In a properly run society higher education would be very cheap and its utility would not be measured solely on whether or not degrees are directly used in employment.

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scld 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What would it be measured in?

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czgov 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s what the Medici asked Leonardo.

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nirse 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps education has an intrinsic value to society that does not need to be measured?

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g8oz 10 hours ago | parent [-]

For instance: developing citizens who demonstrate critical thinking, responsibility, organization, independence, collaboration, initiative and self-regulation.

Not all of these are easily measurable, but all contribute to a prosperous and free society.

	▲	robocat 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yet every non-uni worker seems to develop those skills without going to university. It would be interesting to measure. Critical thinking in particular doesn't seem to be taught. I personally believe none of those skills were taught during my own engineering degree. For me it was a lot of simple regurgitation against closed ended test questions. In hindsight mostly a fucking waste of time: a piece of paper to get a job.

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toomuchtodo 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I hope to exist in such a society one day, but that is not what we live in today, and it will take an unknown amount of time into the future for that to change. Until change occurs, the best we can do is provide educational resources that are free for consumption until we're willing to properly implement efficient, universal higher education delivery. Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, Yale|Harvard open courses, etc. You won't get the credential, but you'll have the knowledge, if you want it, and mostly for free. "There's no speed limit." as a wise young man taught me once. Does the credential matter if there is robust evidence that it isn't necessary for the jobs folks are working? Or is having the knowledge sufficient as success criteria?

Tangentially, this is likely a call for more leisure time (4 day work week, broadly speaking), but that will take time for politics and structural demographic compression to achieve.

There’s no speed limit (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761013 - March 2012 (194 comments)

https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses/

https://ocw.mit.edu/

https://oyc.yale.edu/

https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free