[rayiner]

The economy that mobilized on a dime to defeat Nazi Germany and sent men to the moon had only 5% of adults with a college degree. Is it so much more complex now that kids need four more expensive years of education? And if it is more complex, is college as currently structured the cheapest way to develop those additional skills?

[rowanG077]

I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle. You are assuming because the cream of the crop could achieve something (I.e. most certainly had college degrees) 70 years ago that we can still form society like that today.

But society is not the same as it was then. I don't think you can argue that the median job today requires the same amount of knowledge or skill then it did 70 years ago. And that is what college is for currently.

Of course you can still argue we don't need that many college graduates but your argument by itself is not convincing.

[tptacek]

One of the highest-growth jobs for liberal arts graduates (which make up the majority of graduates) is human resources. I'll plant a flag in this conversation right now and say that no part of the human resources job requires a 4-year college degree.

[tristor]

Also, most of those jobs are either contingent (contract recruiters) or unnecessary. There’s a significant new “industry” in BS jobs being created to support employment for otherwise unemployable college grads.

Most of the college programs simply don’t teach anything useful in the job market.

[rfrey]

Please name some of these skills.

[watwut]

The engineers inventing the machinery necessary for landing I the moon all had college degrees.

The mobilization for the war does not require super educated population.

[tptacek]

Yes, but his point is that the society that marshaled those degree-holders only had a pool of 5% of graduates to draw on. There's no question that some jobs require college education; the question is whether there are enough of them to justify pushing the majority of 18-year-olds into 4-year colleges.

[watwut]

The mood landing is pretty bad example. It is useless except for propaganda and good feeling. It is organizational and technological achievement, but not particularly needed by society that produced it.

People don't go to college to moorland nor to facilitate next war. They go to college to get corporate jobs.

[pclmulqdq]

Looking at the moon landing and the Manhattan project, you hear about the very few PhDs on the program. They were outnumbered at least 100:1 by skilled tradespeople who manufactured components of those programs. None of those manufacturing jobs need a college degree, just time and focus, which a college degree detracts from by taking 4 more years of your life. You should look at the LHC for a modern example. Even these feats of science need a small minority of people employed in them to be trained scientists.

[watwut]

Manufacturing still don't require college.

But, qork in manufacture sux. Also very related, those job were either replaced by machines or moved abroad.

[inawarminister]

Sucks for who? The capital owners? Compare being employed in a regular shift in a production plant to irregular shifts in 2-3 different "sharing economy" apps.

Manufacturing moved abroad seems one explicit failure of Western post-war economic system for me. And here I'm from the third world myself.

[tzs]

What was the percentage in Germany?