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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost

This isn’t socially useful.

And what we're doing now is? Telling 17-year-olds to take on six figures of debt and then replacing them with ChatGPT while making it impossible to discharge their debt?

Just because Comp Sci and many STEM degrees in general are losing value does not mean that university overall is not worthwhile.

Does it really not, when many of the other degrees already lost their value a long time ago?

Not sure what you mean by that, many other degrees still have plenty of value because they teach "soft skills" that are more broadly applicable and more difficult to automate. Hard skills always get automated away.

The question is not “does it provide any value whatsoever?” The question is “does a degree provide surplus value to society, given its costs?”

This is not something that can be measured ahead of time, what someone does with their education.

What is obvious and what would be hugely socially useful would be to have a completely online, completely free accredited option for degrees that don't need labs. That would cause downward pressure on all of tuition outside the top universities.

The price of college at this point is a ridiculous value proposition to the average student. Who cares about the top students and the most gifted people. They will be fine regardless. The average student is getting crushed and ripped off blind.

Ripping off entire generations of young people is really stupid and is going to have devastating long run social consequences.

That's easily solved with labor market reform. First implement federal and state law that requires every worker performing any profession to have a college degree in that field.

Then companies are evaluated on how much work is produced in their business (for example by revenue), and they have to either contract the equivalent number of people with college degrees, or even better - license the degree from a college graduate. This can also be used to pay for tuition. The student gets a mortgage that pays for her education when she enters college, and then the lender has the right to part of either her salary, or the licensing fee for her degree to companies that need it, or to people who need it.

Let's say a chef who hasn't gone to culinary college, he can pay a culinary college graduate 20% of his salary to use their degree, which is a professional license. Or a company needing programmers. They can hire immigrants or an AI to program, and pay licensing fees to computer science graduates who have the degree.

Think what I thriving market for banks, investors, and insurance companies! They will be able to package these licenses and offer them on the market to individual workers or to companies for competitive and efficient rates. The college student of course gets rewarded as well, as they can rent out their degree, or even sell it. So a good student can get several degrees, and have a very good income from both his own work and from degree licensing fees. Of course we'll make sure that students belonging to an oppressed class be allowed to license their one degree to several places at the same time.

I... can't tell if this is satire or not.

This sounds like those UChicago people who were floating the idea of sponsoring immigrants with cash (read: indentured servitude)

Bank could lend out money to students, with the future college degree as security. After graduation, the student either gets a job that requires that degree, or licenses that degree to another person or to an institution which collects degrees and licenses them on one or several degree licensing marketplaces. Most would use these third-party re-licensers to simplify the paperwork. For example when a company needs to license a degree for a temporary project of just a few months, or when a degree holder takes leave from their own job for let's say three months. Then she can have some income from renting out her degree during that time.

I'm sure you've already thought about the problem of students who have mortgaged their future degree, but do not graduate for some reason. What happens to the money the bank has invested? This problem is mitigated and solved by packing these degree mortgages into Credit default swaps to hedge the risk. Since most students will graduate and be a return on the investment, we will pack all degree mortgages into investment funds, and offer them on the international financial markets, with sophisticated leverage tools. So, investors will not feel the pain if 1 out of 10 students do not finish their degrees, that will be very much offset by those who do - especially when leverage is used.

This is how we solve social and environmental issues, make education affordable to everybody, create a great investment boom, and make the younger generations stakeholders in the economy. Smart parents would take advantage of degree mortgages for very low monthly rates if they sign them for their child already during pregnancy, meaning they could even be paid off before graduation. That's a good start in life!

The people who can be replaced by ChatGPT are the ones who treated their time in college as "just getting a piece of paper". They paid handsomely for a chance at drinking from the fountain of knowledge and instead did a rinse and spit.

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