The US government education funding is insane. A student can burn over $100k in taxpayer money and come out of it with nothing more helpful than a stamp saying, “I went through the gauntlet, please consider hiring me”. Trillions of dollars a year to enlighten the population, yet the average BA graduate has the knowledge base of somebody who entered work after high school.

School isn’t really for learning: it’s for the signal. Otherwise, people would get their education for free by attending the lectures without enrolling or using one of the hundreds of high-quality online resources. Student blissfully forgets everything they learn after the final exam, assured that almost none of it will serve them from that point onward.

The average citizen’s qualifications increase with each generation. Meanwhile, for every job that gets harder, there’s one that’ll become so automated a teenager could do it. The more pointless education a person has, the more others will need to compete. The ridiculous governmental subsidies mean the country has blown past the natural breaking point. Propped up artificially by the state, the inefficient system rolls on.