China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
So you’re trying to tell me that the Chinese don’t see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it’s cool?
Any argument that begins with “So you’re trying to tell me” is being made by a person who is NOT, in fact, being told what they say they are.
I’m not Chinese, so I can’t answer that.
I can tell you that’s absolutely not how or why I got my own degree. For which I paid barely anything, so hard to picture it as an investment. And it didn’t seem to be much of an “investment” for my classmates, many of whom paid nothing or were paid to do it.
We did think it was cool, though. Got to meet very smart people, both as professors and as classmates, some of which I keep in touch to this day. Got to learn stuff I hadn’t even considered and access technical means I couldn’t have afforded. Zero regrets, even if my degree is only very tangentially related to my current job.
So… does that answer the question?
Sorry, but that’s just an absolutely snobbish way of looking at education.
Of course it’s an investment, you spent years of your life, took exams, wrote theses, sat in boring lectures because a person in their late teens and early 20s has nothing better to do than that? Yeah, sorry, that’s bullshit and you know it.
In some countries you don’t pay for education and many people absolutely love the lectures. You can study something because you love the subject. I myself enjoyed every single lecture I had and I often attended even lectures that I didn’t need in my curriculum, just for the delight of learning things. I understand there are people that study just to get a degree and employability and don’t really like their specialisation that much. That’s ok. But studying what you’re passionate about can be very fulfilling and it’s ok too, nothing snobbish about it.
And that is utter bullshit.
You can’t be that dense to seriously say you enjoyed every single lecture. That’s a lie, and you know it.
BTW, I’m from one of those “some countries”. And no, nobody, not a single person enjoyed everything. That’s not how reality works.
Who are you trying to impress here?
I’m just telling you about my anecdotal experience. You don’t have to believe me. It changes nothing - I loved my lectures to bits. For me, it was such an improvement from high school where I was often bored! At uni, I studied what I was really interested in and even could choose from different lectures. Not every lecturer was good, so I sometimes got bored because of that, but not because I wouldn’t like the subjects they were teaching - I enjoyed every bit of information I learned about at uni. I’m sorry it was so different for you that you can’t believe this could be real for someone.
Edit: I think I found a better way to explain myself: Imagine a nerd learning all the nerd stuff. That was me.
I know nothing of the sort, and I honestly think it’s far less snobbish than the alternative.
I absolutely had nothing better to do than education, that much I give you. It’s a high bar, I was doing some really cool shit.
Thankfully, my government agreed with me on that one, and I’m more than happy to pay taxes for the rest of my life to make it keep being the case. And thankfully, my parents agreed as well. My dad was adamant I didn’t take a job on the side despite us not being particularly well off. Probably because he’s a left-leaning teacher himself and HE worked his ass off and paid all the taxes so we could all do that, not to have us drive living wages down by squatting at McDonalds, or whatever.
And sure, it was an investment in the way reading a book in my own time is an investment. It made me better at a thing and taught me things and gave me time to figure stuff out. It was certainly not an investment in my career. I haven’t submitted my degree with a job application once in decades of working for a living. Did alright anyway, wouldn’t have done as well without the things I lived and learned or the people I met and learned from.
Which is what education is for, in my book. If you’re looking at dollar input versus lifetime dollar output… well, you do need an education, so maybe you can get that while you’re making a fool of yourself getting that MBA or whatever.