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Look, I'm the last person who would assert that a liberal undergraduate education is a necessity for everyone -- I dropped out of a high-priced, prestigious liberal arts college after a year, started coding for a living, and think I made the right decision. That being said, there is real value to be found even in the "soft" classes at such institutions.

While any college likes to tell potential students and parents that they'll teach their students "how to learn," the truth is that most kids do still have a lot of cognitive development to do at 18 years old, and even more social and professional. Being able to spend several hours a day arguing about complex and nuanced subjects with other bright young people (all under the supervision of a facilitator with a very high level of expertise in the subject under discussion) is an almost priceless experience.

That being said, it shouldn't cost $50k/year just to be able to have those discussions. Moving some of the content online will help (though some amount of face-to-face interaction is still a must to develop good social graces IMHO). Cutting down on the level of pampering should be a first step, too -- at 19 years old, there's little excuse for someone to be unable to cook for themselves, or find a place to live.

I think of "hard" and "soft" classes as being analogous to search. Before you can search for anything, you need to be able to know what you are looking for and define what it means to find it. That is the sort of thing "soft" classes are about, understanding what we really want and thinking through our decisions carefully.

The "hard" classes, on the other hand, basically consist of a bunch of search techniques and search optimizations for existing problem domains. So, "soft" classes teach you how to define your own problems and "hard" classes teach you how to solve existing problems.

I absolutely agree with you but I'm not sure how that changes anything. No matter how much resistance there is it needs to be done

Oh I agree something needs to be done. I guess what I am saying is that instead of replacing the current system, whatever comes next will just add another layer to it. Instead of having the bachelor's degree as the golden ticket to employment, everyone will start to see the master's degree as the gold standard.

This might finally allow for some innovation at the undergrad level, but the end result will be the same: in an effort to handle so many students suddenly interested in pursuing a MS/MA, schools will lower the quality of education and dilute the value of the graduate degree. Then it'll start again with something else.

To actually abolish the current system and take up something new would require people with current degrees admitting they aren't the sole route to success, which is like saying you know the $2k TV is just as good, but you preferred to pay $40k anyway. This just won't happen.

My CS degree cost ~30,000 and took 3.5 years. I personally thought it was well worth it and a fairly good deal.

If you are an instate student who does not live on campus it's less than 3k / semester including books. So 12k pays for a degree that includes face time with actual teachers. I think I had one class with more than 35 students.

  Four Year Program Student Fees 2008-09:
  Fall and Spring Sessions:
  IN-STATE	
  Tuition and Fees	$ 2,449.00	
  Room	2,153.00	
  Board  (19 Meal Plan)	1,599.00	
  TOTAL:	$6,201.00	

  OUT-OF-STATE
  Tuition and Fees	$ 6,406.00
  Room	2,153.00
  Board  (19 Meal Plan)	1,599.00
  TOTAL:	 $10,158.00

I know MIT and Harvard both accepted some credits when students transferred so it's not a "low end" education.

PS: I got a 4 on AP English and after talking their test I was dumped into a remedial class. I thought this was insane until I took English 101.

"At the undergrad level, outside of certain technical areas"

So the technical areas are good but of course university teaches such meaningless stuff as umm hmm duno (put something meaningless here)

The problem is, as the above quote clearly shows, inherent biases towards believing that a certain degree is better than some other one which is then taken further towards suggesting that education as a whole is "useless" or not good enough.

Education is the most genius way that mankind has come up with to develop the brain. There are things wrong with education of course, but pop culture debate helps none at all.

I personally believe that education will not be improved until and only until the opinions of the students are taken into consideration.

Oh I didn't mean that the technical areas are totally hunky-dory. I was just pointing out that at least you could drop out midway through and still have something useful to show for it (technical knowledge of some sort). Dropping out of your average liberal arts major won't leave you much that is directly applicable to a job. It's the degree that matters.

Both areas have their problems for sure. In fact the technical majors suffer from having a ton of people in them that don't really find the material interesting, they just want a good paycheck after they graduate.