I think 'Let's stop educating people' might be reasonable in many cases. Not all degrees have the same chance of producing useful results and some non-stem education is just anti-education or worse ideological brainwashing. Subjects like psychology, journalism, arts, history, English, and social sciences are heavily over subscribed - these fields are saturated.
It's very obvious to me that today's problems are overwhelmingly technological, biological, mathematical, scientific, industrial etc. Even within these subjects, there's a mismatch between the concrete problems seen in industrial practice and the abstract and simplified ones seen in academia.
I hear the 'but any degree will give you a well rounded perspective' kind of hand wavy arguments, but these are presented without evidence, and are unfalsifiable 'runaway arguments' that have no finish line - at what point do you stop and say we're pouring resources into the wrong areas and neglecting others?
Singularitarianism is the CS equivalent of ideological brainwashing. STEM degrees aren't immune. ( -Masters in molecular biology).
The explosion of mental health problems in the world and economic dysfunction are not STEM problems, and any solutions likely have their share of public policy as well as making life more enriching. Especially since it's smartphones and social media (technology), aided by the best psychologists money could buy to create addictive algorithms, that hold a good share of the blame for those mental health epidemics. With the rise of the sports betting industry in the US I can only see the financial problems for everyday people getting worse, but I'm sure that the masterminds behind it will blame individual people for not being stronger in willpower than their algorithms are at being engaging. Are we going to technology our way out of that, or are we going to be more mindful about how technology is used?
i mean honestly STEM is pretty over saturated too, at least at the junior level, which is what fresh college grads would be at. it’s tough to get any non lab job with a chem/bio undergrad. shit, a close friend of mine had a 3.9+ gpa, honors, did good research for 3 years in undergrad, did a bunch of other crazy shit and he still got denied from every grad school he applied to in bio, including the school we got the undergrad from. i did a degree in math and i was able to get a job but i also did two minors to be employable.
It's very obvious to me that today's problems are overwhelmingly technological, biological, mathematical, scientific, industrial etc. Even within these subjects, there's a mismatch between the concrete problems seen in industrial practice and the abstract and simplified ones seen in academia.
I hear the 'but any degree will give you a well rounded perspective' kind of hand wavy arguments, but these are presented without evidence, and are unfalsifiable 'runaway arguments' that have no finish line - at what point do you stop and say we're pouring resources into the wrong areas and neglecting others?