Before
We have all been conditioned to believe that getting a college degree is the only way for us to get on in life so that we can get a well paying job to pave the way for a life of plenty, filled with possessions, a nice home, and perhaps a family. It is now pretty much accepted that for us to achieve anything less than a college degree will certainly ensure that our life will be filled with difficulty and that it will be really hard, if not impossible, for us to have a decent quality of life and the ability to provide for a family. Decades ago it used to be the case that someone leaving high school with a basic education could look forward to learning a trade and the skills needed in society, and ultimately get a job which would pay for their own needs, a family, a happy life, and eventually a comfortable retirement. Unfortunately those days are long gone and millions of kids are now destined for a life which at best will be an endless struggle, and at worst might be one based on crime, poverty, and even incarceration. The quality of life a person can attain is now directly related to the mental ability they were born with to gain access to college and their ability to find the money to pay for a college education.
College has now become a major financial burden. A college degree was once affordable so parents could comfortably pay for their children or students could take a short term loan with affordable payments once they were employed. Today the rates for a typical college degree are exorbitant and they increase significantly year over year, making it a huge obstacle for families and students. Often parents have to take out long term loans which they now have to pay all the way through to retirement, or kids have to take on mountains of debt which they will be saddled with for many years once they get employment.
The curriculum at colleges often don't match up with the employment needs of society. It is very often the case that a college degree is only an indicator of a person's aptitude rather than the content of that degree serves any practical purpose. The ability to retain knowledge, solve problems, and work hard when needed, are the only real indicators of having a college degree, and the actual course material provides no real value in practice, and the principle of "use it or lose it" means that the overwhelming amount of knowledge which is rammed in to the heads of our kids is an absolute waste of human time and energy. An absurd credit system also means that kids have to cram their heads full of meaningless facts and figures from art history, literature, and other subjects they have absolutely no interest in just to meet the requirements for the piece of paper at the end of it all.
After
In Nutopia there is no concept of a college degree, a job, career, or employment. There are simply Tasks that need to be completed for everything needed by society to function, and people have the necessary Skills to complete those tasks. The balance of skills needed and skills learned is carefully controlled by the Guardian System so that people are only ever learning skills that will be of use, and no one learns a skill that will never be used. As skills become redundant because progress means that tasks needing those skills have been automated then those skills are no longer taught.
In Nutopia all people have their basic needs met and everyone has the same benefits and responsibilities. There is no competition to get the best job, to earn the greatest amount of money, to buy the most things, instead all things are shared equally. Contrary to popular belief, people do not need to be given a reward in order to motivate them to contribute their labor. If everyone gets what they need and everyone gets the same, and contributing your labor as needed is all that is expected, no more, no less, to get no more, no less than everyone else, then that is what people do. The Guardian System ensures that people contribute their labor fairly with whatever the physical and mental abilities they have, so that people with differing abilities are treated the same. Contrary to the world we live in today, people don't expect that having the greater mental and physical abilities they were born with should give them anything more than anyone else.
