Food fights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZN4r8p6KbU

What I would humbly argue is what it’s (primarily) always been about:

Building relationships.

Either written by Claude or someone who has spoken to it too much

I graduated from high school around 2010. Information has been free my entire life. My college campus connected me with people who were in a similar place in life. We were trying to find a place we could contribute, and were uncertain about the future. Uncertain of how we fit in. Instructor quality varied, as I'm sure it always does, but even the weaker professors were seen as our leaders in that uncertain time. They all coached us to listen to ourselves, and to suit our strengths. I felt a presence on my college campuses.

Even before the internet, a determined person could learn about anything at a library. It's been a long time since a university has been strictly necessary for that. Today, at least at the undergrad level, universities function as a job screen for people who can dedicate themselves to an academic program and complete it, providing practical experiences in labs, internships, and clinical settings that an individual cannot really do for himself, and also for meeting people and starting to build a network.

I think the understanding of what a college is breaks into two schools of thought.

One group (mostly students) believe it is a skills training facility, training for specific job skills for specific jobs.

Another group (mostly faculty) believes it is teaching people how to learn skills.

Students in the first group are always panicking about their jobs going away.

Students in the second group learn new skills quickly, and see opportunities when the world changes around them.

I think they are needed more than ever. Otherwise people don’t know how to filter this information.

Information may be free, but knowledge and wisdom still need to be cultivated

What a profoundly dumb question.

network, status etc...

It’s for getting into “the boys club” i.e. nepotism.

Sounds like intelligent, effective planning, and I wish India the best of luck. Unfortunately, it will likely never happen in the US, due to entrenched interests, anti-education attitudes, and economic challenges -- not that the country as a whole couldn't afford it, but funds for higher education are being siphoned into private pockets.

IMO a lot of kids now experience their adolescence in college, not in high school. High school kids focus so much on activities and schoolwork, they don’t get the same social experiences they used to in high school. Now they get it in college.

College becomes the safe island for young adults to grow into their own, gain social skills, and grow relationships for later in life (professional and otherwise).

Which also is interesting because what does this mean for non college bound people?

Prestige, socialisation and hedonistic activities (drinking and dancing etc).

People were saying the exact same thing 15 years ago when MOOCs started showing up. Yet all these years later, people still go to college campuses.

I learned a lot in college, but living with people my age really helped me socially. I went from a shy nerd who could not make eye contact to the "life of the party" (still a nerd though).

I'm not saying it's ok, but some people seem to trust reading a textbook at a university more than reading it on your own.

Of course, this is preposterous.

Even if I can watch tv shows and movies on Netflix doesn’t mean I don’t want friends and family opinion on what is important and what to learn next.

I wrote an essay on this:

https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/

The primary business value of a university will likely be signaling competence which, ironically, they are in a good position to establish with old school infrastructure like pen-on-paper tests.

The primary social value of a university will be providing a stimulating intellectual environment, which they should get back to doing.

This is a ridiculous take. University isn't the gatekeeper for information, it's a place where learning and academic study happen; these are separate dimensions of the broader concept of knowledge.

Teaching people how to think critically, how to contextualize information (both notionally as well as concretely within a given field of study), and how to develop new ideas within a field (both solo and collaboratively) have always been the value add; I say this as a university dropout who didn't appreciate this at the time.

Independent learning will only go so far if you don't know the questions to ask, and that's something you get through sustained exposure to an environment that nurtures that.

I'll mention as well that rolling back learning institutions is a very dangerous line of argument, especially in the age of misinformation, disinformation, and pervasive news-as-entertainment leading to both societal divisions and the erosion of critical thinking.

Its what its always been there for:

1. Networking

2. Mentorships in the respective top of fields

3. Good-ol-Boys club, for the ivy leagues

4. Accumulator for rarer knowledge, including people

5. And since the GI bill, its been a diploma mill and a federal-money-grabber and indefinite tax on the populace who were suckered into the money pit

Idk maybe depends on what you study or what your college campus offers. But for my case studying EE, getting access to expensive lab equipments and also being able to network with companies looking to hire juniors makes it quite valuable to me.

As someone who cares a lot about AI/LLMs making breakthroughs in certain areas like medicine due to my own history with health problems, if it means all the stimulating experiences of life become meaningless, sometimes I wonder if it will be worth it in the end. Which is why I dread the future where their negative externalities aren’t reigned in.

This looks like an AI-generated article. Really weird for a nonprofit with some lofty goals to publish obvious slop.

That said, I think the answer to the question in the title is pretty simple. Software engineering is a bit of an outlier: in the highly developed world, most of skilled professions require credentials, be it by law or by employer's choice. Your local PD probably requires it. If you want to become a realtor, a florist, or a hairdresser, you need to complete state-mandated coursework. Etc, etc.

College is one of the ways you get these credentials. Quite often, that piece of paper is not really to show that you acquired some essential knowledge - a police officer or an executive assistant don't need to know calculus - but that you're a well-adjusted member of the society. That you managed to attend classes for several years, did homework assignments, didn't get kicked out for racist jokes.

Knowledge was always free, proving "fitness" always required work. LLMs are relevant here only in the way the article doesn't acknowledge: that they allow you to cheat your way through college more easily.

Man, that headline shows a complete misunderstanding of what college is for.

Information has always been freely accessible to those who know how to search for it. Primary Education was partly about instilling those skills in the form of critical thinking, though its efficacy is varied and debatable. So to say the utility of college was information, is like saying the utility of a car is mobility: technically correct, but not remotely a robust descriptor.

No, the point of college was threefold: credentials (as a means of generating elites - and decreasingly valuable), socialization across perspectives (which is still the case today - it’s often one’s first exposure beyond their initial social spheres growing up, and where deeply held views are almost immediately challenged), and research. Through the exploration of those aspects, information is transmuted into knowledge and experience, neither of which can be solely obtained through access of information (only through its application).

Colleges have immense value at all ages and for all demographics. It’s why I’m so fervent a supporter of free higher education at public schools.