| > in the big welcome event for incoming 9th graders every mention of post high-school life was phrased as "college and career". 1. If the school pulled from a certain kind of socio-economic status population, then this is a reasonable broad statement to make. 2. In other cases, it may just be projection and/or lazy thinking. 3. The US fascination with college eduction, attributing it to higher earnings, conflates correlation with causation. Many of the folks who go to college will also have a financially bright future if they don’t go to college — for example, by monetizing their social network. 4. The case for defaulting to a college education is that many places use it as a filter for job applicants. 5. My recommendation to folks is either go to a school with a well-developed alumni and/or job placement network or go to the cheapest and easiest school that they have access to. Learning isn’t really part of the equation, since it will either be baked into the program they enter, or they can just embrace autonomous/independent learning. The quality of education at middling institutions is just not very good. 6. Note that I believe that the US is producing college graduates at about double the rate that we need. A quick search of data shows that ~40% of folks aged 25-29 in 2022 had a college degree. I think that number should probably be closer to 15-20%… maybe as low as 10%. The only way the waste in the system can be cut is probably from above — using a college degree as a job filter misaligns incentives, imho, and this won’t change easily. |