I know too many people who have used almost nothing from their undergraduate degrees, and are now contemplating career changes because of it.
The kind of teaching you really want to encounter in college requires close, direct interaction with a mentor. In practice you don't actually get that much of this.
It is a shame the area is locked from most innovation due to lack of funding for anybody but the rich. It would be interesting to try so real alternatives to the current High School system.
I certainly agree with the second sentence, but lack of funding is generally not the problem: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2438214220070524
I don't buy this at all. One of the must important skills for any industry is the ability to effectively communicate, and almost everyone that goes through college gets better at this.
The people that just jump through hoops are doing it because they don't care about getting an education and just want the piece of paper called a degree. College is highly valuable to anyone that actually wants to learn.
Sure, but is it really necessary to take on tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to develop those skills?
And that's the article's point: college is so damn expensive now, almost everyone has to take on debt to pay tuition. The undergrad experience is badass, but it's also fraught with problems:
-- Students are asked to choose a major (and thus, by implication, a career) before they turn 21. If they choose incorrectly and need a different degree, the costs are astronomical.
-- Non-engineering classes are completely bunk until about the third year. Before then it's mainly "weed-out" courses which teach students little or overload them with work.
-- The cheapest (public) schools also have the largest classrooms. You pay less in tuition, but quality of education suffers.
We ask students to decide on a career during a transitional phase in their lives, in an economy where no one works in the same field for more than a decade, and then charge them $50k in the process? That's just unfair.
We also know that the gap in income between those with a higher education and those without is increasing significantly.
1 + 1 = 2
There's an unaccounted for correlation between the accessibility of higher education and general life opportunities.
My point was about the widening of the income gap, the correlation you speak of doesn't explain the widening of the gap.
You can pick up the same communication skills if you worked during the day (and partied at night) during those 4 years. By doing both you're learning to socialize and communicate with coworkers.
Of course, I actually did learn this kind of stuff in college. You do similar stuff in the courses and it applies to the job in unpredictable ways. The point is that you learn to learn, and if you (with the college's help) do it right, you pick up the specific job skills much sooner.
I know (from experience) this can be a painfully hard sell with HR at a lot of places, but saving a few months of learning-curve time for your employer or your clients adds value to the economy, especially in an economy where technology, tasks and jobs change so often.
I am of the opinion that the problem is they don't focus enough on theory. CS Theory classes at my university are 4000 level courses. Until then, you're just learning 'good' OOP design with Java.
"For most degrees (non-engineering, IMO), you don't learn how to add value to the economy--you just learn to jump through academic hoops."
Yeah, I think you've absolutely nailed it.
I'm currently taking a "Discrete Structures" class. It's a 2000 level course, and it's all theory. And it's fun.