Time to write off public education?

[DVaut1]

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I loved college, would do it again in a heartbeat, and might do more some day.

I'm not advocating the slightest bit of government involvement. I'm just saying that I think higher education evolved inefficiently (whether because of government or not). For 70%+ of kids, college is a big party. They're not interested in learning, they're just going through the motions.

I think that most of what we learn in college, for most professions, is not that relevant. You get a degree in whatever, start your first day of work, and your co-worker teaches you everything you need to learn.

I'm not saying that college can't be a very positive experience - but IMO for most people it's just a waste. It's a waste of their parents' money and a waste of their time when they could be earning.

Of course you still need to go in this day and age to get any decent job, and it's a blast even if you're not interested in learning, but as I said, I think it's inefficient.

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This narrative doesn't square with the fact that many top international students go to great ends for the opportunity to attend and study at American institutions of higher education. Either they're behaving irrationally, or American higher education truly is comparatively better than the rest of the world's.

If you need some objective measures, The Economist recently wrote an article about the quality of higher-education worldwide where it claimed that the American higher-education system was a paradigm for the rest of the world to follow; the article cited a higher-education ranking formula created by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The results are dominated by American universities: