A generation of American men give up on college

What you are talking about is a war-based society, a fault-tolerant system, with lots of redundancy, that runs through conflict and chaos. The last two decades were an experiment in that one.

2 year associate degrees from community college are very affordable and cover the general education. Even those going into other work could afford that and their employer could offer assistance if not. If for example, the cost of a 2 year associates degree was $5,000- $10,000. That would make college affordable, but we as a society would have to recognize that as more than it currently is recognized for.

The 4 year degree is meaningless now. It doesn't even translate to a useable skill most the time, but it's become the bare minimum.

Then if certificates of specific skills...say "certificate of statistics" which could just be 3-5 classes on statistics were added for those who could afford it, that would bring down the cost.

The idea of "going to college" and moving on campus is not an economical decision most 20 years old are prepared enough to understand. There appears to be too many people losing from that bet.

1) There's a point to education. Decide what you're going to do and then prepare for it. Most likely you will need to get a job that either does something for someone because it's specialized, do something for someone because it's boring, or you will entertain people. If you want to be an electrician, great, line that up and get on with it. We need electricians. Going to college isn't a goal. It's a strategy to get to a goal, but that's not what we tell kids. We tell them it's the goal. If you want to go to college because you want to work as a civil engineer - awesome - we need civil engineers. Going to college to study civil engineering isn't the goal - working as a civil engineer is the goal. Many jobs, like licensed Civil Engineer, oncologist, or attorney from YouTube videos (even if you read all the comments), require education ** as a strategy to get the job **. Other jobs require you work for a licensed practitioner. Some require a mix of the two (e.g. CPA or Welder).

2) I see too many men have extended adolescences into their 40's. If you want to man up, here's the list: 1) take care of the kids, 2) take care of the spouse, 3) take care of your job, 4) take care of your house, 5) your community, and somewhere along 8, 9 or 10 is 'spend Saturday on the phone with you college buddies from 2007, on your fantasy draft.' If you're childless an unmarried, the list is 1) take care of your job, take care of your house, 3) take care of your community. I see too many guys with the list that focuses on fun. Many of them are unmarried. Mammals are expected to invest in their children. Men who show no ability to invest in anything besides themselves are probably signaling they are poor choices as mates. This is not to say they can't get laid, but are probably not messaging well as a long term bet. I suspect they over-compensate for their poor signaling by signaling hyper masculinity. They buy trucks they don't need, spend too much time at the gym, or engage in high-risk activities.

3) The better the job, the farther it is away from being automated. No one runs to a room to look up your records at the DMV any more - we've automated those clerks away through computers. Call centers are largely automated - thanks to computers. Bus and truck drivers will eventually be automated away - thanks to computers. If your job can be done by anyone with a few hours or days of training, chances are it will be automated away. This includes programmers, as well. Companies like Square will chip away at the market from the bottom up and hyper-scalers from the top down. Developers with the depth of knowledge (usually obtained by getting degrees and often advanced degrees) are better off than going through a boot camp to put buttons on a page. Whatever your field, make sure you are able to do something that automating it away would be impractical.

4) Some skills and jobs are more valuable than others. If you want to be a music producer or DJ, awesome. You be you. Just realize that unless you're better than 99.999% of the other wannabe music producers, DJs, indie game developers, founders with a 'great idea,' or whatever it is, you will make little money. If you want to be a successful book keeper, it's nowhere near as hard and requires only a little more preparation. While people may stream your latest mix on as free wall paper music, they will pay you good money to maintain their financial records and any related filings with the US Treasury or state agencies. That's not saying music is worthless, but it does say the average book keeper is more valuable to most people than the average musician. You're more likely to pay off that degree you got in Empathy Studies as a book keeper than DJ.

What does all this have to do with the article? 1) people are becoming disillusioned with education for the wrong reason. They think that being smart and learned is just a con because they (or someone they know) got an education in a random major and is struggling. 2) Growing up asks how you can be of service rather than how someone can serve you - and I see a lot of men not growing up. Signaling you're a grownup will generally improve your fit and function in a society where people expect grownups. 3) Easy jobs disappear easily - you need to have enough investment in your skill, trade, or business that you provide more value than a shell script. 4) No one cares about your shitty music except maybe your girlfriend (she's lying) and your mother (also lying). Even if you're an entrepreneur, you're filling a need for someone else so think about the utility and value of what you're doing.

That's it. That's all there is to it.

First review the blatant, widespread corruption in Chinese academia, before you consider fully accepting the value of education in China

"In 2015, for instance, Britain-based publisher BioMed Central retracted 43 articles, including 41 from China. Later in the same year, Germany’s Springer retracted 64 papers, nearly all from Chinese scholars, while the Dutch publishing company Elsevier retracted nine medical science articles written by Chinese researchers.

"In what is said to be the largest single-incident retraction of journal publications in history, Springer Nature in 2017 retracted 107 articles in Tumor Biology published between 2012 and 2016, all of them authored by Chinese scholars from universities in Shanghai."

https://wenr.wes.org/2018/04/the-economy-of-fraud-in-academi...

300 kids taking a course in a 90 day semester, 10 copies in a library, each kid gets 3 days per semester with the class textbook. Would you pay 25000 for that semester of education? Maybe some students can go halvsies on a copy but the number of copies of the book that you need is roughly equivalent to the number of students. And before you say "well why doesn't the library just buy more copies" remember who pays for the library to buy those copies.

The professors don't make the changes to the textbooks, the publishers do. Professors don't like it either, they have to update all of their materials every year to keep up with the changes too.

No one is denying textbooks are expensive, I'm denying the conspiracy theory that professors and publishers are all colluding to manipulate the market.