[aleph_minus_one]

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

> This is a bit of a naive or maybe affluent take?

Concerning the "naive" aspect, I wrote something at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397759

Basically, this was really my lived experience, which might have been amplified that it was a decent university in a "boring" town where learning for your studies was one of the more exciting things that you could do.

Concerning the "affluent" aspect, I can clearly assure you that neither I am nor my parents were.

[raesene9]

I think perhaps the reason you are seeing quite a few commenters expressing skepticism to your comment "You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study." is that you appear to be extrapolating from one example (your own), without considering whether that's likely the wider experience of people going to university.

In the UK anyway, there's an acknowledged idea that many people go to university because there is a societal expectation that they should and also because many careers require a degree even for entry level positions.

There is also much less emphasis on other routes of tertiary education (e.g. vocational schools), when compared to places like Germany.

[aleph_minus_one]

> "You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study." is that you appear to be extrapolating from one example (your own)

I know a lot of people who think this way, and I can assure you that the people who realized later that university is not for them deeply would have wished that someone had given them this advice when they were younger.