This data is pretty useless without data from other time periods.
And it seems like bashing high education is the cool thing to do nowadays. We use stories of the "I'm $200,000 in debt from my Ivy league B.A. in English and no one wants to hire me!" nature to justify that higher education is becoming irrelevant.
But I think we're all missing several pieces of the puzzle. One piece is that forget that what we're trying to optimize is happiness, and if those 13.4% of waiters are happy, then who cares if they have a BA or MA? OK, maybe we've wasted government money on their education, but can we call it a waste just because they didn't use that BA in English to do Englishy stuff? No. They're probably a more refined person because of those four years.
I do agree that higher education is broken. But higher education is broken in every single freaking country. The French spend less time in college, but they have a higher unemployment rate than us. Kenya's universities are based on entrance exams that encourages memorization and discourages critical thinking and imagination. Asia's universities are based on elite entrance exams where students to spend up to a year studying for.
Yes, higher education is broken. But so is everything else in this world.
And it seems like bashing high education is the cool thing to do nowadays. We use stories of the "I'm $200,000 in debt from my Ivy league B.A. in English and no one wants to hire me!" nature to justify that higher education is becoming irrelevant.
But I think we're all missing several pieces of the puzzle. One piece is that forget that what we're trying to optimize is happiness, and if those 13.4% of waiters are happy, then who cares if they have a BA or MA? OK, maybe we've wasted government money on their education, but can we call it a waste just because they didn't use that BA in English to do Englishy stuff? No. They're probably a more refined person because of those four years.
I do agree that higher education is broken. But higher education is broken in every single freaking country. The French spend less time in college, but they have a higher unemployment rate than us. Kenya's universities are based on entrance exams that encourages memorization and discourages critical thinking and imagination. Asia's universities are based on elite entrance exams where students to spend up to a year studying for.
Yes, higher education is broken. But so is everything else in this world.