Most of the world has severed the two. A lot of what you'd consider key parts of the university experience just doesn't exist in most of Europe or the highly developed parts of Asia. In practice, it's attaching job training to a very, very expensive resort, regardless of who is paying for it. It's pretty nice, in the very same sense that spending 4 years in a beach resort ls also great, but one needs to be absurdly wealthy to choose this model if an equivalent was available without all the features that most of the world has abandoned. The US system would already have been in trouble years ago if it didn't have a government license for being the safest, more reliable way to immigrate into the US. Get rid of the F1 practical training to work visa pipeline, and see many US institutions in serious economic trouble. We can keep trying to keep it working as-is by pushing other people's money into the expensive vacation environment, but without major subsidies, we are already seeing more people realize that the risks are way too high when you have to get loans to attend. There is no idealism separate from economic incentive in institutions that charge 60K per year, plus often a whole lot more for mandatory on-campus housing, without financial aid.

But as it's normal with failing institutions, they'll be extended, kicking and screaming, until they completely collapse instead of reform, like almost every other country in the world already has.

That's historical revisionism. The percentage of American adults over age 25 who have a college degree was only 20% as recently as 1990. When America was truly at the top of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, it was under 10%. A high fraction of college attendance is better correlated with the 21st century decline in America's situation.

It's an interesting combo, but after working for a decade in higher ed, there is a real division and enmity between the liberal arts and sciences and the "career" programs. The latter is seen as an illegitimate degree mill. The former as a freeloader that does not pull its weight financially. It is an uneasy partnership of convenience.

Academic freedom? Where has that existed in the last 20 years?

What they crank out today suffers from grade inflation. No longer is 'C' the average grade. Kids and parents who pay over 100k for their diploma all demand above average grades. It's not as bad as presenting a diploma from a Caribbean diploma mill, but they're not what they used to be.

There are certain advantages to having separate academic and vocational tracks, but that tends to lock out late bloomers. Quite a few of prominent US scientists and business leaders didn't necessarily have good grades going into secondary school.

economies and national policies are complex. only the most straightforward things, like ending patriarchy, wars and modifying interest rates, have firm evidence of causing this or that thing on a national scale. nobody knows if so and so nuanced educational policy really matters in an intellectually honest way.

> Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are the same with or without an employer intermediary.

If you read the fine print of a health "insurance" plan at a large company, you might discover healthcare costs are directly covered by the employer and the insurance company just administers the plan according to "set rules".

In practice, this operates as blame as a service.

The employer pays a large portion of the employee premiums. As a result the employee is further indentured to the employer because they cannot leave without depriving themselves and family of health care. And it further obfuscates the actual cost of health care. And then the tax code makes this bizarre setup the privileged happy path.

> Healthcare costs [...] The only difference is with an employer intermediary, [...]

That's missing the biggest problem, which is that the employer gets a free chance to extort the employee in all sorts of illegal ways lest they be cut off and die.

Wage theft is perhaps the biggest-value type of crime every year (sources disagree, but it's certainly higher than many), and that's only one kind of illegal thing employers do when they have all the leverage.

Right, the federal tax code is structured to give advantages to employer sponsored health plans. But it doesn't have to be that way. A better approach would be to eliminate those plans and force everyone to purchase individual or family plans through state ACA marketplaces using pre-tax dollars.

> Job training didn’t get shoehorned, a cheap filtering mechanism for people worth betting on to be a good hire got shoehorned

While it may not be optimal, there is plenty of training/learning that happens in colleges.

The intermediary in healthcare makes a significant difference, as, by going through employers and using insurance, the US market is quite fragmented, and there is minimal alignment pushing prices down. The US healthcare provider doesn't get more business by providing a better cost/benefit ratio: It's easier to splurge, and get business via an expensive, comfortable-ish service.

When one then compares US facilities to foreign ones, it's trivially easy to see that many parts of the system just look different, which comes from the perverse incentives of going through employers that aren't big enough to actually push down on providers' prices at all. Both truly private, low insurance systems and universal healthcare systems end up having much better incentives, and therefore lower prices, regardless of who is paying for them.

