A century ago, universities were aimed at the intellectuals whose careers were likely to follow a pursuit which required an extensive education.
As the decades wore on, this changed. College became more and more the expectation for students intending a white collar career, even if their area of study wasn't likely to reflect their ultimate industry of choice.
As more time passed, college became an expectation for anyone who didn't want a blue collar job. You'd finish high school, then go to college, especially if you were from a middle class or above neighborhood. It didn't matter if you didn't know what you planned to do with your life. College was just the next phase. If your grades weren't good enough, your parents would send you to community college, with the plan to transfer to a 4-year school after two years.
As costs of college skyrocketed, so did the need for college loans. Student debt became huge, and in some cases, unmanageable. Many of those in-debt students graduated with mostly worthless degrees.
Today we stand with college enrollment higher than ever, and with the highest-ever percentage of students who won't be using their education for their careers. For many, college is simply a litmus test for employers. If you obtained a bachelors degree with a reasonable-looking GPA, you were deemed smart and responsible enough to work there, and you'd be given an entry-level office position.
But this is all absurd. It's a waste of money, and it's a waste of young adulthood. It's also increasingly leaving young people in a state of perpetual teenagedom, as an increasing number of kids simply use college to delay the transition into adult responsibility, whereas 50+ years ago, many were expected to jump feet first into adult life after high school, and grow up quickly.
My parents married in their early 20s. The average maturity of people their age in the mid-60s was FAR higher than early-20s kids today, and it's not close. This has also filtered down to the high school years, with many 16-year-olds choosing neither to date nor drive, but rather remain in a state similar to when they were 14.
And for all the talk about autism being sharply on the rise, it's not vaccines to blame. It's average parental age. That's gone WAY up in the US over the past 50 years, especially recently. This, again, is a side effect of delayed adulthood. People are having kids later than ever, and there's oddly a taboo regarding discussion of declined female fertility after age 35 (and in many cases zero fertility after 40). You'd be shocked how many smart, educated women I've spoken to who honestly believe that they're fertile until menopause, or that waiting until 38 to have kids is not a risk.
Finally, colleges have become propaganda factories. "General education" was meant to produce well-rounded citizens, but instead has become a series of mandatory left wing propaganda courses, aimed at brainwashing young adults into a very specific political ideology. There is no longer a need for "general education", especially on the public's dime. The internet now contains a wealth of information on any subject you'd like to learn. College should be all about training young people for life and careers. General education can still exist at colleges, but it should not be mandatory, aside from essentials such as writing skills and basic mathematics (for those who need help in those areas).
So what's the solution?
We need to have fewer colleges and universities, or at least lesser enrollment. Admissions standards should go up, and there should be a more robust testing process to determine who is "college material" and who is not. There is no shame in not being the college type. I've known great auto mechanics who would have flunked college, and straight-A college students who would have been horrible auto mechanics. Each person has their sets of strengths and weaknesses, and we should not attempt to force a large segment of the young population into an environment where they might not belong.
Public colleges should continue to exist, but tuition must be brought under control, and this tuition should mainly support education, with a much lesser amount going toward research or other non-education pursuits. Universities should examine their pre-1990 budgets and return to something similar, as tuition costs have exploded since then, mostly due to opportunity rather than need. Colleges should reform their education plan to aim more at producing graduates ready for the workforce, rather than putting students through mostly extraneous and needless courses. Students should be made to understand before selecting a major whether there will be jobs connected to that major. Loans should only be given to students likely to graduate with a position which would allow them to repay such loans. The sociology or art history majors would not qualify.
Trade schools should be more emphasized, though aligning with our likely AI-powered future. Students who are not "college material" should be directed to learn a skill which best suits them, and then go out into the workforce.
Students headed for medical or legal positions should start earlier in their training in those fields. There should not be "pre-med" or "pre-law", but rather degrees which already get you part of the way there to med school or law school (and weed out those who are likely to fail).
Engineering and the sciences, which do prepare students somewhat for industry, should be more rigorous and focused upon the skills they will need in the increasingly competitive workplace, and allow them to seamlessly transition from college into industry. While general education is often reduced for these fields, it needs to be reduced more, and there should also be a reduction in the number of science/math courses, removing all of them which are likely to be irrelevant to the major.
Imagine how much this country would improve of all of the above were to be done.
If you work in an office, no doubt you are frustrated by stupid/incompetent people who got their jobs simply because they scored a bachelors degree at a diploma mill school, yet have no real skills and drag everyone down. Wouldn't it be nice to be rid of these people, and for people to get these jobs based upon ability, and not because they have a BS in sociology with a GPA of 3.3?
This is all likely a pipe dream. I doubt these changes will occur in my lifetime. But it would be great to see, and it would solve a lot of societal problems which just seem to be getting worse.
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