So you would say your average 22 year old college grad has "an expansive view of human knowledge"? I realize this sounds like it should be a strawman, but it is not! That follows directly from your supposition that 'college is good because it provides an expansive view of human knowledge.' If this is at all true then your average grad should have something at least vaguely resembling an expansive view of human knowledge.
I think university can nicely compliment individuals' own personal strengths and attributes, but I do not think a university can turn a lump of coal into a diamond no matter how hard it may press. To take for instance Harvard, I think Harvard graduates are Harvard graduates long before graduating from Harvard - in some cases before they're even admitted.
Abraham Lincoln as an extreme example had less than a year of formal schooling, giving up on formal education to help to take care of his family. Far from being an ignorant redneck, as would be the typical caricature of a person with no education running around in on rural land with overalls with a axe, he loved reading and taught himself an immense amount about the world and society. And this is in an era when access to information was exponentially more difficult and expensive to come by. Today it's easier than ever. In a different time he'd be another Harvard grad with people wowed at the caliber of individuals they continually manage to produce. No, it's the caliber of individuals that they manage to attract.
I'm in complete agreeance with this. I notice a difference in behaviour of "working class" vs "white collar" cultures but this difference isn't due to university, it's due to different cultures as adults. In my 20's I'd rarely meet someone intellectual through my professional circles, everyone that age simply wanted to go do drugs at music festivals, talk about the boring reality TV, etc. I know/knew people in academia, however, and this was the one area of my life where people largely had intellectual interests.
I think university can nicely compliment individuals' own personal strengths and attributes, but I do not think a university can turn a lump of coal into a diamond no matter how hard it may press. To take for instance Harvard, I think Harvard graduates are Harvard graduates long before graduating from Harvard - in some cases before they're even admitted.
Abraham Lincoln as an extreme example had less than a year of formal schooling, giving up on formal education to help to take care of his family. Far from being an ignorant redneck, as would be the typical caricature of a person with no education running around in on rural land with overalls with a axe, he loved reading and taught himself an immense amount about the world and society. And this is in an era when access to information was exponentially more difficult and expensive to come by. Today it's easier than ever. In a different time he'd be another Harvard grad with people wowed at the caliber of individuals they continually manage to produce. No, it's the caliber of individuals that they manage to attract.