[mistercheph]

Education is not something arcane, TBH it's really the vocational schools that should be forced to call themselves something different. 99% of university students are not there for an education, they are in welding school upper-middle-class edition. Vocational programs are essential infrastructure, but they are not education, and those programs should not receive funds allocated for education or be held to the same standards as education programs and vice versa.

E.g. most computer science departments where computer science is not taught, students just participate in a charade of memorizing arbitrary facts that they never even attempt to understand in order to get a certificate that entitles them to receive on-the-job training to glue javascript components together for 6 figures.

Job training != education

[yorwba]

What about job training disqualifies it from being education?

[mistercheph]

Briefly: education is concerned with thinking, vocational training is concerned with task performance. There are lots of synergies and gray areas between the two, e.g. certain kinds of task proficiency are really helpful tools while thinking (e.g. arithmetic), and thinking is a really helpful tool while task performing (e.g. an unseen permutation of a task)

That question probably deserves a much longer, more complete answer than this, but another poor imprecise framework is that education empowers people to tackle new problems poorly and taking lots of time, vocational training empowers people to tackle existing problems with known solutions excellently. In the language of the greeks, nous and techne.

[snerbles]

Because it's not elitist ivory tower navel gazing with possible 8th order effects or something.

[mistercheph]

Exactly:

Elitist ivory tower as in free education for all that want it.

8th order effects like a well functioning society that isn't on the verge of collapse, where people live well, love each other, and think about interesting, important problems.

Distinct from the 1st order effects of a really high GDP thanks to all of the code monkeys we've trained to glue react components together: which has netted us a society on the verge of collapse, where poverty abounds, crime is universal, basic infrastructure like roads and water are crumbling, and we are plagued by mental illnesses, suicide, drug addiction, and mass shootings.

Hmm, if only there were any analogues in history that could show us the way forward, anyways, I've got to run, I've got a meeting in five with my agent who's going to show me how to 100x my SAAS revenue.

[snerbles]

So you're laundering academic class contempt into a theory of liberation.