College is a Racket

Interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal on the ridiculousness of higher education. The author, Charles Murray, argues for the replacement of the bachelor's degree with various certification exams. Fewer students would be forced to go to college (and waste their money and time), and there would be more objective standards for job qualifications.

I must agree with this line of thinking. Not having been trained in a technical discipline during college, I could have learned everything I learned there on my own, equipped only with a library card and a couple syllabi. This pretty much happens already with law school -- we all pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the big name law school education for three years, and then we learn everything we need to pass the state bar in a couple months from a private company, for a fraction of the price.