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Originally Posted by Rain Man
I think more and more people are starting to put this together, particularly with the glut of college graduates these days. I'm hearing it a lot more and totally agree with it.
I think there are several issues about college that aren't discussed as much yet as they should be. Everyone talks about the cost of college, and it's certainly increased, but at the same time a local public university is not unaffordable.
I think the bigger issues around college are that the pressures of going to college are overwhelming the rational decision about whether to do it. As you mention, some people simply don't want the careers that college points them to. But society pushes the college route so hard that people feel compelled to go even if they're not interested in it, or frankly in some cases not academically a good fit.
And the second issue is that so many people are going to college that I think we're getting a glut of graduates now. The most telling example is law school, which is a nightmare scenario right now, but it's also true of other degree programs as well. So that lowers the value of a college degree because you're competing with a lot of people who have similar degrees.
And of course third is the cheapening of college degrees through private sector schools and other things.
Somewhere along the line, it seems like our society decided that that a career isn't prestigious if it doesn't require a degree, and that everyone should hold a degree. Neither of those is true.
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I've heard this, but I can't help but disagree with the trades being looked down upon as a big flaw in the system. You said that some people "don't want the careers that college points them to". And what careers are those? You can go to college and major in almost anything you want. In my opinion, people who say "yea, go in to the trades and make 80k a year" are the same as people who say "just go to college and get a STEM degree and you'll be fine". While both pieces are good advice in a vacuum(you can easily get jobs in both for good money)it ignores the fact that not everyone wants to be a welder or a computer scientist. While I'm sure there are some people who get turned off by the trades as a social stigma, the fact is that most people don't want to go home dirty and sweaty from working outside working with potentially dangerous tools. Most people want to go to work in a nice air conditioned office with minimal labor and risk of injury. I can list several other reasons why more people wouldn't want to go in to the trades depending on what trade it is that go beyond the prestige factor, just like there are dozens of reasons people don't become computer scientists to get the prestige factor.