I don’t think most people going to 3rd-tier college to study humanities are doing it out of some abstract love of education. They’re doing it because every adult or counselor in their life told them they have to go to some college no matter what.

And, worse, many office jobs that were satisfied with high school diplomas or 2-year degrees in 1980 were requiring a bachelors by 2000. Even when the degree was irrelevant. Seriously, data entry does not require a history degree. At one place I worked nearly every one in the data entry positions had a history degree, and all had 4-year degrees of some kind.

(NB: Talking about in the US)

High school standards in the US have reached a point where I would not trust someone with only a high school diploma to be able to do data entry. Bachelor's degrees aren't a perfect credential but they're a passable filter, in lieu of building a much more extensive hiring process for low-level jobs.

Seriously. If you're working class or higher, you have to try to not get a high school diploma.

If highschool is really as terrible as you say and any random college is better then why not abolish most of it and let students take a reduced college workload at 16 years old? They would be able to finish college a year earlier. It's weird to have a dumbed down version of linear algebra and analysis in high school and then redo it in college.

Some public high schools offer programs like this, that let students accumulate some college credits while still in high school. This can shave a year off your 4 year degree.

Requiring a 4 year degree for a job even if the major isn’t relevant doesn’t seem wrong to me. Maybe data entry is taking it too far? Maybe the data was really sensitive and complicated.

It causes inflation of job requirements, delays entry into careers, produces vast amounts of unnecessary debt and spending, promotes substandard graduate programs so people can be differentiated from the other history majors, and all because a high school diploma is considered worthless by most companies for their non-technical entry level positions.

Maybe the value of differentiating potential employees is worth it overall.

Maybe for the businesses, I'm skeptical that this is a positive for society and the economy overall.

Size of their feet differentiates them too. How is it actually usefull?

To expand on your point, it's the arbitrary and superfluous nature of this requirement.

If I were hiring pilots, to go with the physical quality example, I would discriminate on height. You can be too short to operate an aircraft, and you can be too tall or too big to fit in some aircraft (I knew a helicopter pilot who only flew helicopters because he couldn't, physically, fit in fighter aircraft which had been his dream job). But if I were running an airline, I wouldn't use this as a discriminator on all my employees, only the ones that it made sense for.

Degrees ought to be treated similarly in white collar jobs.

If that’s a useful differentiator then people would probably use it. Maybe you’re trying to imply that whether or not a candidate has a certain credential is not useful as a differentiator?

Would they? We don't use IQ or neuroticism, are they useless? We have solid proof that attractive sociopaths get ahead more, is that usefull?

Maybe we should not pretend that hiring is this optimally tuned machine that knows exactly whats needed

If the knowledge is not required for the job, what is the degree for? Is it a concealed/outsourced IQ test? Is it a concealed illegal minimum age requirement? Isit collective insanity?

I dare you to provide an explanation that is not illegal and/or deranged.

Flipping this around, put yourself in this situation: you have five open positions, and expect 300 applicants. You have approximately 1 hour per day to interview, and need to fill the positions in 10-15 business days.

You would like to find people with the following characteristics: They can follow complex instructions with minimal oversight, they finish what they start, they have good social skills to work with colleagues and occasional outside parties, they are fully literate (i.e., spell well, read quickly, understand context), and can be trained and managed.

You're handed 300 resumes. How do you select the top 10-15 that are most likely to satisfy the requirements?

What would be your initial filtering criteria?

Past work experience, letters of reference, relevant training program/certification. This is assuming there is not a degree program that can be seen as preparatory for the position. A 4-year degree is a useless indicator when it's irrelevant to the workload. It tells you the person was willing to spend $40-80k (in much of the US) for a piece of paper that didn't prepare them for the job you're hiring them for.

Young people don't have past work experience, hence the need for them to put themselves through a college to serve as a signal for what they might be capable of.

Obviously, once you have work experience and letters of reference, no one cares about your college. But you're not going to have that when you're 18.

University is also a social exercise, which can serve to signal that you are okay or at least exposed to the type of cultural norms that might exist at an employer that is already full of similarly college educated people.

I listed relevant training/credentials. 2-year degree programs and 1- or 2-year training programs used to be more common than they are now, and should be restored as a reasonable entry into more white collar jobs.

> Obviously, once you have work experience and letters of reference, no one cares about your college. But you're not going to have that when you're 18.

