I agree that you can make a case that sending a lot of people to university is wasteful; maybe you can make a case that sending anyone to university is wasteful (though, for what it’s worth, that feels entirely wrong to me). But shminux was making a different claim: that our universities are so wasteful that they imperil our civilization’s survival. That claim seems absurdly overblown to me.
Yes, the age at which people go to university is a good age for learning new things. That would be why people of that age are often encouraged to go off to a place designed for learning new things: a university.
Maybe just getting a job will (on average) actually result in learning more valuable things, but frankly I don’t see any reason to believe that. (More things valuable for becoming a cog in someone else’s industrial machine, maybe, though even that isn’t obvious.)
Maybe all young people (or at least all fairly bright young people?) should be trying to start their own businesses, but again I see no reason to believe that either. Starting a business is hard; most new businesses fail; most 18-year-olds lack knowledge and experience that would greatly improve their chances of starting a successful business. (There are other reasons why I think this would be a bad idea, but since I’m not even sure it’s what you have in mind I’ll leave it there.)
Maybe the learning people currently do at universities, or the learning they’re meant to be doing at universities, or whatever other learning should replace it, should be done “in the background” while they are working a job; but I see no reason to think that’s even possible in most cases. Their jobs are likely to be too demanding in time, effort and mental focus. For sure some people can do it, but if you want it to be the general case then I’d like to see evidence that it’s feasible.
Maybe we need different ways of optimizing 18-20-year-olds’ lives for learning new and valuable things. I’d be interested to see concrete proposals. An obvious question I hope they’d address: why expect that in practice this will end up better than universities?
Apprenticeship seems promising to me. It’s died out in most of the world, but there’s still formal apprenticeship programs in Germany that seem to work pretty well.
Also, it’s a surprisingly common position among very successful people I know that young people would benefit from 2 years of national service after high school. It wouldn’t have to be military service — it could be environmental conservation, poverty relief, Peace Corps type activities, etc.
We actually have reasonable control groups for this both in countries with mandatory national service and the Mormon Church, whom the majority of their members go on a 2-year mission. I haven’t looked at hard numbers or anything, but my sense is that both countries with national service and Mormons tend to be more successful than similar cohorts that don’t undergo such experiences.
Maybe just getting a job will (on average) actually result in learning more valuable things, but frankly I don’t see any reason to believe that. (More things valuable for becoming a cog in someone else’s industrial machine, maybe, though even that isn’t obvious.)
Ok, well I certainly wouldn’t argue that a generic alternative exists, I mean, that’s my original point, that they are wasteful via the fact that they steal signal-strength from any alternative that would crop up.
In my personal experience, getting a job on average is better for learning, if you look for jobs that can provide de-facto mentors/teachers, but that might be because so few young people get a job. Or maybe me and the people I know that took my advice and quite university are just very good at learning from other practitionares rather than professors.
Maybe we need different ways of optimizing 18-20-year-olds’ lives for learning new and valuable things. I’d be interested to see concrete proposals. An obvious question I hope they’d address: why expect that in practice this will end up better than universities?
Well, my proposal in the article is basically that we had such a system, it was called a university, but it got slowly eroded as it went the way of a safety/community provision institution (or at least provisioning an illusion of those two).
My argument for why it worked better in the past are point 1-2 and arguably 3 and 4.
I can well believe that universities used to work well and worsened over time. The point of my question at the end there is that I would expect any New Improved University Replacement to suffer the same process.
(Of course it might be worth it anyway, if it works better for long enough.)
I agree that you can make a case that sending a lot of people to university is wasteful; maybe you can make a case that sending anyone to university is wasteful (though, for what it’s worth, that feels entirely wrong to me). But shminux was making a different claim: that our universities are so wasteful that they imperil our civilization’s survival. That claim seems absurdly overblown to me.
Yes, the age at which people go to university is a good age for learning new things. That would be why people of that age are often encouraged to go off to a place designed for learning new things: a university.
Maybe just getting a job will (on average) actually result in learning more valuable things, but frankly I don’t see any reason to believe that. (More things valuable for becoming a cog in someone else’s industrial machine, maybe, though even that isn’t obvious.)
Maybe all young people (or at least all fairly bright young people?) should be trying to start their own businesses, but again I see no reason to believe that either. Starting a business is hard; most new businesses fail; most 18-year-olds lack knowledge and experience that would greatly improve their chances of starting a successful business. (There are other reasons why I think this would be a bad idea, but since I’m not even sure it’s what you have in mind I’ll leave it there.)
Maybe the learning people currently do at universities, or the learning they’re meant to be doing at universities, or whatever other learning should replace it, should be done “in the background” while they are working a job; but I see no reason to think that’s even possible in most cases. Their jobs are likely to be too demanding in time, effort and mental focus. For sure some people can do it, but if you want it to be the general case then I’d like to see evidence that it’s feasible.
Maybe we need different ways of optimizing 18-20-year-olds’ lives for learning new and valuable things. I’d be interested to see concrete proposals. An obvious question I hope they’d address: why expect that in practice this will end up better than universities?
Apprenticeship seems promising to me. It’s died out in most of the world, but there’s still formal apprenticeship programs in Germany that seem to work pretty well.
Also, it’s a surprisingly common position among very successful people I know that young people would benefit from 2 years of national service after high school. It wouldn’t have to be military service — it could be environmental conservation, poverty relief, Peace Corps type activities, etc.
We actually have reasonable control groups for this both in countries with mandatory national service and the Mormon Church, whom the majority of their members go on a 2-year mission. I haven’t looked at hard numbers or anything, but my sense is that both countries with national service and Mormons tend to be more successful than similar cohorts that don’t undergo such experiences.
Ok, well I certainly wouldn’t argue that a generic alternative exists, I mean, that’s my original point, that they are wasteful via the fact that they steal signal-strength from any alternative that would crop up.
In my personal experience, getting a job on average is better for learning, if you look for jobs that can provide de-facto mentors/teachers, but that might be because so few young people get a job. Or maybe me and the people I know that took my advice and quite university are just very good at learning from other practitionares rather than professors.
Well, my proposal in the article is basically that we had such a system, it was called a university, but it got slowly eroded as it went the way of a safety/community provision institution (or at least provisioning an illusion of those two).
My argument for why it worked better in the past are point 1-2 and arguably 3 and 4.
I can well believe that universities used to work well and worsened over time. The point of my question at the end there is that I would expect any New Improved University Replacement to suffer the same process.
(Of course it might be worth it anyway, if it works better for long enough.)
That seems reasonable, I’d assume the same.
As in, if I could think of an implementable solution I’d have tried implementing it.
My point here as to describe the problem from a certain angle, which is easy, I lay no claim on the harder task of prescribing a solution.