ArbitraryValue , 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

The article says that Democrats should “loudly [dissent] from the view that education is just job training.” I think that’s the attitude that leads people to end up with college debt they can’t repay. Paying tuition in order to learn simply for the sake of learning is an expensive luxury. Unless you’re already rich, education should be primarily about job training.

Liberal arts majors do get jobs, and I don’t know the details about their post-college earnings vs the earnings of people with other degrees. Maybe there’s parity and then there’s no pragmatic reason to cut back on liberal arts education. But I suspect there isn’t parity, in which case maybe it’s best for universities, especially state universities in relatively poor states like West Virginia, to direct their students to better-compensated specialties.