Students aren’t optimizing for what is best for society. They are optimizing for themselves, which almost always means getting a job.
The credential is a prerequisite but skills are a differentiator. Problem is, not all skills are equal.
Amazon isn’t going to ask you about your opinions on The Illiad, they are going to check if you can write an efficient algorithm to rob houses or merge sorted linked lists.
> They are optimizing for themselves, which almost always means getting a job.
Instead they should optimize for keeping a job.
Since you mention Amazon, I work there as a senior software engineer (almost 10 years of tenure) and the quality of interns has massively degraded since LLMs are available. The result is that where the majority of interns used to receive return offers, now the vast majority doesn't.
Similarly, a lot of new grads get kicked out quickly, before the end of the trial period, because they suck. A lot more than in the past.
That is funny, because job hopping has been the recommended advice on this forum for 2 decades, especially job hopping away from Amazon to greener pastures.
The fundamental issue is that for almost all students, college is really job training in academic clothing. Universities will never admit this, and some professors delude themselves into believing it’s not true. But it’s the only explanation for why students would take enormous loans rather than simply get jobs.
But why else would you have a bunch of students join a class and cheat? Something like 22 out of the 27 perfect midterm students didn’t show up to the final? Obviously these people are not in it for the joy of learning.
So the answers to your questions are 1) learning 2) job-worthiness 3) measurements of 1 which accurately and plausibly reflect 2.
If a course does not plausibly reflect job readiness, or students’ grades do not reflect competence in the subject then the course must be fixed.
The credential is a prerequisite but skills are a differentiator. Problem is, not all skills are equal.
Amazon isn’t going to ask you about your opinions on The Illiad, they are going to check if you can write an efficient algorithm to rob houses or merge sorted linked lists.