First and foremost I am not anti-intellectual and I am not anti-education. Very far from it in fact. I just believe that the quality of education in America is on par with the food provided at a public school.
College education has, especially for the last two generations, been treated as an absolute necessity to have any hope of living a financially stable life. The thing is, many statistics show (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong here) that less than 50% of college grads find a job in their studied field. On top of that student loans are the only type of debt that cannot be discharged under any circumstances except for death (and they'll still chase your estate if you have one). All signed up for by 17 and 18 year old young adults with absolutely no real concept of the working world and surviving on their own, as the system leading up to high school has taught them little of common life value like how to plan for and properly pay taxes, how to manage a personal budget, or any other necessary life skills. Certainly not how to manage tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that will literally follow you to your grave and beyond.
If you can think of a better way to prime a working class (lower all the way through upper middle) to accept sub par working conditions and wages I'd love to hear it. Many of the posts in here are merely symptoms of a system of coerced labor. I say the current educational model is one of many direct causes of the sickness of our system.
The craziest part to me is the professors who spend their days convincing these impressionable minds that they are being oppressed from every angle and then drive home in a Mercedes literally paid for by turning teenagers into debt slaves.
Again, I am not anti-education by a longshot. I love my tech and I need people smarter than me to keep making cool stuff so I can do cool stuff. And genuine open minded philosophical pursuit has driven mankind forward in ways that cannot be truly measured. I am not making character judgements on any individuals who are employed by the educational system. In fact, people very dear to me are teachers and I immensely respect the amount of effort they put into their work. I am simply making an observation about the current structure of the educational system.