College Becoming Worthless is the Logical Outcome of "Free" College

I read a column today by a highly educated Finnish person, who is frustrated over the fact that his or her (the column wasn't clear) university education doesn't seem to be able to ensure a job anymore. The business that the person worked for went under, and the person has not been able to get a job since. And the business went under years ago.

An interesting thing that was brought up was that, according to the writer, some employers even view a university education as a detriment.

This is something I've been saying for as long as I can remember.

In Finland, we have what a lot of countries dream about: a "free" education system. Of course it's not free, it's tax funded, but you get the picture.

The fact that the amount of highly educated people who are unemployed has been rising is, to me, the only logical outcome of the "free education":

Let's say people have paid for college before, and then it becomes free.

• Everybody wants to go to college.
• When everyone goes to college, college becomes worthless.

Another way of looking at it:

• When you're the only engineer in town, you can ask for whatever you want.
• As soon as a second engineer moves into town, he will compete with you for the jobs, and you likely have to lower your demands.
• When there is an overabundance of engineers in town, a single engineer is simply not worth much because he's easily replaceable and far from unique, or even rare.

Supply and demand.

People have been taught this lie that as soon as you have an education, you're set. But it fails to take into account the fact that the value of a degree goes down the more people there are with degrees.

People are not taught how the market actually functions, and what is supply and demand. They're just told that a degree is some magical card that ensures a job, which is also magic. Not need to take market functions into account at all.

I even argue that the value of a degree can go down to the point of even having negative value. And it seems like some employers are already viewing it that way. Education has to be dumbed down to cater to everybody who wants to go, and the more it's dumbed down, the bigger a negative it is to have a degree.

Looking at what's going on in schools these days with safe spaces, trigger warnings and whateverthefuck, it really looks silly to an outsider like me.

A problem right now is that we're in a transitional phase. Meaning that whereas in the past having an education meant that you're likely smart, hard working, focused, capable of planning and foresight, et cetera, et cetera - and there are still plenty of employers, or at least people doing the recruiting, who think that an education is the only way for a person to be valuable - the dumbed down school in actuality can even push actually intelligent people away.

All schooling should be privatized with the people doing the teaching having a personal stake in the quality and outcome of their teaching, in the form of running a business.

I have written about what completely privatized education could look like here