Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

This is an obvious phenomenon. A hundred years ago college was for a rare breed of scholar. 50 years ago it was for the more ambitious. Today it’s for “everyone.”

But the average person has not become more scholarly or ambitious. Just that the umbrella of “what is acceptable for college” has become broader.

As a business it makes sense. You don’t want your product to be hard to consume so having stringent admissions or academic rigor goes against that goal.

So it’s obvious that there’s infinite pressure to lower the bar in admissions and grading so the university can pass more customers through, collecting 4 years tuition.

I say this as someone with 3.5 degrees who benefited strongly from education. There are benefits, but the average college for the average student today is a scam.

View on HN

Most of todays most prestigious american colleges got their start on a government mandate to teach agricultural practices to potential farmers, and by and large they all continue to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university

> A hundred years ago college was for a rare breed of scholar.

A hundred years ago college (and especially elite colleges) were largely for white upper-class men so I would be very careful throwing around words like "rare breed". Education in general was something reserved for the elite, why would you bother educating someone who would probably be working a factory line?

The general population is far more educated, providing massive well-documented and widely-studied societal benefits. What has changed is we have moved (slightly) away from viewing education as a way of stratifying our society and more towards it as something that should be a baseline for our citizens.

> A hundred years ago college (and especially elite colleges) were largely for white upper-class men

In the US. Other countries had different factors on who they discriminated against.

I think the point stands. Education at the time was highly discriminate regardless of who was considered the in-group and who was the out-group by any particular country.

100 years ago in the US, land grant colleges were already enrolling women for decades.

Not in large numbers compared to white males. And culturally many of them were attended to get a "Mrs degree" and not for education (but at least some did go for education, and it is unknown how many gave the appearance of going for the Mrs degree and did get a husband - but the education just as important even if they couldn't admit that)

What percentage of even that group went to college a hundred years ago? That is my larger point.

// and more towards it as something that should be a baseline for our citizens.

At least that's the idea. In reality someone can now graduate 300K in debt, with a degree that neither enables them to make a living nor be an informed citizen of the republic.

I suppose another way my point can be made is that there's now a wider gulf between "has a college degree" and "has a valuable education" because of how common and watered down college has become.

It is your assertion, not a matter of fact, that "In reality someone can now graduate 300K in debt, with a degree that neither enables them to make a living nor be an informed citizen of the republic."

We have a whole lot more failing restaurants nowadays than two hundred years ago, should we conclude people have gotten worse at cooking?

If you think college grads are on average less "informed citizens of the republic" than those who do not go to college, I'm going to tell you that you have very strong personal biases at play that do not reflect reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com