[dmd]

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

[aleph_minus_one]

> This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

In Germany, many people indeed say if you are not deeply into the topic that you study, you should rather get a vocational training (Ausbildung), or attend a different kind of tertiary education than a university such as

- Fachhochschule

- Berufsakademie

(these words have no good English translation). Basically these are kinds of tertiary education that are more applied than the much more scientific training that you get at a university.

Specifically for mathematics (I guess the same holds for physics), a lot of people say that if you don't consider it to be an ideal life to think about math exercise sheets when you sit in the bathtub while other people are having fun at some party, you simply are not made for studying mathematics and should change your degree course as soon as possible.

[carefulfungi]

This situation is changing in the US but isn't well reported, in my opinion.

We haven't regained traditional apprenticeship roles (perhaps because we so weakened unions?) but 30 (of 50) States have free or heavily subsidized two-year community / vocational college programs. Affordable and accessible vocational education opportunities are increasingly present. I also think (very subjectively) that we are seeing a renewed respect for the trades.

However, there are structural headwinds outside of education - no national health insurance plan being a major one. Farming, fishing, forestry, construction and similar trades still have a 20-30% uninsured rate in the US. (The uninsured rate in white collar "professional" work is around 2.5%.)

[aleph_minus_one]

> We haven't regained traditional apprenticeship roles (perhaps because we so weakened unions?)

The reason for the traditional apprenticeship roles is not unions, but rather capitalistic:

- If potential employees are well-trained the employer doesn't have to invest resources for training them.

- The certificate of the vocational training means that the employer knows that an applicant has an established standard, and can save time testing whether he is qualified.

- Because the trainee needs practical experience, employers can invoice this additional worker to the customer. Because the trainee needs explanations and thus works slower, more hours can be invoiced to a customer.

[finghin]

It's a much more socially beneficial system and I think a large part of this is probably differences in culture regarding education and one's career. The availability of these modes of teaching is downstream from that.

[finghin]

It is really about time we thought about what universities are for in the 21st century, since there has been significant scope creep wrt labour markets, particularly roles which do not actually require university education but do require a degree for CV reasons. It is nonsense in the 21st century to require a bachelor's degree for such roles. Not to mention the huge societal pressure that you have mentioned, which no 18 year old can really be expected to see through.

With CS students this is one thing. Medical students? Air traffic controllers?

That is to say, there is a huge gap in the educational integrity of degrees, and this is probably partly driven by people who do not really want to be at university for educational reasons (and, believe it or not, there are other ways to party in your early twenties) and for whom a degree in XYZ is not rationally connected to 80% of their options after school. And there are many such people.

This really needs to be thought through, because education is expensive, and it is an enormous waste of money to pay for a couple of years of university and end up failing out or being sanctioned for AI cheating, or being educated for something you do not really want or need to be taught. That is true whether or not education is paid for privately or by the public.

ETA that when I graduated from school the idea of not going to university was really discouraged by the guidance counselor. It seemed like vocational courses were not really a worthwhile option unless you were a poor (significantly below average) student. There was a lot of emphasis on ‘getting a degree’ probably related to (nonsense) job requirements. Not a lot on what career you should pursue, or why you should consider university. It was more like why would you not consider university, since it was the de facto default. It was, I guess, unseemly for the school to end up with fewer university entrants and more apprentices.

At the time, there was somewhat of a social stigma with apprenticeships. The people that pursued them seemed to only genuinely have been set on the idea, and there were few if any that were diverted thereto. Now, of course, ‘the trades’ pay much better than a middling office job. Egg on my face.

[riddlemethat]

Universities today are seen as debt manufacturing facilities. Debt that cannot be discharged. AI is seen as an act of war against the world’s working classes. Rich people aren’t building bunkers in foreign countries and buying yachts the size of a town because we ran out of land in America. Buckle up for a wild tumultuous period of human history.

[finghin]

Sure, I think this is a major element in the States, but I have never been there and all of this applies to my country where student loans are rare and fees are paid by the State.

[caminante]

Rest doesn't make sense either with the parent's tautologies and self-counters. They seem to argue for it and raise the challenges.

~"Speed doesn't matter unless you need it."

~"LLMs can be good, but if you don't use them properly™, then they become a crutch."

It's hard to deny that "cognitive offloading" via LLMs is becoming a more acute problem [0]. The intelligentsia were supposed to be immune.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-coul...

[a96]

Maybe they are immune, but it's just a very small group.

[charlie90]

It wasn't even true before...

Universities have always had people not interested in the subject, but who went because its elite training school. I was reading something about Issac Newtons college in the 1600s, many of his classmates didn't care about studying and drank all the time.