If the value of higher education is purely book learning, sure. But if the value is signaling and the creation of ingroups that will become future elites, they can be valuable even if you do not learn a thing in class. It's a debate about elite higher education that has been going on for decades, as top institutions refuse to grow their class sizes, even as they could find 4x the students that would fit qualifications.

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nradov 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The "elite overproduction" theory might also factor in here. For society as a whole it's better not to have more students graduating from elite institutions than there are elite jobs for them to fill. The disappointed, underemployed extras tend to cause social unrest. But it sucks for the individuals who get unfairly locked out of those opportunities through no fault of their own.

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RandomLensman 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Then AI might also struggle to find a big enough market, no? Or will it move into things like plumbing?

	▲	ben_w 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The AI will be pushed everywhere, but as it's currently not succeeding at driving across the USA without a human around for emergency intervention* despite a trillion or so miles of real world experience, I suspect the initial success of AI in plumbing looks more like "humans being meat robot e.g. by wearing AR headset while physically at customer site" and less like "AI controlling metal robot that is physically at customer site". That said, the economics of AI… eh. I can see it replacing the $3T/year cost of hiring software developers, but this doesn't mean people will spend $3T/year on AI; I mean, Wikipedia killed demand for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but nobody values Wikipedia at the 16 trillion or so USD you'd get by multiplying the cost of the EB with how many people are online. * even the CyberCab, which was announced as "no steering wheel or pedals", is geofenced and if it's like their other vehicles has human observers on standby for remote control.