Who cares if we drop the standards to earn a degree? In a theoretical world where high-quality public education is freely available, who cares about earning a degree at all?

The most successful and competent people who I have ever worked with don't share much in the way of education, but they all feel some sort of passion and drive for what they do. They see potential in their work and think about it all the time, so they are good at it and they have a lot of useful insights.

"Education" shouldn't be a simple signal that you have enough diligence and financial werewithal to consistently show up in the same place over the course of 4 years. It should be a lifelong process of both asking and informing people what they are capable of.

Personally, I think the all-or-nothing approach of primary school->secondary school->career->grave is a huge waste of people. I think we just need to figure out how to provide adults with the time and safety to uproot their lives for a couple of years at a time.

People will care about earning a degree because the rat race never ends. When you devalue university degrees, people will start earning degrees just because they can and because clueless employers grasp at any straw they can use to differentiate between applicants. That's how it becomes impossible to get a half-decent job without a college degree.

That’s pretty much the current state of affair. People go to college because that’s what you do after high school. Ideally at an Ivy League because it looks much better. Then you go to grad school because that’s what you do after undergrad...

mba anyone?

It anything this would increase the standards... this type of thing comes down to convincing someone that you are able to complete said goals, and that the degree you are working towards and the school itself is worth it.

Education has value independent of any increase in earning potential. Society benefits as members learn a wide range of things. I believe society would be better if there were periods of time throughout ones life to go back to school and learn without worrying that it is useful, practical or will lead to higher salary. Imagine in every member of society learned about John Rawls theory of justice as fairness, or how to weld and make beautiful art or fix their house. Sure some people seek this out but imagine if we removed the instinct to value education or a degree only on its financial impact. Imagine if we removed financial pressure.

>Education has value independent of any increase in earning potential.

And it can be gained independent of college and independent of educating oneself for a career as well. It is easy for someone going to college to get both a degree in something that will allow them financial freedom in the future and to learn all sorts of topics that employers would not care about.

Most types of education can be obtained outside of a formal setting, but not everyone is self motivated; some benefit from structure and accountability. Similarly, the interaction with other students and expert professors is unique and shouldn’t be ignored. Alumni networks are powerful things.

I learned tools in logic class that allowed me to arrive at that conclusion with no other source necessary.

Value means utility in ones life. The experience of college adds numerous examples of utility to a generic students life beyond a future job.

I think it's the other way. If you pay a lot of money then you sort of can expect to get a degree at the end. When I went to school in Germany they made a lot of effort to weed out people. If it's for free you can't really complain but if you already have paid $100000 it's harder for the school to justify people failing the course.

Public funding sources can be tied to students and their success as well. If failing students means lower ratings and enrollment for the school, which in turn means lower funding levels, the school has just as much incentive to keep students advancing.

I'm highly skeptical that college degrees, or higher education follows a zero sum model, doubly so if you expand the value accounting to society at large.

I have to assume this is sarcasm but if not: you’re about 30 years late.

Instead, let's have only the rich kids have an education, that sounds like a great idea.

Why do you think this hasn't happened in Europe?

I don't have data for the whole of Europe, but bachelor degrees in Germany are much less common than in my country despite the fact that higher education there is much more accessible. This seems to correlate to the fact that Germany also has a very well-established system of vocational schools and university there is seen as a way of becoming a researcher or for certain high-skill careers, not a requirement for being treated as a functional human being (which is what I see higher education becoming in the US and my country both).

I can't speak for all of Europe, but Germany avoids having university degrees becoming a mere piece of paper useful only for signaling by having alternate paths to a fulfilling career.

My understanding is that most European colleges have entrance exams and only a fraction of people pass. And since entrance is based purely on exams, college admission is a much stronger signal than in the US.

I think it is the other way round.

You can easily enroll in any university you like, but can't advance in that major if held back in the rather difficult weed-out classes.

Due to significant political and social differences. For example, why has the value of a high school diploma decreased more in the US than in Europe? Why does the US have more of a problem with for-profit colleges? Why does the US have such a rapidly rising cost of college (regardless if the cost is paid by students or by the state)?

If I had to give a single root cause, it would be how we vote (the US system leads to a far stronger polarized two party system than Europe has).

Hasn't it? I'm all for public education, but at least in Poland, it seems that almost any half-decent job expects you to have education past high-school level.

Poland is a pathological case, because where communism fell we inherited one thing from it: obligatory two-year service in the army for all men of age 19 (except those with health issues, obviously). And one of the only few reliable ways to avoid it was to go to university.

The result was that literaly thousands of bullshit private universities were created not to educate you, but to help you avoid military. This also created additional income source for university professors, who earn pretty shitty salary in Poland.

Now, obligatory military service was abolished few years ago, but the trend of everyone going to college after high school remained.

Hadn't thought of that, thanks.

I was born and lived in an "university town", and I remember military recruiters in my town were absolutely expecting that everyone's going to university, and they defaulted to giving people the status of "not suitable for service during peace time" for any reason whatsoever. I heard that in smaller towns, on the other hand, it was much more difficult to avoid getting pushed into service.

