Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

Bachelor Degrees need a complete rethink, it was basically modified finishing school for rich capital owners, needing to make their children of proper class before they could take over their businesses.

It then became a vocational degree for the working class, despite being completely detached from useful skills for a wide swathes of degrees. The only value is that you could talk the talk and become a member of the professional managerial class if you impressed the right hiring committee/individual.

In spite of this, we decided the working class should take out crippling loans to pay for this degree, and be in debt for the rest of their working life.

It's not sustainable, and just forgiving the debt only will make it all more expensive and less aligned with actual results we desire (useful workers).

> despite being completely detached from useful skills for a wide swathes of degrees

It's a nice suggestion, but it's one that isn't supported by the evidence. Even controlling for other factors, a college degree makes more productive workers. And given that it's controlling for other factors, "selection bias" becomes a hard argument to make. STEMbros get real arrogant about their degrees (I have one; I've seen it first hand), but like it or not the person with an English degree still learned a lot of useful skills.

Going to uni to major in a specific career is how you get screwed when available careers change.

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.

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

> 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.).