Universities are honestly the strangest institutions. Responsible for the feeding & caring of the nation's Science People, but also for credentialing a *bunch* of random jobs via licensure reqs that are all over the place; conduit for a $1.5T debt crisis but still much beloved
It's how I imagine religion *used to be,* so deeply entrenched and widely presumed that almost nobody even notices that the incentives at play seem unlikely to drive desirable outcomes and the proof is absolutely in the pudding
Does this seem a bit extreme? OK, but the story told by the numbers is that people are willing to pay essentially Infinite Dollars for whatever it is that college is gatekeeping, and back at the ranch scientific progress, the thing we were ostensibly funding, seems to have slowed
I think it's unlikely that my kids go to college, at least not at the modern price point. I don't know, maybe it'll be their rebellion. "Do I think you should take on the equivalent of a down payment for a million dollar house at 17, on non-dischargeable credit? No son, I do not"
I've said it before; I think maybe the benchmark for a college program should be outperforming a control group that simply reads 1-2 books/week. 15-30 books/semester, but *actually* read them. I think virtually all BS programs would fail to beat this on *any* reasonable criteria
But let's not forget the other apparent reason universities exist: the prolonged, systemic torture and simultaneous neglect of this wretched marked class of human we call "graduate students"
The only two life events I have ever known to fell the soul of an otherwise bright and thriving young scholar are (a) getting a book deal and (b) attempting to complete grad school
AFAICT, the last couple of years of grad school represent the fresh academic's "actually, it was Lord Xenu all along" watershed moment, as it is finally revealed that Science is actually just paper-shuffling to sate an endless hunger for grants that must be chewed into citations
Why do employers like grads? I partially buy the "conscientiousness" explanation, although I'd point out that beyond demonstrating personal stick-to-itiveness, a degree shows that you aren't distracted by sick family, an immediate need for cash, etc. Yes, it's a class signal.
...but I *mostly* think it's Things Being Done The Way Things Are Done. The guy who just got hired to do hiring does hiring the way everyone does it, because then noone can blame him for sticking his neck out if his hires suck. This is how many crappy aspects of the world work.
My maximally cynical read is always fun, so here's mine re why employers like new grads: people in massive debt work like they have massive debt
(Again, IMO the *actual* explanation is just that doing it the way it's always done reduces personal liability for decision-makers. There is some research showing that interview processes filter poorly for ultimate employee quality, making deviation from the status quo esp risky)
This is another super valuable lens for understanding human systems: very often the explicit reasons people do things are *not* precisely the same reasons that those things are as adaptive as they are.