That's actually not the case, unfortunately. My wife is fluent in two languages, can read and communicate in a couple more but isn't fluent, has 12+ years of experience, and letters of reference from CFOs and CEOs from major international corporations, and is struggling (here in the US) to get a non-minimum wage job in a medium sized city (we'd be better off if we were in a larger city, but this is where my work is right now).

For a somewhat large company, it may be necessary to come up with hiring standards to save time, one of which might be a minimum of a Bachelors degree, and maybe of a US college for simplicity of verifying the degree. I'm sure if you had the ear of an executive and they really wanted to hire you, they could make an exception, but that solution doesn't scale.

My point was more that the signal an elite college serves is relatively short lived assuming you then get experience at highly regarded employers. For example, once you have worked at a FAANG, no one cares if you went to a low ranked school.

> A 4-year degree is a useless indicator when it's irrelevant to the workload.

But it's not. It gives a good indication that the applicant has many, if not all, of the characteristics I listed.

And for many non-specialist jobs (data entry, call center, executive assistants, etc.) there is no relevant training program or certification. Few people grow up hoping to work at a call center or do data entry, so they're not going to go to school for that.

Again, a 4-year degree does not guarantee success, but it tells an employer far more than they were "willing to spend $40-80K for a piece of paper." Many people want to go to school to learn about something they love, then they get out and need a job.

I think it's fair for a hiring person to seek out degree holders as a desirable criteria.

Why are there 300 applicants? Why do employers have high standards for low skill jobs? It's because all these people failed to get an education that prepares them for a well paying job and now the employer is basically benefiting from their choice of education without having to fund it or pay a good wage.

As it is right now, being an average human in a developed country doesn't pay because there are lots of average humans in developing countries who are begging for work harder than you do.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'd embrace and extend your remarks with two other illegal or semi-illegal reasons:

One is employees who are deeply in debt can be more easily abused than, for example, wealthy skilled tradesmen. You can do all kinds of things to woman with a student loan debt larger than a mortgage and she'll have to put up with it, whereas a journeyman electrician, in addition to being paid more, would simply move to a competing jobsite the next day.

The other reason is colleges highly promote diversity in freshmen accepted class statistics but always cover up graduating diploma holder statistics. You can kind of legally/illegally guarantee you hire a white woman or certainly tilt the odds against PoC, by demanding the office receptionist hold a bachelors degree in something "to maintain office culture because everyone else in the office went to college and we wouldn't want her to feel left out". Presumably those type of places where PoC need not apply, will soon require their janitors to have a four year degree in some sort of liberal art...

The article is about colleges in the US, so I have no reason to doubt you. It’s just a ready bleak observation for someone who is raised to pursue a career that would make me happy, and be lucky enough to live in a country that allows me to do that.

More and more the Internet makes me feel that the US somehow lost the cold war and it’s now a dystopian nightmare.

I wouldn’t know. I went to college for a topic I’ve always loved and that happens to be lucrative. I actually think the narrative of “pursue a career you love” is still the basic message. It’s just framed as requiring a college education in order to achieve that. There is some truth in it, as it’s hard to even get your foot in the door without the credential.

> More and more the Internet makes me feel that the US somehow lost the cold war and it’s now a dystopian nightmare.

And yet the country is attracting talent more than it exports it!

99% of the people writing about how the US is a dystopian nightmare haven't lived in any other country.

I don't think it's a dystopian nightmare. I just think about how you guys got all those counter productive policies.

Guaranteed student loans in combination with private college simply doesn't work.

The way you zone your cities is causing widespread social problems.

Arresting people for doing drugs doesn't rehabilitate them.

It's not a dystopia, it's just lots of short sighted policies that cause long term failures.

Outside perspective - here in Europe, enormous numbers of people in late middle age to old age return to university out of love of learning. Despite low to negligible impact on wages etc. They generally have better outcomes in terms of overall grades also. There's a boatload of research into intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation that supports the idea that we have an innate love of learning.

One million percent yes.

> I don’t think most people going to 3rd-tier college to study humanities are doing it out of some abstract love of education.

Well, the fact that they are third-tier already tells you that they won’t get some cushy job from the education by itself.

Are they necessarily doing it for the love of education? Probably not. But I suspect that that motivation is more likely to be found in them than the students at the top-tier institutions that will be welcomed by the open embrace of six-figure salaries and social status once they graduate.

