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Comment by lint_roller | Hacker News Reader

Universities are already pre-professional for the vast majority of students. I think the idea of a university being a place of exploration and self-discovery is a lofty ideal of a bygone era for all but children of the upper middle class and wealthy. College used to be more optional; today it's practically a prerequisite for a middle class lifestyle.

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Except it really isn't any more. If all you want is a job, there are tons of resources online that will give you much more practical experience than universities. All that it's really missing is some accreditation for employers to use to filter out the talent from the dead weight. University idealism is alive and well I think if you look past the undergraduate programs you'd agree.

If all you want is a job then this will be easier if your diploma says UC Berkeley vs self-taught. We can split hairs all day about exceptional cases of people being great at something without a formal education but for the great majority of people a college degree is simply the new minimal education that employers are seeking.

The lofty ideal is still alive and kicking at Berkeley's peers on the Top 20 lists. College as a box to check off disinterestedly is more the purview of a mediocre football-obsessed and frat-oriented institution than an intellectual beacon like Berkeley.

You picked an outlier top university frequented by the offspring of the upper middle class and wealthy. My point stands -- the notion is elitist and has no hope of reflecting the reality of most Americans' relationship with higher education.

I picked Berkeley because it's what TFA is about, and it's ridiculous that higher education should be one-size-fits-all. Such a move might be less disturbing, even welcome, from an institution which is already a job training center. It's still problematic that it's happening at Berkeley.

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