I know a German who avoided work by staying in university into her 40s. This was only possible because it was free to her. Despite 20+ years of university education, she managed to get a low level job.

I don't know how prevalent this is in Europe.

But it's a general economic fact that people don't value what they get for free. They need to have "skin in the game", so to speak.

If you want evidence, look at how people treat rental cars vs their own. Or how they treat those ride share bikes. Or how they treat public bathrooms. Etc.

People may not value it but can I argue that society improves as a result?

I personally treat rental cars, bikes and public bathrooms the same as anyone else. I don’t trash them but don’t clean them meticulously. I still value their presence.

I agree with your sentiment, but understand his as well. I think it's mostly a cultural problem rather than some instinctual problem with humanity. Japan has a culture of cleanliness as far as I can tell. In my area, however, a handful practices seem to persist because of the fun derived from exploiting the commons.

Many times I hear the phrase "what do you care, it's a rental!" People who buy used cars tend to avoid ex-rentals.

Once a group I was in was staying in a hotel. We were all heading out to dinner, and one person came out of her room, leaving the light on. I asked why she didn't turn out the light. She replied: "why should I? I'm not paying the electric bill."

Apparently that's pretty common, as most hotel rooms I stay in these days require you to insert your room key into a device that enables turning on the lights, so they turned off when you leave.

This is so frustrating because it describes my family...

They understand empathy and the concept of a carbon footprint, but don't consider them when it comes to decision making. In my experience, it is as if it isn't a variable in the equation.

I attended public high school, where everything was free, and a private college, where everyone paid to attend. What a difference.

High school was populated by people "doing their time", who wanted to get by doing as little as possible, thought it was cool to be disruptive, cut classes, etc. They definitely dragged the whole thing down for the others.

College was different. People paid to be there, the work was hard, people wanted to be there and would take the hard classes to get their money's worth. There weren't any disruptive students.

What a difference.

Money is not the only way to pay. In fact, it is often the easiest way to pay.

I studied in a university in a country where you have a dual-track system - either you get in for free, but have to pass a far more rigorous exam (since you're competing against everybody else who is trying to get in for free), or you pay and get your spot. The people who paid their way in - or rather, whose parents paid their way in - tended to do that "doing their time" thing you described. The people who were studying for free were far more determined to make all the efforts that they had to put into passing the entry exam worthwhile.

You're also describing the difference between children and adults. In fact, I think you'll find that the older the college students the less the disruption.

When I was a boy I'd not take care of my shoes, wearing them out very quickly. My father applied a simple solution. He said if I wanted new shoes, I had to earn the money to pay for them.

My shoes started lasting several times longer. I was still a child.

My dad didn't think of this himself. The Army had the same problem with combat boots, and solved it by having the GIs pay for their boots.

That would be great. I've seen too many people coast off of prestigious degrees, while other hardworking people struggle because they do not have the same access to quality education.

Note, that OP isn't suggesting that the educational process be centralized. Just the funding. Unlike K-12 public schools, universities will still maintain full autonomy on how they want to go about teaching or structuring curriculum.

European countries offer free education, and their quality is still great.

Universal college education is still a great idea, even if it lowers the value of an individuals degree across the broader society. A world where more people can make meaningful contributions to the development of new technologies, providing healthcare, educate others, and contribute to other areas of human understanding the better the world will be for everyone (short of issues relating to capitalism itself).

The key piece of this is that should any universal college education legislation pass, it needs to be designed in such a way that we don't make the focus of college be the same as high school where the goal is to make sure everyone can pass. And in turn, include a very rigorous minimum education standard in order for an institution to provide government funded education.

>Universal college education is still a great idea, even if it lowers the value of an individuals degree across the broader society.

This is assuming the actual standards for a degree aren't lowered to achieve the goal of universal college education. That's why I bring up high school diplomas where the standards to graduate were lowered to increase the percentage of people with a degree. The end result was damage done to the degree and to the education that is needed for the degree. See the modern day nightmare of standardized testing preparation instead of education.

You are assuming that higher education institutions still have an incentive to actually make people able to make "meaningful contributions to the development of new technologies" and all that good stuff after a college degree becomes a requirement to signal to the rest of society that you're not useless.

Honest question. Instead of institutions declaring that so and so is certified in a field, why not let employers make these decisions based on the work that the student has produced. Particularly for the STEM fields, let each student publish their thesis or project work in a publicly available repo and rather than evaluate someone on GPA or degree, evaluate them on whether their domain knowledge is good enough.

Honestly and fairly evaluating an individual requires more resources than checking the value of a single bit (hasDegree==1). Society has attempted to address this scaling problem with a system of _degrees_ and/or _certifications_.

It's absolutely NOT free, and may not be without strings... such as your area of study (major), how far you want to go. Demonstrated competency going in, etc.

In this case, the investor(s) could look at the potential value/income for the person going in. If you want to focus on an area that has limited job prospects and low salary, then you're unlikely to get funding.

"how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree" I'd say the steepest decline began about 10 years ago. We have people receiving graduate degrees who are barely functionally literate, let alone know anything of value.