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I don't disagree with these points, but I do think many individuals entering college are looking for some kind of extended [rite of] passage or something into adulthood, and I do think college provides that for many. I don't necessarily think it has to be that way, and I don't necessarily think it's the best way, certainly not for everyone, but I think for a lot of people it provides one way. Right now I think it's a broken path, but I'm not sure what other paths there are to replace it at the moment, given that employers (for the most part, maybe not entirely) seem to be abandoning that role. To me the bigger underlying subtext in a lot of these discussions is the vacuum that currently exists in terms of providing a safety net for people as they find their way. I think this could be provided by employers or something but I really don't think it is at the moment; colleges might also be flawed in being too expensive or not really delivering on their promises or something, and maybe we're at an inflection point. But if you think of spaces where society is ok with people figuring things out, or learning, or not really being fully developed yet, college is a major place. Outside of that it increasingly feels like people are treated as machines, interchangeable and replaceable, with little to no sense of potential or anything of that sort. Believe me, I feel like universities are very broken at the moment in many many ways. I just don't really see them going away in the near future, even if they are remade, and I think there's a good opportunity for society to really remake them in a way that's more useful, whatever that is. It may involve restructuring what a college education entails, or paying for it with public funds, or whatever, but that opportunity is there. |