I disagree with that statement. The classic model of a college education was to help form a knowledgeable and enlightened citizen. You were exposed to philosophy even if you did not intend to be a philosopher, history even if you did not intend to be a historian, art even if you did not intend to be an artist, etc. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the goal of developing men and women who can take these various studies from their education to think for themselves has been replaced by indoctrination.
What you propose is a trade school. While there’s nothing wrong with that either, and we need more and better ways to train workers, if we follow your idea then there’s no need for colleges and universities.
The purpose of education is to develop a good “BS Detector”.
There is thought that holds colleges changed from the inheritors and transmitters of Western Civilization into white collar trade schools because of the GI Bill after WW2.
Since no one cared much about Western Civ after that change, liberal arts were taken over by Marxists of one sort or another.
Agree!
The problem there is no longer an agreed societal baseline to draw the western seven liberal arts the trvium ( grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy).
The question a person has to ask — is a person willing to amass a huge amount of debt, comparable to a home mortgage or more, for a degree that although fascinating and enriching will not help the person find employment. A degree like this is only affordable to the rich.
To make things more difficult, a person may fall behind the 4 or 5 years while they were in college and out of the work force.
Yes, that piece of paper is nice, but it comes with a huge cost.
To put it in perspective — college debt can be $100K, $200K? A home mortgage is a little higher than this but maybe not — the average mortgage takes 30 years to pay off!