You can tell this is an ancient meme because it prices college at 4 years at $9,000 per year instead of 5 years at $30,000 per year ๐
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Few things here. Apprenticeships are hard to come by. You have to know someone or be in the right family already.
Second, university is a universal education. You can do almost anything afterwards. Gradschool is where you have to pick something. But some folks do multiple post grads. If you pick apprenticeship, that's it. That's the thing you're doing. Forever.
Personaly, I'm very happy to have a well rounded education. I became a software engineer 10 years after graduting university. I could do it, and could get hired for it, because of that education. All the skills you hone at university helped me alonng the way, writing, speaking, critical thinking, I even leaned to sail and fence.
Apprenticeships give you a single trade, university teaches you how to think, and makes you a better person.
On top of that, apprenticeships are job training, and a unuversity education is... Not. And no number of 17 year old high school honours students, or their parents, or high school teachers, or university recruitment offices, or corporate HR departments have actually or will actually change that. And that's not to say there's anything inherently wrong with job training, but so much of the discourse around university's "usefulness" always boils down to "you spend all of this money, and they still don't teach you to do the job", which... Yeah. You don't get fried chicken from a tailor's shop, either.
Moreover, one of the key reasons university education is so damn expensive is because rich dicks don't want the poors getting one. And while they've managed to spin public perception of university as job training, and as a result managed to get people to go deeply into debt to target specific, non-comprehensive or non-critical degree programs, it remains true that a high level liberal education is soemthing they don't want us to have.
Because it gives us the tools to see through their lies and bullshit.
All we need to do is look at the degree programs they shit on most strongly: They're all rooted in examining and criticising social power dynamics. In response to that, they tell us that they'll be excited to "order their happy meals" from people perusing those fields.
Which, of course, isn't exactly rooted in falsehood, because most well paying businesses don't want to have people around who are trained in recognizing and criticising power dynamics.
Because they're abusive systems in and of themselves, run by people who don't want their power criticised or checked.
But that doesn't mean the ability to do so isn't unspeakably invaluable to society. But in a society run by entitled, unworthy assholes, the last thing they want is a populace who can recognize both that they have no place in a healthy society, and also the knowledge and gumption to create a healthy society and remove them from it.
I used to think like that. As times passes I'm increasingly starting to agree with what you are saying. Sadly I do still think that is a matter of choice. There are poorly valued college educations and not all off them are philosophy and literature. I don't see anything wrong with them existing like you said, they teach people critical thinking and improve people overall. But like you said the lie that education exists to give us jobs exists and there are people going to college to learn not very lucrative things and expecting to make a living out them and coming out with dept and can't find an occupation that provides for them. Honestly I think the only way to go around that problem is to make University universal and free. That way you can always go back for something more lucrative or later in life to learn something that makes you grow.
Absolutely. Education at all levels is a boon to society at large, and it should be freely available to all. An educated populace makes the world a better, more equitable, and forward progressing palce.
An uneducated populace allows people exploit us all, and keep us working for their benefit, and not society's.