This view seems to be common, but I think it misses what incredible alchemy comes from making people who come in for “job training” (like I did) spend 4 years in close proximity with research, academic freedom, liberal arts, and at least an attempt at some kind of intellectual idealism separate from economic incentive. It’s peanut butter and chocolate that has served democracy and its people well by having a middle class that is not just productive, but truly educated. It’s weird and it has problems, but it’s also wonderful, and we should not try to sever the two so we can more “efficiently” crank out credentials.

The job training you get at 20 is often obsolete when you're 40. For example, many women of my parents' generation trained for jobs in the textile industry. But eventually the jobs disappeared, as Finland got too wealthy. A bit more abstract education would have made it easier for them to find a new career.

But not too abstract. From my point of view, the weird parts of the American educational system are the high school and the college. Everyone is supposed to choose the academic track. I'm more used to systems with separate academic and vocational tracks in both secondary and tertiary education.

Plenty of colleges and universities started as job training. The Morrill land grant colleges were founded to study mechanical and agricultural arts, and that was over 150 years ago. Many of those are now the top state schools in the USA.

"People want cheap healthcare"

This has a lot to do with what a country wants. Many countries show this is possible; the USA prefers a profit-based system where everyone pays a lot.

> People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools

I really wish the computer science degrees and even online courses spent like 30 mins on the history of computer science.

The entire existence of this field has been dependent on those non job-training liberal arts degrees.

Thanks, I thought this was a very insightful comment that helped me think about the problem differently.

I would add, though, that I think "co-op universities" have a good solution. That is, places like Northeastern and Drexel when the undergrad program is 5-ish years and a good portion of that time is working in paid co-op positions. This ensures that students graduate with at least some real-world experience in their field but still get the benefit of classroom study and the full college experience.

Funnily enough there is a parasitic vine in Australian rain forests that kills its host and then thrives.

It grows completely around the tree and creates its own trunk on the outside. The tree underneath eventually cannot get any nutrients in its sap and dies. The vine then feeds on the tree as it rots away on the inside.

Eventually you have a hollow tree.

It didn't get shoe horned. Before college degrees proliferated, employers had entrance exams and were expected to train people. A supreme court decision found this to be racist. Companies could be held liable so most companies stopped that and demanded a 'fair' credential. Then everyone had to go to college

At least the good part about the US situation is that people are still free to choose for themselves. The cost isn't redirected to the whole population at large via taxation. In the EU it's much worse, because the same reality is materialising, but it is still advertised as "free". Of course, this is the path to a form of soft communism and all systems are becoming dysfunctional and unable to create real value at the same time. The "solution" has been to create ever more taxation and even more debt that is to be paid by the next generation.

It seems that the US will course correct but the EU seems to be declining into authoritarianism and proto-communism.

I was told in college that the US system of healthcare being tied to your employer was the result of companies looking for fringe benefits to offer when tax rates were at their highest for the high income group.

However I can’t find evidence of that now that I’m looking so if someone could confirm one way or the other that this was true or not, I’d appreciate it

> People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related healthcare in any intrinsic way.

Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are the same with or without an employer intermediary. The only difference is with an employer intermediary, the insured gets to pay their premium with pre-tax income. The cost of the health insurance is still felt by the employer (shown in box 12 of code DD of everyone’s W-2), and seen by the employee in the form of smaller raises, or higher premiums/deductibles/oop max, or worse networks.

>People want job training, and it got shoehorned into extra departments at liberal arts universities intended as aristocrat finishing schools. Job training really has little to no relationship to liberal arts.

Job training didn’t get shoehorned, a cheap filtering mechanism for people worth betting on to be a good hire got shoehorned. But that filter simultaneously got worse and more expensive over time, making it a bad purchase for most students and bad signal for employers.