Can't believe we're hating on college now!
College has its problems (lack of equal access, highly variable quality), but it remains the surest means of social mobility, and a personally transformative experience for students.
College has its problems (lack of equal access, highly variable quality), but it remains the surest means of social mobility, and a personally transformative experience for students.
The whole "skip college and become a tech entrepreneur at 17" life plan reeks of debilitating privilege. For the vast majority, skipping college means a lifetime of shuttling between low-skilled jobs at the very edge of the middle class.
Another favourite argument of the tech echo chamber is that college education should be more vocational and focus on employable skills. To me, it's a reactionary argument that seeks to perpetuate the very differences it outwardly seeks to erase.
The purpose of the global university system was to create an elite class that would do the thinking and the leading, separate from a working class that didn't need much education.
As the new "working class" requires more intellectual than physical skills (think IT services vs machine shop), vocational college becomes a means to create a middle tier of the new doers. When we advocate vocational college, it's never for our own children, it's for the poors.
In the vocational college paradigm, the benefits of a broad education that teaches you how to think and exposes you to the world of ideas (i.e. college) continue to remain accessible to a small elite. For everyone else, there's "employable skills".
Instead, I would argue for a dramatic increase in college capacity and using technology to bridge the quality gap between top universities and provincial colleges. And the free entry of foreign universities that pushes everyone to up their game.
That way, we don't create tiers. We broaden access to high-quality education. And that means expanding college education, not diminishing it. </rant>
