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Degree != education, though. In the US system a bunch of introductory lecture-only courses could potentially be pushed down to high schools or outfits like Coursera/edX without the requirement of paying $35,000 to be physically present in the room.

Online delivery doesn't work well for seminars or labs, but basic proficiency with lecture material before enrolling and taking out a student loan would boost the graduation rate. Currently only 59% of students enrolled in a college program in the US complete their four-year degree six years down the road https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

I wish there were a way to do th labs as an outsourced thing, sort of like hacker spaces. Doing a few weeks or months of lab work together with a group of people would be great fun and a useful adjunct to other education -- I've done this for various technical skills (firearms, armorer, machining, medical, diving) and expanding it to more academic topics would be awesome.

Is there a business opportunity in this idea? Coworking and Maker spaces are all the rage now days. How about tailoring those kind of spaces in collaboration with a MOOC to bring labs to the students. It obviously doesn't scale like a MOOC. But it might work in population centers that have a lot of MOOC students.

For a lot of physical skills, Techshop is the model I'd use. They run amazing classes, plus have a credentialing system in place to access certain kinds of equipment.

They recently opened a TechShop in Arlington. I did not realize how spoiled I was with NoVaLabs. It seems like techshop is all-or-nothing pricing. There is no plan that allows for light to moderate use. For $400 less than techshop yearly bill I can get 24h access to NoVaLabs.

It is dangerous when college becomes, instead of education, indoctrination + a piece of paper + high debt. This is not always the case, but many people evaluate their own situation and rightfully don't think a college degree is right for them. Since almost everyone in high school is constantly pushing for the students to go to college, anyone that figures that it is not right for them is likely correct. In the US one can always go back to school later, if you decide you want to.

What "indoctrination" is present at the college level in the US?

I can certainly think of examples at earlier stages of US education, like the (effectively) compulsory daily pledge of allegiance.

> What "indoctrination" is present at the college level in the US?

There is a disturbing trend of mob rule where student activists become increasingly obsessed with the silliest things they perceive as "opression" and try to silence every voice at university campuses that doesn't toe the line with their worldview of intersectional feminism, cultural marxism and postmodern power games.

Points in case:

The idea that Yale students are smart enough to choose their own Halloween costumes made a mob of activists feel "unsafe" and they threw a fit, bullying two professors (who voiced this idea) for days until they resigned. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new...

A transgender candidate (masculine-of-center genderqueer) for the position of "multicultural affairs coordinator" at Wellesley college had to pull out of the race because his opponents accused him of having become a white male and that's not "diverse" enough. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/when-women-becom...

Then there's Evergreen College. I'm at a loss of words to describe the level of crazy that went on there, but here's Jonathan Haidt's take on it: https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/05/27/this-weeks-witch-hun...

I'm pretty sure this is only a small bit of the college experience, though I can see how this can actually affect one's perception of the value of college, especially among those in families with few college graduates.

Indoctrination in to the consumerist-materialist-debt-burdened-over-worked-under-paid dream of the current era.

I'm not sure anyone is actually convinced by it, but it sure does seem we are convinced we can't implement an alternative.

What made me a materialist was not the wonderland of college but seeing close friends of the family slip up and see their lives spiral out of control because they didn't have enough money.

Money doesn't matter when you're 21, and rich in health, family and friends. Money matters soo much when you're 56, tired, boring, and have a bad back.

I'm picking up what you're putting down.

Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I wish I wasn't so late to the party, I could have had my house paid off my now.

Still, I dream there was a less stressful way of going about it all.

Where I went to high school the pledge was optional.

I think you're missing the point. I don't think that Americans are losing faith in the value of education. Most Americans I know envy the low cost of education in Europe exactly because they would like the same conditions of access. Simply put, we want to go to school. But we don't want to sink ourselves into decades of debt to do so. Would anyone?

You'll have to agree to pay a lot more taxes though. I got a Bachelor's degree in Germany where it was cheap (we had some tuition at the time, but nothing compared to the US). Let's say it costs 15k a year (not what they charge, but the actual cost, which counts in a state sponsored system). That is 52.5k over the 3.5 years I studied. I've since paid at least that amount extra taxes as compared to the US. But I still have quite a few years of work ahead of me, so I'll be paying off this "debt" for a long time.

