Comment by gammarator
19 days ago
> A college degree (especially from good old State U) serves first and foremost as a white-collar job permit.
It’s worth pointing out that this is a perception that has been cultivated. Position the degree as first and foremost a job credential, cut state support, and force students and their parents to directly bear the cost for this supposedly individualized benefit through higher tuition. “The customer is always right” and no learning need occur.
“Starving the Beast” is a documentary on this topic: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5444928/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_p...
I can't respond to any specifics of the documentary, but it looks to me like the universities themselves are the biggest cultivators of this perception, with the goal of increased enrollment.
If a college degree wasn't so important in the job market, do you think there we'd be handing out even 1% of the ones there are today? Sounds like a recipe for a lot of unemployed professors.
I see state funded education as making the problem worse. The market just reacts to what is available, and funding everyone to go to college, whether or not its useful or resourceful to do so means companies have a large enough pool of applicants to make it a requirement.
I could see even, that employers themselves would take up the cost to train if they lacked qualified applicants. Imagine for example there wasn't a billion CS students. All the company still need programmers, so what are they going to do?
IMO, instead of funding universities, simply give people a stipend to be used for some sort of educational purpose.