[holograham]

Why is there an onus on "society" to train people? Shouldn't the onus be on the individual or perhaps businesses that need folks with unique skills? (Think Ross Perot's famous training boot camps for EDS where they hired teachers or English majors and taught them systems engineering)

It's the same concept in programming. No one learned COBOL and stopped (at least most didnt). You are constantly learning new skills to stay relevant. The business world is indeed moving faster and it used to be true that you could learn a single skill and have a career (e.g. assembly line workers). Clearly that is no longer the case and if you havent realized this you've been asleep at the wheel of life.

You are right, college is not solely about learning discrete skills as it is about learning efficient ways to gain new skills. I am sure most people on hacker news would agree with my experience that the first 6 months of working in the "real world" post graduation I learned more discrete skills than my 4 years in undergrad. However undergrad gave me a solid base from which to build those skills on.