system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Most US College Students do not belong in College

Right now, the US has $1.6 trillion+ in student loan debt. We also have colleges charging exorbitant amounts, and a massive number of college graduates who are working in jobs that do not remotely require their level of education.


I'll try to use Sociology as an example for my current set of beliefs, since it's a traditional punching bag as a "useless" college major.


I operate under the belief that there are 2 reasonable purposes for attending college to begin with:

* To learn and promote one's own education.

* To increase employment opportunities.


Graduates with sociology degrees have ~10% unemployment, and ~50% underemployment. I would argue that the reason is not that Sociology is useless, but rather that the degree attracts students who should not be in college to begin with. In a graduating class of say, 200 Sociology Majors at a school, I would say a VERY small fraction of them are genuinely interested in Sociology, promoted their own learning in the discipline, and can put their knowledge to practical use. In contrast, the vast majority likely chose the discipline because it's known for being "easy". They have no real interest in it, and did the bare minimum to pass classes for 4 years. If they ever did get an interview for a job requiring knowledge conveyed by a sociology degree, they would be badly under-prepared.


Most of these students will end up either unemployed or employed in a line of work that absolutely did not require a bachelor's degree at all, and many will be saddled with large amounts of debt.


Based on the frequency of college parties, drinking, and social events, most college students attend for social reasons. To them, it is a 4-year vacation. While socializing is fine, the problem is that the majority of students (~70%) take loans in order to do this. So the current university system has a massive number of students who are taking out loans to be there, but have no serious motivation to take advantage of anything that can advance their careers to help them actually pay off the loans.


Moreover, a huge portion of the student population is wasting university resources (dorms, lecture halls, time of instructors, etc.) when they don't care about furthering their education to begin with. 


I do not understand why we have a system like this in place.
gpt
I think a big factor in this is that reading that 50% of sociology majors are underemployed and just assuming that is bad, is an assumption, one that doesn't make much sense to me.  Yeah sure maybe 50% are underemployed, but that is on a scale made by people who aren't the people they are measuring.  It seems pretty logical to me that people taking a sociology degree because it is easy would also be the kind of people to happily take a job that they easily got due to thier degree that provide money and isn't difficult and just living life contentedly.  To these people getting the degree was 4 years getting the college experience and then getting a job they are overqualified for probably without any hassle whatsoever given they were overqualified.  To many people this would be a good outcome, it seems to me painting that outcome as only possibly being negative is premature.