> One thing that most people don't realize (or willingly try not to think about) is that every "higher education" level, all the way from the BSc to the last day of your PhD, is actually, first and foremost, a selection process.
I also have no interest in funding a selection process with my taxes (EU resident), I have an interest in funding a process which prepares people to be productive members of society, which means prepares them to contribute in a commercial for-profit setting as without this the state has no revenue with which to fund anything.
I also don't think what it selects for is of particular value to industry.
Well, that is why we all work under the guise of "formal education"; we cannot really admit and accept that what we are doing is something else, because then people will react like this. Actually, in many ways it is education, just not in the ways we think about it. In my opinion, most of what passes for "pedagogy" or "education skills" is quite frankly bullshit. You learn things everyday, whether you're a student or not, and you teach things everyday, whether you are a teacher or not. If you really want to learn something in the Bsc/Msc/PhD trust me, you will learn, and we will teach you. The problem is that most people want education to be some kind of straightforward, almost passive process, like "hey I'm attending university, if I'm not learning it's your fault". The transfer of responsibility from student to teacher as it is done today is absurd. Learning is an active, exhilarating, and sometimes even brutal process. And, well, sorry, but it should be: knowledge is power, and to learn things is to thrive and improve yourself. How can that be such a passive process as "go to lecture, see some slides, learn"? Learning is also competitive; if you know how to do something that few people know, you are more valuable to society. By definition, that cannot be a passive, watered down process as people want it to be; if it was, then the knowledge you obtained would be borderline worthless (because everyone else would have it).
I also have no interest in funding a selection process with my taxes (EU resident), I have an interest in funding a process which prepares people to be productive members of society, which means prepares them to contribute in a commercial for-profit setting as without this the state has no revenue with which to fund anything.
I also don't think what it selects for is of particular value to industry.