Comment by bpt3

> Classes and more importantly practices get watered down to accommodate them. The situation gradually looks less like university of the 1950s and more like highschool.

Fair, though the solution there is to just flunk them out.

> I don't know but bending what were once rigorous academic programs to accommodate them seems like the wrong answer to me. Do these people see any real benefit from taking on debt rather than working for that period? It seems to me the "benefit" is the diploma and that the requirement of a diploma to apply for a job is most often an arbitrary one these days.

I'm not convinced this is happening at the scale you think it is, but higher education is an arms race to some extent and you'd need to get all parties to agree to de-escalate, but only for the ones who don't get much value out of the experience (a group that is somewhat hard to identify a priori).

> As a thought experiment. Is there any particular reason an AA wouldn't have sufficed for the jobs that don't require specialized knowledge?

For the jobs, probably not. I still think a portion of the "college experience" is just maturing, which I agree could be done while working in theory but there is some personal opportunity cost there.

It's not an easy problem or one that can be solved individually IMO. Something like mandatory public service could be an answer, but I don't have high hopes of that being enacted.