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SilasBarta comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Anybody else think the modern university system is grossly inefficient? Most of the people I knew in undergrad spend most of their time drinking to excess and skipping classes. In addition, barely half of undergraduates get their B.A in 6 years after starting. The whole system is hugely expensive in both direct subsidies and opportunity costs.
I think that society would benefit from switching to computer based learning systems for most kinds of classes. For example, I took two economics courses that incorporated CBL elements, and I found them vastly more engrossing and much more time-efficient than the lecture sections. Instead of applying to selective universities (which gain status by denying more students entry than others) people could get most of their prerequisites out of the way in a few months with standard CBL programs administered at a marginal cost of $0.
Oh, and to add to my earlier comment, another major problem with the system is the difficulty with which you can dismiss employees, which extends through most industrialized countries. This makes it much harder to take a chance on anyone, significantly restricting the set of who has a chance at any job, and thus requiring much more proof in advance.
And what frustrates me the most is that most such regulations/legal environments are called "pro-worker" and the debate on them framed from the assumption that if you want to help workers you must want these laws. No, no, no! These laws make it labor markets much more rigid.
Remember, whatever requirement you force on employers as a surprise, they will soon take into account when looking to hire their next albatross. There's no free lunch! These benefits can only be transient and favor only people lucky enough working at a particular time. As time goes by, you just see more and more roundabout, wasteful ways to get around the restrictions. (Note the analogy to "push the fat guy off the trolley" problems...)