The only reason people are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for college is that it is a credentialed degree that people think will open up career doors. We shouldn't beat around the bush on this fact.
If you want to learn about chemistry or biology for learning's sake, good luck. Most autodidacts won't have space in their apartment for a -80C freezer or flammables cabinet, and their landlords might not approve the installation of a proper fume hood.
We have things very easy in software. The cost of iteration is low, you can fit a respectable laboratory in the space underneath your desk, and you're unlikely to accidentally poison or maim somebody if you screw up an unwise experiment. Not many fields have that luxury.
I agree, but you won't have a sheet of paper proving it. It's like that infamous scene from Good Will Hunting. Question is whether you want an easy way to PROVE you're educated. Which is what a license, certificate or diploma grants you.
Why else would you need to prove your education except for work?
Essentially a new way to establish hierarchies.
But we're nowhere close to that. Also, if it's being used to establish hierarchies, I could still see that proof being important.
Getting “there” doesn’t happen overnight, but the point is that we are already heading there, and to the question “why get a degree if not for work”, I presented a potential future option.
> I could still see that proof being important.
This is key to the point I was trying to make. Essentially that the purpose of education may change over time, but the value of gaining an education will still be there in one form or another.
If learning is “merely” a diversion, I don’t see why people would think about it any differently. Whether or not it still makes sense for that proof to carry a six figure price tag is a separate conversation.