Part of the problem is that the university, in its current form, is outdated.
Young adults are kept in their cocoon for far too long. Michelangelo started work at 14; young people now start at 24 or older. Productive years are wasted, people accumulating debt rather than saving, living in a bubble rather than doing something useful.
The university traditionally was for the top few % - the children of the wealthy, as a few years of freedom before taking on the family firm, and a select few of the lower classes as a ticket to government and upper management. Nowadays companies use a degree as a lazy jobs filter and its scarcity value is gone.
This is not to devalue education itself. People have longer working lives, and may change careers several times - either because they get bored or the economy changes under their feet. Short, useful periods of education and training throughout your working life may be a better way than 4 years early on in your adulthood that soon pass into irrelevance, leaving you with decades of debt.
Young adults are kept in their cocoon for far too long. Michelangelo started work at 14; young people now start at 24 or older. Productive years are wasted, people accumulating debt rather than saving, living in a bubble rather than doing something useful.
The university traditionally was for the top few % - the children of the wealthy, as a few years of freedom before taking on the family firm, and a select few of the lower classes as a ticket to government and upper management. Nowadays companies use a degree as a lazy jobs filter and its scarcity value is gone.
This is not to devalue education itself. People have longer working lives, and may change careers several times - either because they get bored or the economy changes under their feet. Short, useful periods of education and training throughout your working life may be a better way than 4 years early on in your adulthood that soon pass into irrelevance, leaving you with decades of debt.