Basically you're trading the freedom to choose to go in debt for a personal decision, for going in debt for the average decision in your country. I'm ok with it, but I think it's a very different philosophy. A similar thing when I see single payer health care proposals in the US where they say it's too costly. Well d'uh. You gotta charge health care tax. It's not free, it's just that everyone is paying into the same pool. I'm paying almost 700€ a month for my socialized health insurance. Mostly because it's adapted to your income. But it's really not low cost or free. Just that everyone is paying together.

700€ is dramatically lower than what my employer pays for my healthcare with my family and that still has deductibles and Co-Pays. I'm not sure what your amount includes so I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but if it is then that's not a bad price at all.

What did you learn from your management courses? Genuinely curious, as I've always found that people with degrees in management were no better (and probably slightly worse) than people that just figured it out. My evidence is anecdotal and limited, so I'd be interested to hear what you found useful about your program.

My anecdata from working quite a few years at big tech companies where most of the staff began as technical and then some went off to get business degrees to advance into management, is that the biggest change was they started using a lot of business school buzz words and attached much more importance to spreadsheets and presentations than they used to.

"2/3 of HBS is BS" -Ben Rich, former Director of Lockheed Skunkworks

Coming from a technical background a lot of the softer sciences were quite new to me personally. Things like social constructivism and the mangement methoods based on it werent completely unfamiliar to me, but learning how to use analysis, understanding and argumentation to steer strategic decision as well as employees in the direction I want, has been immensely useful.

Perhaps this is a disconnect: "academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation."

In the US, I can't 100% defend our universities (of which I am a product...both engineering and MBA) of achieving this (which would be a fine) goal.

In fact, in the US, it's proabably easier to be skeptical of "The Ivory Tower", where one hears what will work and should be done, only to go into the field, and find out it's a bunch of non-practical garbage from a textbook some prof wanted to sell.

But in Denmark are you paying $100,000 + interest for your shiny paper? Because that's what we charge in the states.

But in Denmark, one pays high taxes which, among other things, go towards subsidising higher education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark Under the Danish tax system, it is possible for a high-wage earner to pay up to 51.5% of their total income after gross tax, giving a total of 57% of total income.

Does that include property tax, sales tax, and smaller (but still impactful) taxes like alcohol tax?

The actual number, as a percentage of your income, that you pay in the US is very likely around - if not higher - than 50%.

If you are paying 50% of your income as taxes in the US, you are making enough money that you shouldn't be complaining about college being expensive.

And... there's a weird hump, because capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate. in that bracket, you have the very top end of those who work as employees, and small business owners who end up having to pay income tax on their profits. Much above that and most of your income is usually in the form of capital gains, and thus taxed less.

I take @rubicon33's point that even if you make $40,000 a year, and your income tax works out to be 20-25%, you still pay 8.875% in NY for sales tax, and the other taxes. Looking at it that way, you pay over 35% or more when all is said and done. You are taxed on previously taxed income.

Do their taxes go towards paying college presidents a median salary of $438,000 http://blog.credit.com/2015/12/10-u-s-college-presidents-wit... or are the Danish administrative officials willing to accept lower rates?

> A large part of the reason my country (Denmark) is as rich as it is because of education

No, it is because they have marketable (in demand) skill(s).

If the whole country received a degree in history, would Denmark be as rich as it is today? They have an "education" right?

I understand your point but without a diversity of degrees I think there will also be a loss. Perhaps not an obvious, quantifiable loss. If everyone got a STEM degree in Denmark (include economics and finance) I think the consequences would be as bad if everyone got a degree in history. Having a society in which people care about others and want to live in requires more than quantifiable utility.

I think focusing on "marketable" is not a good governmental policy. It seems to me that education is the correct level of focus in terms of governmental policy.

> But academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation.

IME academia absolutely does not teach that, most academics wouldn't know how to determine that. What tool to apply for a given situation is something I'd say is only learned with and can only be learned from industry experience.

For example, my day to day work would be much more pleasant of academia didn't go overboard making students create OO hierarchies for everything.

Also surprisingly with academic experience. Of course use of tools in academia is vastly different from one outside. Academia has less of a time pressure and less of a budget often (at least in Europe).

Cannot speak for non-STEM though.

I'm just going to point out that Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree. He says the attitude is more important.

I also highly doubt that he "had to hire" swedes. And if he did that would be an indication that something besides education was the reason. Education is in many countries if swedes are special, it must be something else.

>Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree.

So he says, but I have yet to see roles in Tesla's core business units that don't require post-secondary education.