Is education a waste of money. Well, in a word, yes. If applied to the author and his favourite like-minded Authors.

As to his article? Risible rubbish not worth the time of day?

The world, our world is a rapidly changing place where automation and AI is making many occupations including many white-collar occupations, entirely redundant.

And a not too far away future where only those who knuckle down get their heads into their books and absorb all the STEM subjects might be the only ones not hard-pressed to earn an honest/moral living?

Dismiss this article as pure unadulterated dribble and entirely uneducated conjecture. That nobody still in their right mind ought bother to even read. Unless you are some kind of masochist?
Alan B.

Many degrees are certainly useless for employment purposes. They seem to serve just to pull in people who should never have gone to university, but who provide taxpayer money to pay for the ridiculously expensive rubbish degrees that line university coffers. I believe that many of these 'student’ drop out, but the money grubbing institutions keep the loot. The taxpayers get back only the money spent on proper degrees gained by students who are wanted in the workplace, and who earn enough to repay their debt.

“Taxpayer sponsored education encourages excessive credentialism”. Well said. The qualifications some employers require are just plain crazy. The work that comes immediately to mind is journalism. There are undoubtedly many others.

User pays, and scholarships for the less well off who prove that they are capable of further study is the way to go. Some academics believe that we should be switching to private universities and colleges if institutions paid for by the taxpayer are merely brainwashing people in the humanities - home of the really junk degrees. The humanities are beyond redemption, and even in science areas, PC bullsh-t is beginning to creep in.

Yes. Certain sections of our education system are a 'waste of money’.

Yes sure anyone can learn on the job. Like, say, brain surgeons, airline pilots, Those who build and or repair nuclear reactors or find out the chemical composition of strange new compounds. Defend you in court when they found you with the hand in the company cookie jar?

Why kids don't even need to school anymore. I mean, just tell them the brain is an app and they'll soon learn how to use it, instead of the phone/laptop half of them are glued to.
Alan B.

Come on Alan, while we all know that an arts degree is considered the ideal education for a clerical job in the bureaucracy. Perhaps they should include an arithmetic major in there though. Uni for airline pilots is going a bit far. You know, I haven't seen too many air strips around universities these days.

When I did my flying training their was not a graduate or undergrad to be seen. Yes we navy types did waste about 7 months, & the RAAF types about 4 months doing math, physics & aerodynamics on the ground before we got into an aircraft.

I was lucky, at 19 I was closer to school than some trainees. Some of the 30+ year old officers said they only got their math back up to scratch because I & another young bloke was there to help. Unfortunately about 30% of our course never flew, they were off course when they couldn't handle the physics.

When we passed we never gave another thought to all that stuff. It was not much use knowing how unsuitable the wing chord of our planes really was, we flew what some politician had bought.

The next time I used any aerodynamics was when at age 72 I started designing & building my remote control toy planes. I don't think it was terribly economically advantageous for the tax payer to train me to do that, back in the 50s.

Education for education's sake is a total waste. The notion of everyone being entitled to free education brought on this tsunami of Uni students that weren't actually capable of learning anything at all. Most of them are bureaucrats now & we all suffer the impact of the education they couldn't comprehend.
Education must be freely available to students or rather young people who can pass the entry exam, nothing less.
A national Service should be established where trades are focussed on alongside discipline & responsibility. It sure would prove the pants off the all hare-brained academic dreamed-up schemes out there costing us billions for nothing more then just more costly problems in return.
If you have the intelligence to become a skilled (useful) professional then every encouragement must be given just as every encouragement should be given to people to stay away from Uni if they haven't got what it takes to walk through the doors. Get a job that doesn't make you a burden to society.

Hmmh !