Why College Is a Poor Choice for a Lot of People

For instance if long haul truckers become obsolete. Could we retrain those people to maintain the self driving trucks or perhaps trouble shoot problems?

My view is you need to find your gift in life and go with it. If it's your dream then you will have the fire and motivation that others will want, if you try to live someone else's dream you will be a miserable person and never at the top of your game or income potential.

The real issue is not college or not college, if you need college to live your dream then do it. Don't expect a college degree on it's own will bring you success and happiness.

I think you are correct that many employers use college degrees as an implicit hiring filter. Interestingly, the same United States Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971), that declared most uses of IQ tests as hiring screens illegal also declared most educational credential hiring screens illegal.[1] But the headline report about the case holding was the part about IQ tests, so a lot of employers and even lawyers don't know that it can be legally dodgy to require an educational credential as a hiring criterion.

The better way to hire is to give applicants a work-sample test. I have a FAQ about that[2] that is one of my best-liked comments on Hacker News, and I encourage you to give that a look and to let me know how I can make that FAQ more useful for job-seekers who have skills but who may not have a degree.

[1] http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1970/1970_124

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583580#up_6584957

If you're a self-directed learner passionate about a subject nothing about a classroom holds you back. [1] It sets a minimum pace for acquiring new information, it sets a minimum domain of concepts and to some degree it will influence the order of the first few concepts you'll have to tackle, if you concede to only tackle the subject when the class begins.

I'm endlessly bemused by the repeated assertions of self-identified "passionate", "self-directed" learners that an organized class is some sort of jail cell from which their (self-identified) considerable curiosity and talents cannot break free.

If you are actually passionate, if you are actually self-directed, it may put a crimp in your process for about a week or two until you're so far ahead of the syllabus that keeping up with the topics as-covered in class is no more an obstacle than setting your learning aside to cook or do laundry.

Sure, it can still be an annoying distraction. But it's not a particularly notable one. It's certainly not a pen or a leash.

[1] Slower learners can certainly be harmed by classroom schedules. But one would expect the self-directed and passionate ones would have recognized their predicament long before they entered college and thus realized they need to tackle subjects before they sign up for credit-hours.