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Re:Is college worth it? A return-on-investment analysis by tshaddox on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @02:16PM (#29004068)
I don't know. To some extent I do agree with you that the social experience of attending university can be very valuable in ways that aren't easy to measure. But part of the reason for that is that university is pretty much the only socially acceptable way for 18-22 year olds to move away from their parents for the first time and spend 4 years burning huge amounts of money hanging out with other 18-22 year olds. And I mostly agree with the article's claim that "Most students attend college in order to get a better job with a higher salary," or at least that's the core reason why it's generally socially acceptable to attend a university. What if there were other socially acceptable ways for 18-22 year olds to hang out with peers, and get exposure to various fields of study and potential career paths, that had significantly different ROI factors than traditional universities?
Re:Is college worth it? A return-on-investment analysis by sfink on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @01:54PM (#29016656)
I absolutely agree. I'm hopeful that with the ridiculous debt loads that are common today, that there's enough pressure to start inventing these kinds of things.

"Succeeding" at the current setup (which includes not going broke) requires high school juniors to know enough about what they want to do that they can do the ROI calculation, and heavily penalizes them for getting it "wrong". Which is ridiculous and unfair. It also pushes everyone to be the sort of people who I don't particularly like to hang out with.