That is absolutely correct. If we were to drill deeper down, the purpose of 'education' and the certificates it brings for most jobs is extremely questionable. I'm an advocate for education for highly skilled jobs where lives are at stake, such as doctors and civil engineers.
But it's hard to see and justify the same need for typical white collar jobs where college is mostly a repetition of high school and employers train you/indoctrinate you with their koolaid anyway once you're done showing them you have a Bachelor's/Master's.
The same applies for comp sci/developers where a lot of the talented ones tend to enjoy writing code or playing around with tools like web APIs or their Android SDK way before they went to college anyway. It seems a lot of people who weren't passionate in the tech field before, but majored in the T part of STEM in college basically forced themselves into it for the money. They end up graduating with the same certificates anyway, but the forced-non-passionate ones use the cert only for getting their foot in the door while still lacking critical thinking and have little interest in improving/enhancing their skill set (See: majority of developers from India).
And don't even get me started on lower-tier majors like communications, history/librarian, arts, basic design, etc where little more than basic hands-on training would be adequate to get people on their feet to do their jobs, versus spending a ton of time and money on 4 to 8 years of 'higher education'
That's exactly what's happened and what will happen - setting goalposts and then moving them. In Europe, specifically Germany and France, it's common for people to go for a Bachelor's and Master's back-to-back since there aren't any student loans to worry about.
While the lack of student debt from studying so much sounds all nice, the reality is you get a bunch of 26-28 year olds graduating with Master's degrees and ZERO working experience, bar some internships which may or may not be useful.
There are two sub-problems here: "Free" education (not actually free when you see how much taxes are) allows Europeans to take their sweet time in graduating, so it's common for people to be done with their Bachelor's at 24 or 25, while their American counterparts graduate at 22/23 because of the (financial) pressure to finish on time. A combination of high taxes, encouragement from peers/uni to "study abroad" instead of work and from companies to keep their student status to stay interns, means there's also not much motivation to transition to full-time work.
Make no mistake about education quality here, it's not better than America, in fact it might be worse. The population here complains a lot on their local education quality (though you'll rarely ever hear it on the Internet - see last paragraph on why). A lot of memorization from books for things you'll rarely, if ever, use after graduating, lots of partying and bumming around. "Study abroad semester" is nothing more than a proxy term for "4 month vacation for sex, drinking, parties and roadtrips while the taxpayer takes care of the host country's evil out-of-state tuition (usually US, Canada or Australia)" - see for yourself with those "Erasmus" (exchange) students from Europe doing their exchange program in America.
There's a misconception commonly spread in Germany that staying as a student to work means you pay less taxes - kinda true, but technically it's because you get paid so little, you stay in the non-taxable <9000 EUR/year bracket - so you have people postponing graduation or enrolling in a new university without taking any courses after graduating to keep their student status.
Student/internship wage exploitation is turning into an epidemic because of the large student population that remain students for such a long time paired with legal loopholes that allow many companies to get away with hiring a bunch of cheap students instead of one full-time employee.
I've been living in Europe for a few years and they are not immune to the problems that Americans complain about. They do a good job complaining about America on the Internet while downplaying their own problems and spreading positive vibes (cough propaganda cough) on how Europe is superior/more human/ethical than America though.
I disagree; there is some definition of 'stupid' that exists in the same shape and form in most consumers. It stems from laziness, desire for showing off and instant gratification, and lack of critical thinking when being bombarded with marketing BS like cool visuals, gimmicky features and awesome keywords. The same self-interest leads to them being stupid and, usually, staying stupid.
The stupidity of the average consumer manifests itself in not wanting to "waste time" with some "nerdy tech thingamajig" (boohoo muh computer is slow, must be the viruses and need more RAM, lemme buy myself a new one, ooh look the slimmest model, lemme get that. Soldered everything? Non-user replaceable battery? Huh, wtf are those. It's slim and pretty tho) or comparing products on the shelf to make the best, most practical choice (it has X famous brand name that's associated with cool and expensive, great to show off to friends, especially on social media because everyone on there cares. Oh there's a vocal bunch speaking about bad reliability, poor quality that falls apart 1 year and 1 day after purchase and terrible price/performance ratio? Must be lies spread by dem haters).
Yup, pre-purchase research and post-purchase diagnostics (not even asking for much, just googling a problem to see if it's unfixable/too expensive to fix) are things today's consumers would rather not 'waste time' with because they clearly have better things to do that aren't a waste of time, like taking more selfies for Snapchat, raking in likes and loves on Facebook and Instagram and surfing the internet (anyone up for more shopping and getting 'inspiration' from friends on what to buy next to one-up them?) on their $2000 Facebook/web browsing machine and $1000 phone.
The best part is very few of these people learn from others and their own mistakes. They'll continue to buy the same crappy products because they saw a cool ad or all their friends are talking about it without any thinking or research. They'll stay loyal to overpriced brands with poor reliability because 'dat brand name doe' and continue with their need to see and be seen having/doing/wanting cool things. Simple reading to make an informed buying decision? Too uncool! F-that!
I saw new job postings from Booking quite frequently in 2013/14 when I was first applying for jobs in Europe. Figured they were growing very quickly and applied for a few but never got a reply from them. And reading this thread and your post today, I'm glad I didn't.
I'd be interested to know how your buddy's doing there. Seems like they still post a lot on job websites, and their growth isn't exactly mindboggling, so it would seem they have really high turnover and/or trouble filling positions to begin with.
But it's hard to see and justify the same need for typical white collar jobs where college is mostly a repetition of high school and employers train you/indoctrinate you with their koolaid anyway once you're done showing them you have a Bachelor's/Master's.
The same applies for comp sci/developers where a lot of the talented ones tend to enjoy writing code or playing around with tools like web APIs or their Android SDK way before they went to college anyway. It seems a lot of people who weren't passionate in the tech field before, but majored in the T part of STEM in college basically forced themselves into it for the money. They end up graduating with the same certificates anyway, but the forced-non-passionate ones use the cert only for getting their foot in the door while still lacking critical thinking and have little interest in improving/enhancing their skill set (See: majority of developers from India).
And don't even get me started on lower-tier majors like communications, history/librarian, arts, basic design, etc where little more than basic hands-on training would be adequate to get people on their feet to do their jobs, versus spending a ton of time and money on 4 to 8 years of 'higher education'