One of the things about college that's not discussed often enough is that it's a bundle of a bunch of stuff, the elements of which provide different benefits for different people. For instance, it has come to contain:
  1. quality assurance of the student
  2. vocational skills
  3. broad awareness of the sweep of human culture
  4. breadth of exposure
  5. social training
It's been notable how the internet / tech has pried this bundle apart in a bunch of ways. I'm a big proponent of college, but for particular intentions and for particular people. You can usually get individual bundle elements much more cheaply. I think the COVID-driven remote-schooling trend, combined with fiat inflation around schooling (which is interesting, that a university education has been monetized, similarly to real estate), is blowing this up.
Will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Yep, agreed.
I think a true college education containing all the components above is invaluable, for the right people. But not everyone going to college these days wants, or even expects, all of the above.
For example, many students see it as purely vocational and have no interest in breadth of exposure, awareness of history and culture, or social training. They just want a job and aren't interested in learning history, philosophy, science, or any kind of perspective on human society. They skip class and do the bare minimum to pass or get the grade they want, because they think that's what will land them a job, and they don't care at all about actual learning.
These people are probably wasting their time by going to college. Better to spend 4 years apprenticing in your industry of choice (though you should be careful and pick a good person to apprentice you. College at least theoretically offers some quality assurance on the part of the teacher, though I'm not so sure these days).
The other point, quality assurance of the student, is being eroded by certain college departments pushing political agendas over actual education. To me, that's the fault of the administrators and the professors, and not the students. But the end result is that only a few majors are providing any valuable skills, and the rest are mostly fluff.
And indeed, this is driven by fiat educational policies that disconnects funding from real returns.
Unfortunately one thing that still stands in the way of this is societal norms and prejudices. Non-college-educated people are still looked down upon by college-educated, both in the workplace and in society. The assortative matching in mating is just ridiculous... good luck getting a college-educated spouse if you yourself don't have a degree. I would send my kids to college if only to better their chances in the marriage market.
reply
Brilliant -- agree with every part of this. The assortative mating thing should have been its own bullet on my list, but it got smoothed into "social training".
reply
I second the point about assortative mating and that touches on how utterly horrible the modern dating scene has become (at least as far as I've been told). It's ironic that it's now a problem for men, since finding a spouse was one of the reasons parents started sending their daughters to college.
I'd love to see a study on that. I'm sure some have been done, but I don't remember coming across anything in my labor econ courses.
reply
You left out the leisure value of college. I enjoyed college, for the most part. We don't talk about "returns to vacation", for instance, as being the primary way to assess the value of vacation. The main difference (and the reason this issue bugs me) is that young people are badly mislead about the financial value they should expect from college.
I also think it's pretty dubious what gains people actually tend to make in the items on your list at college. At best, college is a very expensive way to achieve those goals for most people.
Don't get me wrong, I feel like college benefited me on items 1, 3, 4, and 5, and I do recommend it for bright driven intellectually curious students. My teaching experience, however, leads me to believe it's a pretty small minority of students who should be there (in the sense that it's a good use of their time).
reply
You left out the leisure value of college.
That was lumped into the "social training" part in my mind, though as I just mentioned to @SimpleStacker, I should have unbundled that one. (How ironic.)
I read an article once that this inflation of benefits was one of the chief reasons for escalating tuition prices -- some of the more prestigious schools are transforming themselves into combos of cruise ships + Disneyland.
reply
Yep. It largely goes into physical rec facilities.
reply
Coach K was the highest paid employee of Duke University. I'm sure various sports coaches are. Utterly a sham if you ask me, though a lot of students love that stuff... so it makes financial sense for the colleges to attract enrollment and attract donors... just don't call it education...
reply