Higher education is personally very challenging and not how people were designed. Even those with some standard deviation above the mean aren't meant to study books all day.
This becomes evident now that there is more and more instant gratification around slot machines disguised as social apps.
It is not about a student loan but about investing hundreds of hours of intellectually challenging work, either stressful (unstructured learning) or highly disciplined (planned learning).
In earlier years, say the 1990s and 2000s, there was no FOMO. Going to university was work—white-collar work. You were either qualified to take this route or not, and degrees were needed to enter specific job markets, mostly better paid and without physical demands on your work besides sitting.
When the bachelor's degree was somewhat democratized, the baseline sank: differentiation was gone, and a degree was no longer exceptional.
Now, you face the question of why you should invest years into education that "There is an app for this" can handle within milliseconds. The old funnel of education towards more yield took a hit.
This becomes evident now that there is more and more instant gratification around slot machines disguised as social apps.
It is not about a student loan but about investing hundreds of hours of intellectually challenging work, either stressful (unstructured learning) or highly disciplined (planned learning).
In earlier years, say the 1990s and 2000s, there was no FOMO. Going to university was work—white-collar work. You were either qualified to take this route or not, and degrees were needed to enter specific job markets, mostly better paid and without physical demands on your work besides sitting.
When the bachelor's degree was somewhat democratized, the baseline sank: differentiation was gone, and a degree was no longer exceptional.
Now, you face the question of why you should invest years into education that "There is an app for this" can handle within milliseconds. The old funnel of education towards more yield took a hit.