[GuB-42]

The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be?

You need to give these people something to do. You say they just want to get the job, another way to say it is that if they don't graduate, they won't get the job, so what are they going to do instead? Some low skill jobs don't require much study, but there are only so many in modern society, and we don't really want more of these.

So, more apprenticeship? That's actually a really good solution, but an entire system needs to change as it shifts the burden of training to employers rather than schools. Whatever the solution is, it would have an impact on every aspect of society, maybe positive, maybe negative, my guess is on an overall negative as even if lowest common denominator education is not ideal, it is still better than no education at all for the masses. But it is debatable, and it is often debated.

Also there is a correlation between countries tertiary education rate and GDP and life expectancy. It does not imply causation, but it supports the idea that it may be a good thing.

[jkubicek]

> The problem is: what are you going to do with these 35%? where should the people who shouldn't be there be?

Doing the exact same thing they’re doing now, just without wasting 4 years in college and being $100k in debt

[GuB-42]

I wouldn't call the 4 years in college a waste, you still learn something even if it is not what will make you money later in life. General knowledge spread out over the entire population is a good thing I think.

The debt however is an other problem, a US specific one it seems. Many other countries have a lot of students and no student debt problem. But one way to think about that debt is that it is someone else's asset. Money is debt (maybe that's the kind of useless thing you learn in college ;)) and getting rid of a $100k debt is like removing $100k from the economy, and it will be felt in one way or another. I still think that student debt situation is terrible, but "solving" the student debt problem by removing students is not the way to go IMHO.

[pclowes]

They are already doing it. They just have a useless degree and if they went onto college, another worthless degree and likely a bunch of debt in order to do it.

Whether or not our programs are rigorous, does not change the reality on the ground or make the actual capabilities of the population different. It’s not like a person with a worthless degree is more capable than a person who dropped out of a worthwhile rigorous program. We just perceive them to be. A rigorous high school program corrects that perception, saving time and money.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You need to give these people something to do

Yes. But not as a first-order priority. Fixing the incentives in the schooling system can take priority over figuring out what to do with every single person passing through it. (Also, a market where a third of students fail to graduate high school will find use for that labor.)

[potsandpans]

(I realize this is an ungenerous and blunt take that lacks some amount of empathy)

I have worked in fortune 500 companies for 15 years, and my observation is that there is an alarming amount of people (engineering) who work in these companies are completely inept in their domain of expertise.

What they seem to get by on is a complete adherence to hierarchy: do not ask questions, do not push back on requests, do not engage in capability mindset, just execute on whatever slop is getting jammed down the throat of middle management.

Now, as someone who is on "the leadership team", I see this as generally widespread across many different orgs.

These folks obviously serve some function: which is to churn out whatever the whims are of the executive leadership team based on the Current Business Strategy.

So what do we do with these folks? Let them keep doing it. We could satisfy these roles with the standard factory style highschool education followed by an associates -like degree, e.g. a two year rule following program that introduces the domain and jargon that you're going to be in.