I do so enjoy when we fall into this tangent. We all kind of agree, but still have a lot of room for interesting discussion.
I was discussing a similar point on another board. Basically that after WWII, college boomed in part becuase of a bloom in white collar work, which also has the advantage of being better on the body than a lot of blue collar jobs. But we swung so far that way, that blue collar trades have become under supplied and now highly valued (even as a lot of skilled blue collar factory work has disappeared). I still think college provides a lot of prep for general white collar work, but it’s not as direct.
The example I use is a friend who got a kind of esoteric degree and a year or two of grad school. He fell into the non-profit world, got assigned to a department where he learned an in-demand piece of software and could now get a six-figure job. I think a lot of the skills that allowed him so succeed were learned at school (maybe not grad school), but the cost-benefit could certainly be debated.
We have colleges themselves being treated primarily as vocational, even when they’re designed to also have an academic mission, which I think can be good, but people who work there often delve WAY too much into.
On the Memorial Day thread, I talked about this a little, but I think the shift from military to college is an interesting social one. I think college has the benefit that you get four years where minor missteps don’t hurt as much and people learn to adult with some structure. Basically, I think most 18-22 year olds are idiots and college is a nice bridge while you get your stuff together. In the past, the military provided that structure for many, at least men. But we’ve shifted from that world being a paying job (admittedly with a lot of risks), to something we pay for.
