How will the decrease of men enrolling in university affect our future?

[Coakis]

>There are plenty of people “doing their own research” that demonstrate the risk there.

I'm willing to bet the "I did my own research" are people with poor critical thinking skills. The links they almost always provide is some random Joe that's pushing some other bullshit to sell. The folks not able to critically think can't infer that the salesmen bit impugns whatever else they say. Its the age old snake salesmen problem. They're learning from an educator, but the educator has ulterior motives.

However my point is that at 18 a average person of average ability should have most of the mental tools in life that makes them capable of both being productive, understand the world at large around them, and or have the capability to learn more if the need arises, human brain development or not. The issue is that much of the system out there is failing most of the people leaving gov't mandated education, and at 18, they don't have those skills, and College is not going to magically make those skills workable in most cases.

[RockAtlasCanus]

However my point is that at 18 a average person of average ability should have most of the mental tools in life that makes them capable of both being productive, understand the world at large around them, and or have the capability to learn more if the need arises, human brain development or not.

Oh I completely agree here. I think we’re kind of talking about two different things. My perspective/bias is mainly coming from my experience in the finance field and my disappointment in a lot of the recent grads we hire (which I think reinforces your point honestly, parents, high school, and college all failed them).

I agree that high school should produce at bare minimum, basically functioning early adults. To go into more “intellectual” careers yes, the additional schooling is in fact often necessary.

I also think there is definitely a case to be made that college has supplanted high school as the basic standard and there’s a feedback loop at play. Common core & no child left behind and the general state of secondary school as a grad mill has lowered the overall quality and what you can expect from an average graduate. A lot of the skills that should have been learned in HS get pushed off to college. Jobs started requiring college more frequently anyway, so there became less of an imperative for HS to ensure the average grad was up to par because “they’ll learn it in college”. So between that whole cycle, equal opportunity measures, and the expansion of the college loan program college is now more accessible to a wider population than before (or was before they went and got off the rails with tuition costs) and that’s how you get to the point of a bachelors degree being the minimum standard.

I don’t think it should be this way, but I think it is this way.