Time was that a high school diploma was thought to outfit a young man or woman for a prosperous, productive life. You did not go to college to acquire job skills or credentials; that was what trade schools or vocational classes in high school were meant to do.
No, you went to college to learn how to think, to write, to do research, to read the Greats, to pursue the life of the mind. Only a few relatively select intellects went to college and grad school, and that time was not intended to be four years of drinking and fornicating, though of course some used it that way. Those years were meant to furnish the student with the wisdom and beauty of Western Civilization, and equip him or her to impart that knowledge to future generations. It was a way of carrying on our culture.
We made a mistake in treating college/university as a very expensive trade school. In so doing, we have damaged and nearly broken the link from past to present to future in our civilization.
The overwhelming expense of a post-secondary education and the intractable debt this generation has accumulated may have changed that, however. I see more and more bright people going to good local community colleges to get job credentials or to learn what the high schools should have taught them. This movement may lead in time to a severe pruning of our nation’s colleges and universities.
I went to university and grad school, and finished without debt (but that was many years ago). The experience was well worth it for me. Wish I’d gotten my doctorate. But this path is not for everybody.
You make a number of good points on a topic of interest to me. There are many examples that would indicate that “college as preparation for work” is a pretty inefficient approach. Not only due to competition from drinking and fornicating ;-) - but just based on the fact that so many graduates end up working in fields other than those they majored in. In essence, we are following the classical liberal arts tradition that you describe well, but are somehow expecting a tradesman to emerge rather than a scholar. It might make sense to return college education to what it was, and supplement it with vocational-oriented degree and non-degree educational options that would be more centered around local community colleges, work-study-apprenticeship type programs, and “distance learning” i.e. online courses for those who wish to pursue advanced study while employed (something that will likely happen several times throughout the graduates working life). I suggest this as a more balanced approach, not to besmirch the role of the traditional university education for those who pursue primarily academic, teaching, or research - or as preparation for professional graduate education.
I just see the need for post-secondary education to undergo a major evolution, from something you do for 4-5 years after high school that prepares you for a “job for life” to a lifetime of education, starting with a vocational-trade education for many, and continuing as they by necessity “re-invent themselves” through their careers.
As you say, a liberal arts education was originally intended to make a man (no women at the time) a better man. With exceptions those who attended were from wealthy families, usually the aristocracy, and their income, and for that matter status, for life was assured.
University was intended to pass along the answers (to the extent we’ve found them) to the great question Socrates asked so long ago, “What is the good?”
Well, those who were trained in this tradition committed treason against it, starting in the 19th century and peaking in the late 60s. It’s the “treason of the clerks,” the betrayal of those we trust to lead us to what is good and true, and they’ve rebelled against the notion that the good and true exists or can exist. In fact, you can make a case that their true ideal is to be “anti-good,” as their highest accolade is that a work of art is “transgressive,” which just means it makes normal people, who still want to believe in the god, uncomfortable.
Now there was a tremendous amount of moral and character capital in our society, but it’s being depleted and not replaced.
Just about all the problems in our society spring from this treason.
Jerry Pournelle addressed it very well in an essay from some decades ago.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/intellectual/intcap3.html#12