We get something similar when you compare US universities to those in Continental Europe. It's clear that over there, the finishing school component is so vestigial as to be practically invisible, whole the focus is a filtering mechanism that attempts to teach something. Go look at, say, Spain's universities and see how many open electives are there, or how many university-wide general requirements exist (0). Each degree is basically an independent unit, and chances are you'll never visit a building from a different school. Undeclared majors? Nope. Significant number of students living on campus? Nope. Sports teams, offering scholarships? Nothing of the sort. This also leads to much lower prices to the school itself, regardless of whether it's all paid by taxes or students.

This one case isn't the full story, but I firmly believe that it is a big deal.

See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/ for the case.

The problem is that any hiring test that blacks and whites pass at different rates, is presumed racist. Never mind that the real issue might be that the blacks went to worse schools and received a worse education. Never mind that there is a big body of research showing that ability tests are a more effective way to hire good employees than interviews. If the ratio of blacks to whites hired is different than the ratio that apply, you are presumed to be racist and in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

So a company that needs to hire literate people can no longer, as used to be standard, allow high school students to apply and give them a literacy test. But they can require college.

Therefore college has become a job requirement for a plethora of jobs whose actual requirement is "literate". Jobs that people used to be able to do out of high school, and jobs that could still be done by plenty of high school graduates. That this has become so ubiquitous lead to an increased demand for college. Which is one of the factors driving tuition up.

(My suspicion is that an ability test would lead to a less racist outcome than requiring college. Why? Because minority families struggle more to afford college.)

It started during WW II when the US government put wage and price controls in place so that companies could not compete for employees by offering higher wages. So they competed for employees instead by offering employer-paid healthcare as a benefit. Then after the war, when the wage and price controls were repealed, the employer-paid healthcare system, instead of going away, kept getting more elaborate.

Yes it is true and is sort of the subject of my original post. One of those things I learned in college ironically and is now background knowledge I can't source.

And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers compared to your peers.

Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring pipeline of course is a different story

Which strongly suggests that one reason 4-year degrees have lost value, is the piece of paper has lost value. Because of (most?) people only getting a degree for the paper.

Two improvements then: Degrees that earn the reputation of not being given for anything less than excellence in studies. Where the earned reputation is used both to discourage the non-serious, and enhance the value of the degree.

And of course, bring down the costs. Create a high octane alumni network to match. Foster an opinionated high work ethic, college-as-daycare / party-scene repellent culture. Anything and everything rethought from scratch.

For instance, why are degrees based on years? Why so standardized when neither students or jobs are? Why not a skill chart that can be custom traversed per student - with students expected to move on whenever they choose to, or have a good opportunity. A high percentage of students leaving for good jobs after just one year would be a win.

For just one slice of education, to start.

As with anything complex, start with something small and focused. Like a low population cutting edge practice/research AI school. Start from scratch with the thing that is new, challenging and in high demand.

Then expand into other fast changing, high demand areas. Keep figuring out better ways, keep taking on more, keep reducing costs, as long as all three of those efforts tradeoffs are compatible.

You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.

100%, but it's even worse than that. "X got into Stanford" is the new "X is a Stanford graduate" because of grade dilution - and admissions dilution has soured even the former.

Dedicated grad schools that are separate from, but affiliated with, dedicated undergrad schools. Those teaching at the dedicated undergrad schools will be hired for their ability to focus on foundational teaching, with research programs designed to involve undergraduate student researchers in genuine research, while still providing publication opportunities and genuine advancement of the art.

That's the sad outcome of everyone getting _some_ degree in recent years. Something like 50 years ago 10% had college degree, now it's close to 50%. Meanwhile population IQ score stayed rather stable while willingness to work hard declined. So of course the quality of employees with degrees has dropped and hence the degree is no longer a good signal to employers

Make money not a consideration in applying for college? Not by handing out whatever the universities are asking for of course, but by giving them a fixed $X per student.

