It is broken. For every coveted job there are thousands of applicants. Employers will accept any signal that reliably predicts a modicum of intelligence, conscientiousness, and agreeability. University degrees cover all three.

But that's just the job market. The other elephants in the room are inflation and the housing market. People who don't have top-notch jobs (that require degrees) can't afford to buy a house. They can hardly afford rent. Cities don't want to build more housing because that will undermine the equity growth of homeowners.

We are a society of ladder-pullers.

  > We are a society of ladder-pullers.

I don't disagree, but often we complain about people pulling up ladders and when faced with the same decision we follow suit. Ultimately we can't change this behavior if no one is willing to defect from "conventional wisdom"

We can't fix the problem by making better choices as individuals, and exhorting people to do so saps energy and distracts. The system interprets integrity as damage and routes around it.

  > We can't fix the problem by making better choices as individuals

That's wildly inaccurate. Your logic necessitates that "the system" is not composed of individuals.

The problem itself was created through individual actions...

> Ultimately we can't change this behavior if no one is willing to defect from "conventional wisdom"

To me it reads as if you're contradicting yourself. It can be plainly seen that almost nobody is willing to defect. So change is impossible, you claim. Also change is possible, you claim. Which is it? You think people will change their choices as a result of you writing this comment and "winning" the argument?

I agree that people are responsible for the current situation, since their choices brought it about. That does not constitute a solution, though.

One or a thousand individuals changing their choice by themselves will do nothing. For tens of millions to change some external factor is required. If it was not, then it would have already happened. You say no external factor is required, so why do you think it didn't happen already, and why would it happen in the future?

The problem of individuals making optimal choices on an individual scale being sub-optimal on a society scale is so widespread we have a specific phrase to describe it: Tragedy of the commons

I would love to live in a world where everyone was altruistic and made correct choices for the long term good of society, but I don't. And there are limits to how much I'm willing to act as if I do, when in practice it just means I'm giving away resources to people who are purely (thinkingly or unthinkingly) selfish.

The problem was created by individuals deliberately acting collectively, not simply choosing one way or another in their routine individual capacities. The solution will require the same.

My tuition was $35k a year 25 years ago. Just checked, and now it is $60k a year. Before room and board.

Broken? Saddling individuals with a quarter million in debt when they are just starting life is absolutely broken. That they must indenture to be a modern professional (and buy hope for at least a middle class landing) is broken.

The notion that everything must return a (generally, near-term) accounting profit is on its face stupid.

Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative? Employers have a surplus of applicants for entry-level technical positions. They need to filter the applicant pool down to those with some level of competence and discipline. Possession of a college degree is a reasonably accurate proxy for those attributes: lots of false negatives but good enough from the employer's perspective.

Ideally maybe employers ought to rely on more targeted selection mechanisms. But this would be extremely expensive (and potentially legally risky due to equal opportunity laws) so most don't bother.

> Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative?

As I said, the only country I know where it is like that is the US.

> I would argue that if it costs $60,000, both your education system and the recruitment in those companies that require this degree are broken.

Meh, academic degrees don't come for free, someone has to pay for universities, staff and other expenses. In the US it's everyone for themselves by student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcies, in Europe it's the tax payers.

The problem is, the ones profiting from the gatekeeping (aka employers) aren't the ones paying for it in either system. If employers had to pay, say, 10.000$ for each job listing that requires an academic degree without an actual valid reason, guess how fast that incentive would lead to employers not requiring academic degrees for paper-pusher bullshit jobs.

In a sense, it still comes down to supply and demand — if applicants, upon graduating, all requested to be reimbursed for, say, 25% of their tuition up front and to the university they graduated from, we'd end up with reduced salaries compared to just distributing those 25% to the new employee over a number a years.

But how do you get all students to agree with this in principle when someone is in more rush to start earning an income than others?

However, employers would then look to only hire from universities that do good teaching, so maybe it's a win-win?

So like a payroll tax specific to jobs that require higher education?

No, only for jobs that claim to require higher education but do not. Basically, an "abuse tax" to reimburse the government (or the students) for having to spend money on something clearly not needed.

There is also nobody cares about low prices but you can brag about how exclusive you are with high prices. One univertity near me automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship - which is to say they have inflated their sticker price.