[Wintamute]

That seems like a naive assessment of an education model that is failing across multiple dimensions of analysis. It saddles many students with crippling debt. It monopolises some of the most productive years of a persons life studying subjects often of minimal practical value to their future careers. It drains public funding and resources.

You say more highly educated people is better as if its a truism, it doesn't seem so clear to me. I don't see why, for example, someone spending their early 20s in an apprenticeship, doing vocational training or in an industry learning on the job is inherently worse for them or society than receiving a higher education.

Just about the only unambiguous positive I can see in university is the chance to grow and learn as a young person in a social setting, freshly independent of parents. But surely there are more efficient approaches that could be employed here.

[chii]

> studying subjects often of minimal practical value to their future careers

the fact that these subjects offer minimal value should mean that the loan taken to study them should not have been taken. If the student likes the subject, and would be willing to pay, then so be it. But to borrow money, off the back of tax payers, to study a useless subject, is basically folly on the part of the administration approving those loans.

[Jcowell]

I for one am glad the system is not like this. I don’t not think our society as a whole would be better if the only thing we approved were studies of subjects with lucrative careers. While I do not understand Gender Studies , I appreciate those who are willing to study more about us and the phenomenons we silly little humans do.