Of course there is. You can just hire them and train them. Most positions don't require college degrees. Everything you need to know for most jobs you learned in high school. At most you need a certificate program of some kind.

I agree with you.

The problem is that many young Americans for the past 30+ years has been told that a bachelor’s degree is the prerequisite for a job that pays well enough to afford a middle class lifestyle, which I’ll define as being able to afford owning a home in a safe neighborhood and being able to provide for a household without living paycheck-to-paycheck.

What happens when a large number of college graduates enter a tough hiring market while they have five- (or even six-) figure student loan balances? It’s one thing to work at McDonald’s debt-free with a high school diploma; it’s another thing to end up at McDonald’s with tens of thousands of dollars in debt with a bachelor’s degree.

Of course, there’s more to going to college than career prospects, and there’s also the reality that no one is owed a job. Still, given the amount of adults struggling with paying off their student loans, it’s no wonder more people are reevaluating the economic value of going to college.

Educated people are the way they are due to a particular personality that they have. They are curious and self driven. Many educated people have no formal education. You cannot teach a personality.

That's not to say other personalities are less worthwhile... It's just that we have emphasized one kind of personality as the ultimate one and then are surprised that -- after maxing out opportunities for those already suited towards that personality -- a saturation point is reached and future effort has marginal gains.

> Illiterate incoming freshman are the product of the public middle and high school systems, not the university system.

That doesn't matter for the op's point. Students starting from this base won't get good in 4 years.

I wish it were dubious. I recently worked with 11th grade Algebra 2 students in New Mexico and found exactly that, and worse. Most couldn't begin to do algebra because they couldn't do simple addition and subtraction. Out of a class of 24 there were two who were arguably ready for it. But everyone is moved forward anyway. I understand your skepticism because I was shocked by it. The teachers said it all went down the drain during Covid and has not recovered.

It must severely limit what they can learn in college.

If the college would accept someone like that, they probably don't aim to take their students to a very high level.

If a university's administration overlooks a complete failure of the student selection process, it's easy to imagine that it may well overlook a complete failure of the professor selection process. The price of admission is also way too steep to wind up being the peer of mental 8th graders.

Shouldn't that be 8.5% x 75% since you want the percent who could not answer it?

At my liberal arts and sciences college about 10 years ago my entry level biology teacher straight up said to the class that if people are having trouble with some of this math on the board to go home and learn algebra tonight.

None of those are "fine". The problem is that such students aren't college material and shouldn't be admitted in the first place.

If standards aren't lowered and they're just failed out, that's fine eventually, but I would prefer it to be fine from day 1.

Why the Downvote? It is true.

> why would you go to grade school and high school at institutions that produce graduates like that?

Do you not know how U.S. K-12 public schools are funded by local property taxes, which means the quality of a child's education is a direct causal relationship of the wealth of their neighborhood?

Why don't these children just grow up in richer neighborhoods?

>> but knowing the basics about economics, literature, science, art, math, history is valuable if you want to think critically about the world.

Sure if that is relevant to what your goals in life are. I chose to get an education that was tightly coupled with the outcome I wanted.

Why do you need to pay to go to college to learn the basics of all these subjects? The same information is available for free online.

Now do the tech industry (high paying American jobs)

Trump could cancel H1B but most likely he won't. If for no other reason than as a favour to his billionaire friends. They are more important than the popular idea of America first, American jobs etc. here Trump literally says we need H1B because we need talent, and USA doesn't have the talent. Not a good look for a supposedly America first president.. https://youtu.be/U2XUNKcKtx0?si=GOFyMGxqUIbyGD6T

Sure, get the high school dropout to build your bridge for you. See how well that non-traditional hire works out.

My comment is generalizing, as is the thread subject. It has been a downwards moving trend, and for young workers I will say that a college degree is now a negative factor. But that doesn't define the candidate.

Also: Any positive or negative effect of a college degree is either amplified or moderated by candidates self-selecting. A candidate who greatly values their college degree will seek out employers who do the same, and vice-versa.

But were any of your classes gender studies?