As a couple of other commenters have said, lots of ways to get high-quality education freely/cheaply without going to a university.

Beyond that, if schools put a big warning label on their recruiting materials that said "EVEN AFTER YOU SPEND $200K TO ATTEND YOU WILL LIKELY NOT BE ABLE TO FIND A HIGH PAYING JOB" then sure, that would be fine. But that's not what they do. They allude, if only vaguely, to the value of education to one's career. Many people have gone and gotten these useless (financially) degrees because they have misconceptions about what the result will be. As I said, hopefully the market is correcting that issue as people become more aware of what they're getting.

And hey, like I said, there are people who come from rich families or who get full scholarships, and the calculus is different for them. But for everyone else, it's one thing to value education for it's own sake, and it's another to value education at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars (not including the opportunity cost of not working for four years or the interest on the loans to pay those hundreds of thousands of dollars). College is a huge, huge investment of money, and while I definitely value education, I don't think there's a valid argument to be made that any soft education at a low-tier university is worth its price tag.

Its also a regulation issue.

Medical doctors carefully regulate the number of new doctors to keep wages high. Its difficult to get into med school but when you graduate you'll likely get a medical doctor job.

Public school teachers do not regulate the number of new public school teachers at all, and as such the state U system in my state produces roughly twice as many ed degree holders as there are jobs. Assuming hiring system is perfect (which it is not, LOL) the bottom half of ed grads in my state have to find non educational work. Four years of "show up on time and do what you're told" makes them good waitresses and bartenders in my experience, but on a civilizational basis it seems an incredibly waste of money and talent.

I don't think that's the reason medical school is exclusive. It's expensive and time-consuming to train good doctors. If you are sick, would you rather have your doctor be the one who who graduated from a class of 25, or the one who graduated from a class of 250? Which one do you think got the better education? More hands-on experience? Direct attention from instructors?

>Beyond that, if schools put a big warning label on their recruiting materials that said "EVEN AFTER YOU SPEND $200K TO ATTEND YOU WILL LIKELY NOT BE ABLE TO FIND A HIGH PAYING JOB" then sure, that would be fine.

can't wait for college to put out prospectuses that list out all the risk factors in dry and exhaustive detail (eg. https://personal.vanguard.com/pub/Pdf/p3141.pdf#page=4)

I have found Community Colleges to be the perfect place for this actually.

Community College classes are MUCH cheaper, and are even more so if you don't take the class for credit (where I went, tuition was $20 for a 1 credit class for non-degree seekers. No that was not a typo, it was Twenty USD for the entire class).

Community College professors don't do research, so they are usually focused much more on teaching classes. I have actually known quite a few professors who are in actual industry and teach a class or two.

I took a Jazz Combo class every semester with a well known local musician. He enjoyed teaching the class because everyone wanted to be there (we were all adult non-degree seekers), and since it was on a weeknight, he wasn't gigging anyways so it was a nice bonus to his freelance work.

They generally aren't that high quality in terms of classes, and the humanities they offer are "transfer credits" when they aren't practical skills. I mean that there's little chance to go to a community college that has a strong English section, or gives any more than the basics of history or psychology.

CCs are mostly there either for cheap transfer credits, or technical programs for local industry; things like cad/cam, aviation tech, etc.

> They generally aren't that high quality in terms of classes, and the humanities they offer are "transfer credits" when they aren't practical skills.

There were a lot of classes I saw (and some I took) at Universities that were just as bad, if not worse.

I would say they have a wide variety, much like universities. I have generally had a pretty good experience doing it for non-credit (i.e. education for it's own sake).

The problem with community colleges is that you completely miss out on any meaningful networking. As long as all the best students see it as beneath them, you'll have a hard time meeting people in a community college who can actually help your career

I think your comment misses my original intent. If people might value education for its own sake (which is what I was replying to), then I have found Community Colleges to be the perfect place for this.

But to address your point:

> The problem with community colleges is that you completely miss out on any meaningful networking. As long as all the best students see it as beneath them, you'll have a hard time meeting people in a community college who can actually help your career

Since the instructor I had was a well known local musician, he actually called me up a few times for a gig, and I have done quite a bit of networking that way. I think you would be surprised just what type of networking oppritunities are actually are at a decent community college.

Like I said in my comment:

> I have actually known quite a few professors who are in actual industry and teach a class or two.

