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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Dunno what David Tennant paid to study Shakespeare at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland but it landed him work at the Royal Shakespeare Company and a pretty lucrative stage and film career.

Being Scotland and not the US there was likely some of that socialised education helping out, so I guess that might have taken the edge off cost a bit.

Still, it seems pretty worthwhile.

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Bringing up any celebrity to prove a point that something is worth spending absurd amounts of money to study seems silly. Is that the lie we sell now? Get into debt to become a movie star?

Ditto Terence Tao - celebrity mathematical genius.

Clearly Shakespeare and Mathematics are of value to some.

Also, screw Hollywood - stage is where the challenge is, for many big movie stardom was never the goal.

Y'know, it's kinda funny that despite the commecialization and streamlining of the German university system following the EU reforms in the mid-2000s, German universities will still insist that the value of higher education is the refinement of the mind, scientific literacy and all that Humboldtian jazz whereas in US-influenced social spaces it's now apparently heretical to suggest that academic study of anything that does not directly translate to a workplace education or pay rise is not a scam.

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not that someone might think attending lectures on a TV show you don't like is a waste of time and effort but that they will have to decide between that or having an income and the only way for them to do it is "spending absurd amounts of money".

Maybe, just maybe, literally no degree is worth "spending absurd amounts of money" and the primary function of degrees in the economy is literal virtue signaling (i.e. demonstrating endurance) and networking (or compensating for a lack of social capital if your family doesn't already provide you access to the right networks).

Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized and so absurdly expensive to begin with. Maybe privatization results in more economically useful degrees but reduces the overall quality of education as an intellectual endeavour and entices vast amounts of people to go into crippling debt to do academic busywork to get the meaningless trinket necessary to make it past job application filters.

Less is more. If you want to make a point just make it instead of wrapping it in the bs.

And if your point is that people should embrace learning outside of the confines of the education system, yes I agree. You shouldn't spend any amount of money to be taught Shakespeare. Just read Shakespeare. If you are not motivated to learn it, don't.

> Maybe education shouldn't be so heavily privatized

Education is not privatized. The majority of education is public and / or not for profit. The problem with education is not profits. Non profit institutions are raising the cost of education to absurd heights and it's on track to be $1 million for a 4 year degree.

You can't blame capitalism for the rising cost of education as much as you'd like to. Blame the left wing administrative class.

I doubt Tennant paid tuition at RCS as many/most British subjects do not pay. As an American, my kid does pay. It’s also 50-75% less than the comparable American collegiate programs. Going into debt to do what you love is probably the best reason.

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