[agumonkey]

I see a few non educational issues with this trend:

- human nature has important points: teenage, young adult, young parents. Pushing education longer means delaying these.

- being a student is not necessarily being an independant adult, very often it delay teenagehood, whereas previous generation had to start earning their life around 16. It creates a meeting point between high desires and responsibilities. Something that doesn't happen nowadays where kids 'may' (only a mild subjective opinion) satisfy desires through culture and fads

- higher education was a bet on the previous structures, where being a grad student meant sure and high payoff. This changed... very often people with degrees are struggling. The education pipeline isn't met by a good demand in a way.

I think it also change the family structure where parents became grand parents earlier, now you may start stable life after 25 and have kids at 30, whereas before people would have them before that. And IMO this factor is an important source of happiness and motivation for the whole family circle. Delaying means everybody is older and doesn't respond the same way at all.

[closeparen]

>whereas previous generation had to start earning their life around 16

The previous generation had access to vastly more efficient and heavily taxpayer-subsidized public universities, and could pay for them with typical teenage part-time jobs. Universal high school came on the scene in the 1940s. I'm sure there was a generation that had to earn its life starting at age 16, but it was more than a couple of generations ago.