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Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

We need to just move past the college model. They’re just expensive certification programs at best, in terms of utility. The actual teaching/learning (which I feel they do a bad job of) and the testing/certifying can be separated from each other and democratized (opened up to competition, made more available). The current costs of college are ridiculous, and a minor 10% tuition cut from the $70K/year cost mentioned in this article isn’t going nearly far enough. I also feel there isn’t a good reason to limit the number of students who can be certified to a Harvard or MIT level, for example, and we can change that.

Moreover a lot of college seems like activities the public shouldn’t be subsidizing. A jobs program for overpaid administrators. A portfolio of majors that are not rigorous and seem more like hobbies. Pet research projects for tenured professors that often has low return on investment. Local college town economies. And so on.

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Top tier colleges (and even state colleges) teach a lot more than what is inside of a book. They teach interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, professional networking, etc.

I think it is misconception that these schools are respected because they teach the subject matter better, or that they provide no value outside of the lecture hall. If anything, >50% of the value is outside of the lecture hall.

Also, I don’t think academic research shouldn’t be expected to have any return on investment. The job of a professor is to further academics, not profit.

> They teach interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, professional networking

This suggests that people who don't go to college lack interpersonal skills, work ethic, ability to self care; Seems like all of these are important, especially for the other 34%.

But the other response is, this is a loud siren for nepotism -- and potentially other isms; as opposed to meritocracy, thanks for including "professional networking".

Or do plumbers, car mechanics, home builders, beauticians, and (in trade school, programmers) not have/need work ethic or self care ?

> This suggests that people who don't go to college lack interpersonal skills, work ethic, ability to self care;

No I am not suggesting that. These skills are not boolean, they are all a varying continuum, and they can be learned in different ways.

Liberal arts schools don't teach these things because they cannot be learned in a different way, they simply teach them because they are important to their educational mission. Colleges don't need a monopoly on conveying these skills to have it as an important part of their value proposition.

> they can be learned in different ways.

But that's not what you're saying. Your comments suggests that a college education is necessary to learn these skills; That removing student loans would somehow decrease work ethic.

The irony of the West Point cheating scandal coming out that denies that even the most prestigious college that focuses on values fails to instill values disproves your suggestion very strongly.

> They teach interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, professional networking, etc.

Judging by the amount of screaming children we've seen exit these institutions, they're either not teaching those things, or are doing an extremely poor job at it.

The coddling companies have to do for new grads entering the workforce is a testament to the lack of interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, etc. that they gained while away at these institutions of higher learning.

Regardless of your personal opinion on recent grads, an accurate measurement of success can only be made with the control group. There is definitely no shortage of bad employees in the non-college employment track... and oftentimes the behavior can far surpass a "screaming children" characterization.

>Regardless of your personal opinion

Not an opinion, it's a documented and studied phenomenon.

>an accurate measurement of success can only be made with the control group.

Luckily behavioral and social psychologist have been studying this phenomenon:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American...

>There is definitely no shortage of bad employees in the non-college employment track... and oftentimes the behavior can far surpass a "screaming children" characterization.

No one said otherwise.

Time and life end up teaching those things because normal interactions end up teaching those things.

This is ascribing four years of interacting with other people to colleges. Four years of work experience in a given job makes someone far more valuable than four years of college preparing to start the same job. College isn't the only place to learn. Art history can be studied as a hobby any time in life.

The idea that using four years to learn english 101 while accumulating massive debt instead of focusing on becoming valuable enough to start working in an industry you want is a destructive mentality. If typical college was much cheaper and more focused there might be more validity to it.

Four years of working earns money instead of bleeding it. You meet people that actually know how to do the things you want to learn instead of guessing at them.

Vocational schools already exist, if students want to attend one, they already can. Liberal arts schools are very intentionally not that.

It is certainly possible to learn broad range of subjects outside of a structured environment, but it is improbable, which is why we value structured educations.

The idea that it is learning outside a structured environment is "improbable" is part of the problem. Most college isn't very structured in the first place.

I think it is a problem with expectations. Kids seem to take on massive debt, then wonder why the job they get after spending four years at a school taking lots of classes that have nothing to do with the skills they need doesn't pay well enough to make their debt seem worthwhile.

The truth is that lots of kids are pushed into a path that wastes a huge amount of their time, energy and money, because what they need to actually become valuable is going to happen after they graduate.

I agree, that expectation is absolutely the problem. A liberal arts education is not and has never been intended to be a job-training program.

The trope that kids should "go to college so they can get a job" has elements of truth but is wildly misleading when most interpret it to be a causal relationship. I don't blame post-secondary academics for this -- this is mostly a cultural problem. The last couple generations have been raised with a cultural expectation that 'success' equals 'college-bound', and secondary school advisors are not willing to rock the boat by suggesting anything otherwise.

There are a lot of alternatives being tested out right now. Most of them do a great job of the training and certification parts of college.

The problem is that we've also loaded in a "maturation/social growth" responsibility onto college. It's a place where teenagers can move out and meet people their age from different places and do dumb things with minimal consequences. Lots of people argue that this, and the networking opportunity, are the far greater part of the value of college, and nobody seems to have a good alternative for that.

This is an interesting idea, but I would hate the place where I live to be a guinea pig. Have any country ever tried anything like that?

What do you do for a living, if I may ask?

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