[irishcoffee]

"See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library."

[organsnyder]

If you approach college as a consumer of the information fed by professors and books, the Public Library approach is probably a great value proposition (though I'd question whether that $1.50 provided any value at all... :-) ).

However, a good education is much more than this. It includes the opportunity to engage in back-and-forth discussions with professors and classmates, building social and professional networks that can pay innumerable dividends, and to pursue experiences that aren't immediately related to career advancement.

College shouldn't merely be about vocational training. While that's one valuable outcome, there is much more that can be gained. Of course, many colleges (and individual students' experiences) fall far short of this—I wish I thought this way when I was in school, and didn't just see it as another hurdle to full adulthood—but that doesn't mean that the concept is flawed.

[Vraxx]

I agree with you in theory about the utility of higher education, but it falls apart when you start to consider (at least in the US) the practical system in which it exists. People are taking on debt in order to go to college and the fact of the matter is that it's a terrible financial decision if you aren't expecting some vocational training that will help pay that debt back faster than never taking it at all. I agree that life shouldn't be all about money, but most people can't afford to expend thousands of dollars and 4 years of time and work for an enriching experience.

The big distinction that ends up causing all these arguments is that when people say it's a bad decision, they mean it's a bad financial decision when you go to college and take on debt to get a degree that won't lead to a well paying job. Of course everything is about context, so it might not be a bad life choice, but the debt certainly should not be ignored in evaluating that decision.

[ktRolster]

Not to mention: while public libraries are great and I love them, thy are often lacking in-depth knowledge.

My local public library doesn't have a book on advanced logic design, for example. It favors a more 'general' collection, and thus books with heavy reliance on math tend to be omitted. Same with in-depth law books, they just aren't there.

[pmoriarty]

You could go to a university library. Often they're open to the general public for a modest fee.