[bilegeek]

That's the exact problem though. Companies have been outsourcing training to colleges for decades now, further and further reducing available career paths as mentioned and causing degree inflation, higher education costs for everybody, etc.

It's also unlikely to change because it's just one more symptom of how companies are run these days, and that mindset has societal-scale momentum now.

[scarface_74]

Why wouldn’t they? Despite what idealists think that people should go to college to “expand their minds and be better citizens of the world”, most people can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars and not expect to be ready for careers.

[bilegeek]

I didn't intend to sound crunchy like that. College for practical means has long been the norm in the US vs. elsewhere, going back to agricultural schools in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is nothing wrong with that; what is NOT good is the whole-sale replacement of job training to colleges, as it cannot properly encompass every eccentricity of a particular job, leading to the problems mentioned before.

College is about getting the knowledge to perform your field, not the knowledge of every particular procedure one could possibly expect to see. The modern emphasis on internships softens the blow somewhat, but it's a half-hearted replacement and is easily abused in many fields.