[firefoxman1]

Yeah, higher tuition is exactly what I wanted. There's a reason state schools are so much cheaper than private: state funding.

As much as I love libraries, I hardly visit one thanks to the thousands (millions?) of public domain books I can get free straight to my Kindle. The only thing I would want to visit a library for would be books like O'Reilly books, but my college pays a subscription to Safari Books that allows students access to literally thousands of such books completely free; O'Reilly, Apress, etc. so my thirst is quenched for now. The beauty is that as soon as a new book is published, it's on the site. And there aren't HTML3 books from the 90's still wasting (virtual) shelf space like my library.

Random thought, but that could be the future of the library. What if a little bit of tax money went toward an online directory like Safari Books instead of a huge expensive library building? Always updated, easy access, and a much wider selection? I'd go for it. I guess baby boomers wouldn't though.

[learc83]

>state funding

Indirect state (and federal) funding, in the form of scholarships, grants, and loans, is one of the reasons tuition is so high in the first place.

If student loans weren't so plentiful colleges wouldn't cost 10-50k a year, because no one would pay.

[firefoxman1]

That is a very good point. Yeah, I completely agree with you that the easy access to such high sums of loan money for students has led to the high inflation of college prices, but we don't need anything to raise those rates even higher.

[Joakal]

Some more parts of the equation; deregulation, unemployment pressures, some job degrees aren't helpful, heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education.

[firefoxman1]

"heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education."

Wow, I'm glad there are others that realize this. I guess hacker news would be the place to find independent thinkers like yourself. One other I would add is:

Lack of school counselors, teachers, parents, etc. that believe entrepreneurship is a viable career option.

[learc83]

>Lack of school counselors, teachers, parents, etc. that believe entrepreneurship is a viable career option.

Excellent point. Since kindergarten, when I tried to sell some crafts I made during play time to the other kids, I've been pulled towards entrepreneurship, but going through school you are eventually led to believe that running your own business isn't an option.

It's not that anyone ever sat me down and told me that I couldn't be an entrepreneur, but it's never discussed as a possibility.

[johnnybgoode]

It looks like this whole story was manually pushed off the HN front page for some reason (or it was flagged and the sorting algorithm takes this into account?), but I just wanted to say while I'm here that I was really glad to read this particular subthread.

[learc83]

True.

>heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful

I think the cultural emphasis on degrees was in large part pushed from the top down. I.e., once more people started going to college (because of loans/scholarships), college became a necessity for jobs where it previously wasn't.