Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it.
It would help people to realize any thing one does has an expiry date to it. This is why you need to have a system to remain consistent at some broad goals. Things like good eating, exercise, personal finance, relationships, reading and learning have to be done consistently, and have to be done throughout your life. You won't be good at life, if you don't do some of things regardless of the age, and place you are in.
The loss is in assuming College Degree as an aristocratic right. If you think this way you will soon realize there is nothing special about reading a few books between ages 18 - 22 and doing no learning after that for decades.
To me primary purpose of education is initiation. College degree should be treated as a good head start as an initiation. Nothing more, Nothing less.
Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it. <
To me College screwed my long haul instead.
When I graduated, I couldn't find any legal jobs (I could find some jobs masquerading as contracts, that employers offered to avoid paying taxes properly), because whenever I did, the person that got hired was someone else that DIDN'T go to college, but had 4 years of experience more than me.
After some time working (like I said, as "contractor"), and I finally had some experience, my issue was that people hired were either younger with same experience, or my age but more experienced.
And then of course there was the issue that my job selection was extremely limited, I could only take jobs that would let me pay my massive student debt, it felt to me my life wasn't much different than the one of a literal slave, being forced to work into very specific jobs because I couldn't take a job that paid less, or take my time to find a better job, etc...
Now I am 33, I have a wife, don't live with my parents anymore, have a reasonable income.
Still can't get unemployment benefits, because never been employed.
Still I am not even called to many job interviews, because "no experience".
Or one time, I was called to a job interview in a big asian multinational that had a Brazillian gamedev office, they been complaining on media for months they were not finding people qualified for the job, the job title was exactly what I had a degree for, the HR loved me and all.
Then when the last step left was for them to get authorization from higher ups... the authorization didn't came.
Know why?
Well, because although I had a degree, they didn't cared about the degree, what they cared about, was experience.
So no, college is NOT "obviously" part of anything unless you mean being "obviously" part of crushing student debt that force thousands into conditions that in my country are literally legally slavery if the owner of the debt was also the employer (we have a law named "employment analogous to slavery", one of its points is that employing people to have them repay their debt to you is considered slavery).
> Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it.
I would disagree. College education is absolutely not required to get through life. And it should be required even less than it is. There are some professions for which degrees are super useful. But most people doing degrees are going into professions that just require any degree and could easily be done without one.
I have a good friend of mine from high school who right after graduating became a welder. He has a very high quality of live, better than many of my friends who are doctors who are in debt and just now starting to pay off loans.
Does it follow that you see basically no value in community colleges and other "low-prestige" public institutions whose participants are predominantly from outside of any aspirationally-aristocratic subculture?
Of course if you are rich you are always going to have means and mechanisms to connect with the peer rich. I'm guessing once you move out of Ivy leagues, you will always the board rooms and golf courses to continue your networking.
I'm talking more on the lines of normal people, from normal families. For people like us, education means some thing very different. Its like initial exposure to an experience we must maintain all life.
It would help people to realize any thing one does has an expiry date to it. This is why you need to have a system to remain consistent at some broad goals. Things like good eating, exercise, personal finance, relationships, reading and learning have to be done consistently, and have to be done throughout your life. You won't be good at life, if you don't do some of things regardless of the age, and place you are in.
The loss is in assuming College Degree as an aristocratic right. If you think this way you will soon realize there is nothing special about reading a few books between ages 18 - 22 and doing no learning after that for decades.
To me primary purpose of education is initiation. College degree should be treated as a good head start as an initiation. Nothing more, Nothing less.