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Comment by awinter-py | Hacker News Reader

If I were bernie sanders, I'd push for it to be illegal to ask about education status in job interviews (same as family status or sex stuff). This would hamper the signaling value of a college degree and get us back to the value of the skills conferred (if any).

... not that I'm bernie sanders.

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You’re still buying into the myth/propaganda that higher education is only good because it makes someone more employable by providing skills (and/or connections) important for job-seeking.

Wouldn’t you much rather create and live in a world where higher education was free or nearly free, so that your neighbors, fuck it, even those you will never bump into, those on the other side of the country are better educated, better able to reason about the world, more likely to understand evolution and spot marketing and persuasion techniques around them, less likely to believe the blowhard on the radio who is promoting conspiracy theories, and more likely to have gone through a period of rapid personal growth during which they met and grew with people from diverse backgrounds? … without obligating these strangers to a lifetime of bondage to a particular high-paying career?

skills != job skills, necessarily. Everyone likes the scene in good will hunting where the martian puts down the sociology grad student by quoting out library books he memorized. and he gets the girl (how about them apples).

Though yes, employability is a big part of it. The dollar value of a college degree is an ROI calculation.

Because the only way someone can be intelligent, is if they wasted 5 years of there of life, not working, but reading old theories and academic papers that don't line up with the reality we actually live in?

I'll rather save 100k and listen to the blowhard on the radio, than be in debt and listen to the blowhard on a podcast.

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