Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

I don't think there is any doubt spending 4 years studying a subject will increase skills in some areas. The question is whether the benefits are worth the cost (and that question applies both to the individual student and society as a whole).

Remember the cost of all this is absolutely massive. Mostly the 4 years of lost time.

It doesn't have to be though. In Europe the vast majority of people attend public universities that don't require having to end up with a degree and crippling debt.

I left uni almost 20 years ago, but one year of my tuition was about 1000USD at the time, something I could easily afford with a part time job. I'm sure the cost is higher now, but I would have thought it is still orders of magnitude cheaper than in the UK or the US. Germany subsidizes university tuition fees for a huge percentage of students, and adds a monthly stipend for expenses and free public transport while enrolled in uni.

Your point is valid, challenging the worth/cost of higher education. But I think it is the cost part what is broken in some parts of the world, not necessarily the worth part.

I mean we can reform it without necessarily throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In Europe a bachelor's can often take 3 years, and maybe we can even shrink it down to 2 years; this is already kind of a thing in the US with some schools offering a 5 year bachelor+master's program.

Realistically maybe we reform community college to be the required thing instead of traditional undergrad, since the cost and length is more comparable.

associate degrees exist

they exist, but at least employers do not seem to think they currently cover enough to accept them in lieu of a bachelor's.

in fact i would say I don't know how much additional value an associates' holds in that context, and maybe we just merge the two concepts. I haven't ever really seen a posting that is okay with just an associate's.

The cost is there regardless. If the ROI is negative then it's making somebody worse off even if the state is paying for it. If the state pays, it's even worse, because people may take the option based on a positive ROI for themselves while it's overall negative. If the ROI is positive but people aren't taking advantage because of the cost to themselves, then you want to look at subsidies.

Sometimes "ROI" isn't measurable. What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other? What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works of art, or producing great culture? What's the "ROI" of happiness?

Sometimes the purpose of central government is to make a negative ROI into a positive one, because there are greater purpose than the return

It may not be measurable but we still need to think about it and do our best to figure out what things cost more than the benefits they provide.

Most European public universities have low tuition because taxpayers are subsidizing them. This can only work if the number of students is kept relatively low. You can't have both cheap tuition and widespread access to higher education. The math doesn't work.

It will also be interesting to see what happens now that Europe has to get real about defense spending instead of freeloading on US security guarantees. Since defense spending is going up there's going to be a lot of political pressure to cut higher education.

A higher education/degree teaches you how to think, not what to think. I’ve never used the knowledge from my physics degrees directly, but they taught me problem solving skills that I have applied to my career.

Here’s a pointed take on it from one of New Zealand’s successful businessmen: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/education/the-art-of-business-...

What if we don't agree what the benefits are? Tieing the "benefits" to money breaks your system before you even get it off the ground.

We already have a way to discuss that benefit, it's the political process. Doing politics IS figuring out the benefits.

What supports your assertion that low tuition fees limit student numbers in Europe? This would only apply to non-EU students. I could very well claim the opposite, that high tuition fees limit student numbers in the US and make higher education out of reach for most.

The money has to come from somewhere. Tuition doesn't cover the cost of operating those European public universities. Most of the cost is borne by taxpayers. More students would thus mean higher taxes.

To an extent this also applies in the USA. Public universities in most states have relatively low tuition (although still higher than their European equivalents) for in-state students. But they are unable to meet market demand, so many students take out loans to pay tuition at lower-tier private universities.

> What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other?

Calculable.

> What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works of art, or producing great culture?

The academy doesn’t do this anymore and hasn’t for more than half a century.

> What's the "ROI" of happiness?

Is there any evidence to suggest college graduates are happier which account for differences in childhood socioeconomic status, lifetime earning potential, and similar confounding factors?

> Sometimes the purpose of central government is to make a negative ROI into a positive one, because there are greater purpose than the return

While I agree with you in principle, this rationale can be used as a cover for bad policy. You take a measure that is widely accepted as an indication of worth, and then insist that the system’s failure to produce that indication of worth may actually just indicate that it’s providing an intangible goodness that cannot be measured nor accounted for (beauty, happiness, etc.).

> Is there any evidence to suggest college graduates are happier which account for differences in childhood socioeconomic status, lifetime earning potential, and similar confounding factors?

I'm not going to read this entire study just to respond to a single comment, but according to ChatGPT, the answer to your question is yes.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.25.1.159

https://chatgpt.com/share/67e5793f-e284-800f-8bb4-ebd340e4c9...

"Yes, the evidence strongly suggests that schooling has nonpecuniary benefits like increased happiness, beyond what can be explained by income or family background. But the authors remain cautious and emphasize the need for further causal research."

You answer your own question here.

You don’t have to tie the benefits to money, but you do need to understand that there is a cost, some of which is money, and the benefits should be worth it if you’re going to be doing it. Who pays the money is a secondary concern to that.