You can't really grasp the value of college as a smart and capable young person until you hit your thirties. That's when the idealism of youth starts to fade and hard truths start staring you in the face.
One of those hard truths is that most people are not smart and capable. They rely on others around them. If you took a smart and capable person and transplanted them into a strange environment, they'd thrive after a short time finding traction. Take most everyone else out of their carefully-cultivated social milieu, and they'd fall flat on their face.
So smart and capable people will pooh-pooh the value of college because they don't understand what it's doing for them. They'll think of throwing themselves against the free market as the ultimate challenge, the great meritocratic equalizer. And for these people, it is.
For those that are not smart and capable, it is not. The free market is a horrific meat-grinder of a system that chewed up everyone you loved as a child and spit them out beaten and broken. Most people need social stability, structure, a safe place. That's what our social institutions provide.
The value a college degree provides, that piece of paper that signals to your future employer that you are worth hiring, is indispensable. If you are not smart and capable, you will not be able to jury-rig alternative signaling. You're at the bottom of the free hiring market.
I would love to live in a world where you didn't need to mortgage your future to pay for the present. But the world is not like that. As a young person without family money to fall back on, you're going to have to make a number of investments just to get to the point where you are comfortable. You need a home, you need a vehicle. You need a spouse. You also need a degree. You're starting at the bottom of a hill, and the college degree is right there at the bottom.
Well ok, if you say so - the choice of words in "the world is not like that" suggested otherwise. And I guess I am being pedantic, as the whole discussion is obviously aimed at people from the US, and I fully agree with your overall point.
I'm an American with a passport who has lived and grown businesses in Europe. (I attended private and public schools only in the US and half-heartedly finished a top 50 uni because it wasn't a top priority.)
GWB's NCBLA further inculcated standardized testing as an official religion in American education system. It's a complete and utter failure; another in a long line of ill-informed, "top-down solutions" that cause more harm than good.
You can't really grasp the value of college as a smart and capable young person until you hit your thirties. That's when the idealism of youth starts to fade and hard truths start staring you in the face.
One of those hard truths is that most people are not smart and capable. They rely on others around them. If you took a smart and capable person and transplanted them into a strange environment, they'd thrive after a short time finding traction. Take most everyone else out of their carefully-cultivated social milieu, and they'd fall flat on their face.
So smart and capable people will pooh-pooh the value of college because they don't understand what it's doing for them. They'll think of throwing themselves against the free market as the ultimate challenge, the great meritocratic equalizer. And for these people, it is.
For those that are not smart and capable, it is not. The free market is a horrific meat-grinder of a system that chewed up everyone you loved as a child and spit them out beaten and broken. Most people need social stability, structure, a safe place. That's what our social institutions provide.
The value a college degree provides, that piece of paper that signals to your future employer that you are worth hiring, is indispensable. If you are not smart and capable, you will not be able to jury-rig alternative signaling. You're at the bottom of the free hiring market.
I would love to live in a world where you didn't need to mortgage your future to pay for the present. But the world is not like that. As a young person without family money to fall back on, you're going to have to make a number of investments just to get to the point where you are comfortable. You need a home, you need a vehicle. You need a spouse. You also need a degree. You're starting at the bottom of a hill, and the college degree is right there at the bottom.