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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Good. The purpose of college in the US is not to educate but to create a market for student debt tied to non-dischargeable high interest federal loans, predatory pricing for books, materials, housing, etc, all for degrees with very little value in a job market being cannibalized by automation, outsourcing and AI. It's a racket, and newer generations are only right not to participate.

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Yes. Education should be and is free. Anybody who wants it otherwise is morally confused. The universities restrict education, to extract economic value from the essential human experience of learning. It’s a trillion dollar industry built on restricting access to what should be and is free, knowledge. It’s a way of sorting workers into classes. It’s all it can ever be until the money is removed.

Universities do not have a monopoly on education or on learning. You can go teach someone today, no questions asked. You can even charge them for the favor, if you want.

Universities DO have a monopoly on credentialing. Credentialing, contrary to popular opinion in these parts, is actually a useful function.

Providing education and credentialing is not typically free. You need to acquire physical space, hire teachers, and so on. Education could be at least one order of magnitude less expensive than it is now, and it some cases probably even two orders. Education could also be subsidized 100% for the first N most qualified candidates, at point of use, using tax dollars. But there is no way to make it free.

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