're indicating your kids are paying $2000 a semester -- so that would be $4000 a year, or $16,000 over four years. And you're saying that doesn't include their tuition, so that's just room and board, right? (That's under half the cost of New College's, which again sounds like quite a deal.) Further, room, board and tuition at this private college would still be under $20,000 over four years? Unless I'm missing something, that would mean tuition at this private school is less than $500 a semester. I can't help but suspect that either one of us has our math wrong, or you have the best school deal in the history of ever.

I too am very interested in the answer to this question. if you're spending that much and not going to a top 30 school, you're a chump. if you are going to a truly elite school, you're not paying anything close to the sticker price unless your parents are quite well off.

I'm not saying college isn't unreasonably expensive these days, but I often see this number for undergrad and I always wonder where the hell it came from.

Where did you get this idea? The term "university" (as an Anglicization of "universitas") refers to its guild-like corporate organization.

- college is in every way, dumped on teenagers as THE ONLY way forward

Absolutely true in my experience. High schools are entirely structured around two things: standardized test performance, and pushing kids into college. If you are not a college-bound kid, you essentially don't exist.

- No one is there to mature. No one is there to improve their concept of individuality. No one goes to college to learn for the sake of learning.

"No one" is too strong, but I think this is true for the majority. Most people in an undergraduate program (and probably also a majority in Master's programs) are there because they think it is the path to a good job. Because that is what has been drummed into them since elementary school. Learning, expanding horizons, etc. are secondary.

If most people at college were there simply for the sake of learning, enrollment would be a small fraction of what it is.

I studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Historical Linguistics, neither of which is part of anyone's plan for getting rich. But I studied those things because I was interested in them, purely for the sake of learning without any hope of financial reward.

Also, I made the best friends of my life in college, many of whom, 20 years later, are still my best friends.

Overall, I feel like I matured a lot in college.

As for my own kids, I'm encouraging them to do what I think will be best for them and their future based on their skills and temperment. My two oldest I encouraged to go to college. But my third I am strongly encouraging to go to trade school. I encouraged the two oldest to study whatever made them happy in college and to not worry about studying to make money. One is studying non-profit management and the other is studying animal behavioral psychology (she loves working with dogs). Neither of those are good career paths, but they are things they enjoy learning.

You don't need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college. My wife and I graduated without any student debt. My two oldest are about halfway through and so far they have no debt either (through a combination of working their way through college and academic scholarships).

Well, colleges used to be for the elites (either rich or very talented) to learn science and to do research.

It wasn't meant for vocational training for the general salaried worker. Now it's mostly that.

I ask one simple architectural question that weeds out many of the paper tigers:

“We need to deploy a website that is fault tolerant, secure, can handle one AZ going down and scalable. How would you do it using AWS technologies?”

I’m saying this as someone who has 5 AWS certs and interviews AWS Devops candidate. But I also have 20+ years of professional software development experience, a degree, and before that I was a hobbyist for 6 years.

Of course you can learn the foundations without college and not learn them with college, but on average it's much easier to do so with that.

When I started my career as a scientist in a corporate analytical lab 36 years ago, corporate funding for travel and continuing education was plentiful. When budgets got tight, that was the first to go. Those of us who were self-directed learners survived the downsizing and cost-cutting much longer than those who didn't.

That’s all well and good until they find themselves competing with people from other countries who are being trained to hit the ground running and are willing to work for less....

14 chapters of Digital Signal Processing in 12 weeks w00t!

For many of my engineering courses at a top tier public university it was in-one-ear-out-the-other.

Though, the most of stuff I learned at community college (pre-engineering) did stick.

As it happens, I use stuff I learned in my distributed systems courses--in that oh-so-awful university, hiss--on a weekly basis, if not daily, to solve those problems. (I use stuff I learned in my microeconomics and my political science and my sociology classes daily, but you can't put that on a resume, so obviously it doesn't exist.)

In the Salesforce consulting world the Certified Technical Architect (CTA) cert means you walk in the door at any of the big consulting firms at managing director or equivalent rank and that comes out to around $200k/year. The cert isn't that easy to get, it requires a dozen or so prerequisite certs and then an exam plus a board review but you could probably do it in a year and a half.

Also, i think over half of all CTAs are employed at Salesforce itself so you could always go work for them if consulting isn't your cup of tea (it's not for everyone that's for sure).

(Nobody cares about SWF.)

Except for button-pusher roles I've always hired for whys, not hows, and certification programs seem to never care about the whys. College degrees don't assert that you know how to learn, that you know how to derive the whys--but, in my experience, they correlate better than cert-hunting does.

Who thinks they're ever gonna do any cloud service right employing some dude who only has worked with traditional servers?

You'd be surprised how many insanely expensive and dorked up cloud setups out there that honestly could have been solved / way cheaper by some guy with a random AWS cert.

I'm not talking former barista turned AWS guy in a couple weeks, some background is required for that and random server guy of course, but the barriers are dropping.

I'd likely never hire an engineer with one of these certs and no relevant experience into a full-time position. I might offer an internship, but that's not a six-figure position.

Even still, I agree with the parent up above. A degree isn't strictly necessary, and if someone had the motivation, the talent, and the cert, I'd be willing to give them a chance as an intern.

Edit: I see we have some touchy SJW-types in the house this evening :)

However: Some of your other recent comments are spot on. The upvotes are on me. Try not to spend them all in one place.

When TX is taken the US will officially turn into a social/welfare state, the US is doomed already, similar to what happened to Rome in the past.

People from CA or Mexico are running from there for a reason, however when they arrive TX, their first to-do is to make TX look like where they used to live. They are virus.