It’s not even job training, in a lot of cases. I know I guy with a history degree that made his living working on wi-fi for hotels. I’m not saying he didn’t get anything out of his degree, but it didn’t help him do that job. And I’m hardly knocking history degrees, but it’s weird that a generalized “bachelor’s degree” with no specified major is a “requirement” for jobs that pay $11 an hour. The problem isn’t universities or degrees, the problem is that meritocracy is a myth. If you develop social programs that compensate for inequality, like student grants and loans, then you end up discovering that you cannot sort people by ability (because “ability” is often a function of access), and it drives up competition because there is no future under capitalism where every single person has a great job that offers them dignity.
I’m not an anti-intellectual, but maybe universalizing “expertise” as a requisite for jobs as a guarantee of universal individual prosperity as the ultimate vehicle for social change has hard limits. We need to live in a world where people feel free not to go to college, more than we need a world where college is free.
