First of all college teaches knowledge that you would need relevant to your major. Then college is a signal that you can learn stuff that is required (but not necessarily that you would like to learn). For example sometimes you might just not know what you need to know. Like math. I am glad I was forced to take calculus because I find it useful in my programming job, years later. Taking that made it easy to take understand and analyze algorithms. I am also glad I was forced to take English and Critical Thinking. I stuck with it for 4 years. That also tells something about me to a potential employer (maybe the wrong thing, maybe it shows I can be a submissive grunt that will willingly follow orders, or maybe it shows I can get stuff done to a future startup partner...)
So, taking costs aside, I think there is some value in college.
Now bringing the costs back into it, I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k. There is a terrible inefficiency some place if it actually costs that much. There is terrible waste some place. I remember my University was building large stadiums, and huge gyms with lazy rivers and other crap in them, while some colleges couldn't afford paper to print exams on and was using single spaced double-sided, small fonts.
> , I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k.
There are efforts underway to provide the education, filtering, verification and signaling services for $0-10k per person. It can be done. We just have to cut out all the fat.
First of all college teaches knowledge that you would need relevant to your major. Then college is a signal that you can learn stuff that is required (but not necessarily that you would like to learn). For example sometimes you might just not know what you need to know. Like math. I am glad I was forced to take calculus because I find it useful in my programming job, years later. Taking that made it easy to take understand and analyze algorithms. I am also glad I was forced to take English and Critical Thinking. I stuck with it for 4 years. That also tells something about me to a potential employer (maybe the wrong thing, maybe it shows I can be a submissive grunt that will willingly follow orders, or maybe it shows I can get stuff done to a future startup partner...)
So, taking costs aside, I think there is some value in college.
Now bringing the costs back into it, I agree with you, that all this should probably somehow be obtained for less than $100k. There is a terrible inefficiency some place if it actually costs that much. There is terrible waste some place. I remember my University was building large stadiums, and huge gyms with lazy rivers and other crap in them, while some colleges couldn't afford paper to print exams on and was using single spaced double-sided, small fonts.