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Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

> It is especially troubling because post-secondary education is a sort of cornerstone of all other human endeavours so the cascading effects of people cheating and not learning the material that they need to be better at their jobs influences lives just as much as a plane crashing.

This is insane. Most people never attend university and do plenty of productive work. Most people who do attend university never work a day in the field they did their degree in. Most people who do work in the field they did their degree in never use the large majority of what they leaned there. On top of this a large majority of professionally relevant material is learned on the job.

The reason that there’s no real effort to check people aren’t cheating is because school isn’t primarily about learning, it’s about ranking and sorting.

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As a uni president I know once privately put it: "universities are warehouses that store unemployed people"

That says more about the ruling class from which presidents are selected than it says about universities. No doubt the management of AT&T said similar things about Bell Labs, even after they invented the transistor.

The sad thing is that the person who said this actually cared. Being a student at uni makes little sense unless you know that you can afford to not earn any income

They also create them in the first place.

It may be insane but it is the state of things.

Lawyers, doctors, nurses, engineers, and teachers are all educated at universities.

These are the people who create our standards bodies that dictate how the rest of society functions. Whether it's the legal system, the standards regarding medical practices, the standards regarding electrical and mechanical safety our entire society is built on the education and credentials that these people receive from attending university.

Think about this: Nearly every single person if not every single one that you have ever met was taught to read by a university educated teacher. If they were home-schooled, their syllabus was likely prepared by a university educated teacher.

We are all literate and numerate because of university educated teachers. That fact alone proves that university is (for better or worse) is a cornerstone of all human endeavours.

> We are all literate and numerate because of university educated teachers. That fact alone proves that university is (for better or worse) is a cornerstone of all human endeavours.

No. People were literate and numerate for millennia before universities existed. Universities are not necessary preconditions for literacy or numeracy. At least 10% of children are able to read before they start school at all because their parents taught them. The first society with near universal literacy, Puritan New England did so without any universities and their teachers were in the large majority not university educated.

We are talking about contemporary society.

Of course people were literate before universities were invented. Writing predates universities.

Then what are you trying to say? If we agree that universities are unnecessary for literacy or numeracy then university is no more a cornerstone of contemporary societies than supermarkets or libraries.

I was under the impression that we were having a discussion in good faith. It appears that this is not the case.

Good day Barry.

The timing is also bad, isn't it?

For most people, first years at university is also the first years of independent adulthood, with all its challenges. I sometimes wonder if universities would work better at educating people if everyone was given a year or two to focus on getting their shit together - interests, romances, whatnot - and only then the real education would start.

"Most people who do attend university never work a day in the field they did their degree in.".

Curious, any source on this?

For undergraduate see below.

> We find that about 27 percent of undergraduate degree holders are working in a job that is directly related to their college major.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

Don't forget networking. Careers in our modern society are based around who you have in your contact list.

Spend as little time as you can in the university library and go around campus socializing.

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