One of the best entry-level folks I have ever met we found this way. He is an incredibly hard and smart worker, but did not have the money to go to a four year university. So he went to community college, and a colleague of mine who taught there offered him a job as he was a student. Now he has a four year degree (he was able to pay his way through college with that job) and is one of the best contrbutors to that group.

I suspect community colleges are a fantastic way to recruit people who one would not find otherwise. People taking classes at night and holding down a full time job, and doing well, just out of interest- that's someone who has potential.

Yea I missed the point. Everyone I’ve ever met who went to a community college did it specifically to learn job skills since those are what all the programs were for. I didn’t know they taught things just for the sake of knowledge or personal interest.

There's a massive number of people who as adults or even seniors take classes on a non-degree path at a CC-- whether it's a language, an arts class, or whatever.

If you insist on a pyramidical social structure, 99% of the population will never meet or network with the top people in their field anyway, and as such a school that prevents them from doing what's impossible anyway yet saves money is wise, especially if the alternative is spending ten times as much on a pale imitation of what the people at the top would get but they'll never associate with them anyway.

Classic microeconomics vs macroeconomics problem. Individuals can always improve but you can't extend "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps harder" to an entire civilization. An individual benefits personally by going to Yale, if they can. You can't fix a national education system by making the official strategy telling kids their only hope is getting into Yale. Especially if there's an alternative that actually works for the masses, like CC.

Another problem is wildly varied quality. I’ve seen course material from some community colleges that made me think “wow, this seems to be a high quality resource” in all sorts of interesting subjects, but most community colleges in places I’ve lived near or been too have limited programs and often low quality ones at that.

If that’s the case you can get it for nearly for free by just buying the books and reading them rather than paying $25,000 a year for that same privilege.

So then why do we have formal education at all?

To create workers for the industrial revolution.

no, we have formal education because not everyone is an autodidact and may need actual help in evaluating and learning skills.

Many skills are not like computer programming. You're not learning physical therapy from coursera, or even something like human resources; some things you need others for to mentor, correct, guide, or provide facilities for.

No, he is right. Employers demand cookie cutter education and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that if everyone gets their cookie cutter education, earns money and then pays for their kids liberal arts education. We are at a point where everyone gets access to college but not everyone can actually support themselves. This is why the first generation of students has to maximize economic gains above everything else. Once the economy is doing well your kids will be able to pursue their dreams, or you can just go back to college yourself.

Apprenticeship is the historical way to accomplish this.

Formal education predates the industrial revolution.

Not for the masses.

I value education for its own sake. So I got my degree from a well regarded university in a lucrative field that I'm good at and enjoy. A roof over my head and money in my bank account, I can study anything I want without worrying about the financial yield. Sometimes that takes the form of free MOOCs. Sometimes that takes the form of paid classes taken through university extension programs. Unlike when I was taking classes for degrees, I'm learning things I want to learn, not things I have to. It's very nice.

This is the way to go, go to university so you can earn money. Once money is no longer a problem, focus on all your other life goals. That could involve getting the education that you really want and as long as you can afford it that's perfectly acceptable.

However, many people are not in your situation. They have to work hard to get a good job and if they pick the wrong degree they will have to work even harder in the future. The education itself is not the problem, it's the unsustainable nature of getting a loan for a degree that does not empower you to pay the loan back.

Yea, but we don't need the large-college-campus model for education for its own sake. As far as I can tell, the social focus of those institutions actually _hinders_ education (even as it supports social & emotional growth, networking, etc., which all serve the secondary purposes of campus-colleges).

In terms of education for its own sake, why is Coursera insufficient? Or Youtube? Or, for that matter, book clubs?

I imagine for many subjects, great benefit comes from the probably millions of dollars worth of equipment you get access to.

EDIT: didn’t see GPs caveat.

We have infinite free/cheap educational resources on the internet. University only exists for the credential now.

I wouldn't say it's just for credentials. Having passionate and smart colleagues and professors does wonder for your own passion and determination. It's the same reason companies have much more innovation in offices compared to remote working.

The other thing is the networking, I have plenty of former colleagues that own their gig, and plenty others that are CEOs, CTO, COOs

I went to a crappy state school after community college and met exactly 0 passionate professors along the way. It was an astoundingly miserable experience. None of my classmates have gone on to do anything of note.

which is exactly why a good school is better than a bad one: the courses and materials might be the same, but the experience can be totally different. IMO for most of us it's not worth getting into debt to pay any college, unless the college is in top X, or if you need the certification for your profession. Paying 60k a year for a mediocre college is one of the worst decisions you can make. You can achieve just the same amount of knowledge in less time on your own.

