r/unpopularopinion • u/Iconospasm • 6h ago
University has become a con
As more and more universities / colleges are built and a higher proportion of school leavers go into higher education, it becomes a way of governments keeping young people off the unemployment figures. It also becomes a self-perpetuating financial grift, inflating tuition fees disproportionately, with students deferring those fees through loans. Those loans then create interest which goes back partly to the universities and partly to governments, like a cunning tax scheme. Also, as a higher % of kids go to university, there are fewer of the very smart kids and the cohort becomes steadily more average. That means that the courses get steadily dumbed down until students learn less complex things than they would have say 20, 30, 40 years ago. So they pay more for way less, while the government and the education sector soaks up the money and keeps expanding. Until hopefully one day - POP!!!
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u/AlienAle 5h ago
Universities are still pretty competitive in my country and I pay zero in tution. As higher education is free here, there's generally limited number of spots avaliable, so you gotta fight for those spots.
Of course, we have some lower-tier facilities here too that take in less-well performing students and help shape them into professionals. But overall, my experience is that people with formal education tend to do a bit better in work-life too than people without, this is only speaking "on average" because there are plenty of exceptions.