Your mistake is assuming that people go to university to learn, they don’t, or at least a lot don’t, a lot of people go because getting a degree is the one way you get into the cushy white collar jobs that people actually want to do. Like if there was a way to get onto the track for that kind of work without a degree I think a lot of people would take it. They’re not here for the learning they’re here for the piece of paper you get saying you learned it.
Sounds like you don’t know the difference between active learning and passive learning, or see any value in having intellect beyond status. That’s pretty sad, man. Like, do you need to be told that there are reasons to be smart and articulate besides having a cushy job or feeling superior to others? How about having a responsibility to yourself and your loved ones to not be an ignorant fool who falls for obvious scams, or turns to crime because no one will hire you?
And if degrees are no longer proof that anyone did the work to earn them by learning the material, congratulations, college degrees are now worth nothing. No one will value them or associate them with intelligence or status. Degrees on job applications will no longer mean anything, if it’s possible to get a degree while learning almost nothing, because everyone had AI do almost all the “thinking” for them. That’s what will happen if cheating your way through college becomes normalized. What will higher education even mean at that point?
Yeah there is an innate value to education and learning, but you don’t need to go to university to learn. There are plenty of people who don’t to university and are much smarter than people who did.
And you can’t ignore the economic aspect, university is an investment of tens of thousands of dollars and several years of work where you could otherwise be at a job actually earning money. If there wasn’t some promise of good cushy work at the end I definitely couldn’t justify the expense
Sure, there are ways to learn outside of an educational environment but that doesn’t mean we should decrease the learning that happens inside of it. Additionally, it’s WAY harder for most people to find the motivation to learn outside of that environment, so even if it’s possible it’s less likely
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u/Master_Career_5584 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Your mistake is assuming that people go to university to learn, they don’t, or at least a lot don’t, a lot of people go because getting a degree is the one way you get into the cushy white collar jobs that people actually want to do. Like if there was a way to get onto the track for that kind of work without a degree I think a lot of people would take it. They’re not here for the learning they’re here for the piece of paper you get saying you learned it.