[amanaplanacanal]

We have been framing it that way for a long time though. How many times have you heard someone talk about the average income of high school graduates vs college graduates as a reason to go to college? I agree with you though. Education should be about personal enrichment, not personal “enrichment”.

[Animats]

We have been framing it that way for a long time though.

Yes. That changed on February 28, 1967.[1][2]

[1] https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-day-the-purpose-of-col...

[2] https://archive.is/G11YT

[yamtaddle]

Fussell (among others) blamed the GI Bill for a marked decline in the average quality of college education, and the diminution of what "college educated" meant (without further qualifiers).

The spike in demand drove a ton of "normal" schools (teachers' colleges) to become proper colleges and even universities, plus a bunch of new ones to pop up, but rather than increasing the supply of (previously) college-level education, it mostly created a kind of knock-off, lower-tier product—there just weren't enough excellent professors to meet demand, not enough good, experienced college administrators, not enough anything, including, arguably, students who were fit for college (as it had previously been) in the numbers that were now attending.

[bumby]

It seems like this sentiment is just a veiled form of elitism. One of the primary detractors when the GI Bill was being rolled out was University of Chicago of Chicago was Maynard Hutchins, who feared it would turn a campus into a shanty town of "hobos." He later walked that statement back and admitted that the veterans coming to schools ended up being higher quality students than the traditional variety.