I think there's a value in being immersed in a subject, with peers equally passionate about it.

You can't quite match the atmosphere of a late night lab session where you finally get your assignment in a working state, the impromptu conversations, someone pitching his startup idea and showing a demo.

This is certainly true, but the harsh reality is that there are “job training” degrees and luxury degrees. If you have all your other financial ducks aligned, I don’t mind if you drive a Mercedes or decide to get a degree you can’t possibly hope to get a job with. Otherwise it’s just financially irresponsible.

Because if you want education for its own sake, Google university will get you there much faster and cheaper. Universities are to get that diploma.

Every reply to you is repeating the same thing and they’re all wrong. Woe on the next great sociologist, philosopher, or artist who gets discouraged from study because “just do CS so you can make money” or “just go to the library it’s literally the same thing as four years of training under experts in the field and discussion with other smart young people.”

Realistically, the next great sociologist and philosopher is going to be an academic, and the amount of spaces for academics in those fields is so vanishingly small that if you went to a third-tier university, you're almost entirely unlikely to get one. If you went to Stanford/Harvard/etc., maybe, but still not great odds.

It's like saying that you're discouraging the next lottery winner by telling people that playing the lottery is a bad investment.

That probably has more to do with 'greatness' as a product of the publishing system. (Meaning: it's great because it's published in a prestigious medium, not because the content is inherently superior) The next plato will likely be completely uncelebrated in these mediums, and will publish on an uncelebrated website or publisher.

To be fair, first Plato was born in aristocratic family and got best education possible at the time with private tutors. He definitely did not go to equivalent of 3rd tier university.

I didn't know that. But, I'm not surprised. It's entirely possible that Ted Kaczynski is the plato we're looking for.

Almost everyone goes to college to get a job. People who can afford to take risks like trying to become a philosopher don’t come from backgrounds where price is even a consideration. No middle class person dumb enough to believe trying to be a sociologist is a good idea will be smart enough to actually make that happen.

The vast majority of people are not the next great sociologist, philosopher or artist. The idea that you create a super individual by ruining the lives of thousands of people is really destructive. Is that genius really productive enough to offset the productivity loss of thousands of people?

You are wrong. Not every reply is saying that.

I don't really know of any great sociologists though.

I kind of feel it may be a made up field to promote forms of Marxism and not something that actually contributes much to the body of human knowledge. Nothing entirely wrong with that either if it's something a person is into, it's just, well, we might actually be better off with less sociology students. The half baked and non realistic ideas that come out of that cause problems in the real world.

The reason I feel this is not from outside observation but because I spent a bunch of time in sociology classes many years ago. 4 as I recall. I wish I'd spent the time in extra math classes and I believe the world would be better off if people did.

“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” - Good Will Hunting

You know the theme of the movie is actually arguing against that quote, right? The conversation on the bench is the climax of the film; Robin Williams lectures Matt Damon about the limitations of book learning.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the movie is arguing against book learning, just that it's no substitute for real experiences.

Sure, I’d agree with that.

Library works pretty well for that, and has for hundreds of years.

*big caveat for hard sciences of course

I'm not sure I agree. I don't have a lot of experience with other humanities, but history is a verb rather than a noun. You learn history by doing history rather than reading it. I do think that universities are often too conservative about getting students into the archive quickly but a bunch of institutions are rapidly equipping students with archival and analysis skills and sending them to do history. This is very difficult to obtain from a raw library.

That's entertainment and if you have to get a loan to fund your entertainment then you better plan on finding a way to pay that loan back. There is a reason why this form of entertainment was reserved for the rich, they could afford it.

Nowadays every single bloke demands free entertainment education without having to work for it.

With the costs required to obtain an education as they are, we are well beyond valuing education simply for the sake of valuing education. If it requires years and years to pay off, then we absolutely must look at it like an investment.

Yes and once your first cash cow investment (STEM degree) has paid for itself you can go on and do any liberal arts degree that you want.

Those people exist, but they are a small fraction of the population.

The number of people going to college to increase their future potential earnings is a far, far larger group.

Yes. And generally no, they don't.

University is the last place for anyone who values education for its own sake