> Most of the adult population have not gone to college but somehow manage to become functioning adults.

We can't do better? Functioning is our only standard? We could go back to the Middle Ages, or be hunter-gatherers, where for 95% of homo sapien history probably most adults were 'functioning'.

You made a very dubious claim that college provides some magic that makes people who go to it betters "adults".

You don't define what adult means. You don't say or imply what ways college would help you become a better one.

For what I would define as "adult", which is understanding the realities of life outside the shelter of their family infrastructure, I would argue most colleges don't really further a student's self-reliance in that way.

If anything, they create another, different reality bubble which is again popped when they are dropped into to the actual real world, often with a mountain of debt. This is the point at which, in my opinion, where someone learns to become an adult.

Does learning new information and skills help one become a better functioning adults? Of course. But college doesn't have a monopoly on being the way to acquire information and skills.

As the price of education in the US continues to increase (for no good reason, other than people can get loans to pay it), college will increasingly fail the cost/benefit analysis for a lot occupations.

As an aside, your attitude seems to imply that you think people who have not gone to college are lesser in some way. I would apply some critical analysis to that.

Maybe that there was a stronger tie to college helping with being "well rounded" years ago, when most of the authority figures in your life up until college were politically conservative? So college might be your first experience where there were more politically liberal authority figures?

That is an interesting point. My dad entered college having grown up in some pretty fundamentalist, anti-evolution church, and became a doctor and an cosmopolitan sort of intellectual. He switched to a liberal church and learned about Darwin, and all sorts of stuff. But I took Attic Greek and Old English and weird English literary theory and Russian history and medieval history. I don’t directly use that stuff, but it does seem like it made me a better person, more aware of a bigger scene outside of my little track of software.

Right now, some knowledge of Russian history and 19th century European history is very useful. Because we're in a war that looks like a 19th century war. Like the many wars involving the British Empire, the Imperial State of Germany, the Prussian Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, and France. The era of the Great Powers, engaged in power grabs for reasons people thought were good at the time.

That's what we're seeing now. Understanding where that led last time is useful.

In the 19th century, nobody had that all much firepower. Battles were local. When that changed, the routine minor wars of the 19th century turned into World War One.

Also, knowledge of international relations, international law, military command and control in the age of smart munitions, the behavior of autocrats (esp in Russia), 20th century history of Ukraine, Russia's prior invasion of Afganistan (similar in its initial plans) and war in Chechnya, the strengths and weaknesses of military alliances and NATO in particular, Poland's experiences with Russia in WWII and the Cold War, geopolitics particularly in the Black Sea, Russian naval power, politics of American war support, nuclear weapons diplomacy and tactics, modern Russian nuclear weapons tactics ("escalate to de-escalate"), propaganda campaigns, etc. etc. etc.

> In the 19th century, nobody had that all much firepower. Battles were local.

Knowing some history of Napoleon, for example, would help too. :) But yes, your general point is taken. And then 25 years later, WWII ...