I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

more easily read here:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505597901011005442.html

Seems like a pretty unremarkable collection of surface level observations if you ask me

This is kind of a weird mix of points. Ignoring his political axe-grinding, I think the value of a college degree is increasingly in question for many fields because the price has risen wildly for decades without a corresponding increase in market value. (Except perhaps for elite-institution degrees, which are more about the brand and the network than what people actually learn.)

I think we haven't seen at least a partial collapse only because most American companies are bad at hiring, bad at investing in workers, and bad at keeping them. But imagine a company where programmers are happy and tend to say for years. That company might do just as well, or perhaps better, running an in-house boot camp and apprenticeship program as by hiring new grads.

What's the word when people with trust and experience on one field suddenly trusted when they talk about other topics too? Saw this a lot with COVID but this is a good example too.

Few thoughts

1) The subreddit of my alma mater has been full of posts venting anxiety, depression, trouble with financial aid, trouble making friends, frustration with administration, etc for years now, exacerbated by COVID. While that may not be representative of the whole undergrad population, I can't help but be reminded of Thiel's line from Zero to One "Why are we doing this to ourselves?"

2) I'm now seeing not only friends without bachelors degrees get well-paying CS jobs with "engineer" titles & equity comp, but even some in mechanical engineering!

3) When I was in undergrad, half of my upper div classes were so abysmal that I figured the staff who cared enough to keep the enterprise going were fighting a losing battle. A complete rewrite would be better than an in place one. "Death is the best invention of life" and we should try the creative destruction of capitalism/evolution instead of holding the oldest institutions in the highest regard.

I don't have much of a clue what the future will look like by the time I have kids of college age, but I do not think particularly highly of what we've got now.