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How The Education System Destroys Social Networks
Submitted by Jeffrey Tucker via The Foundation for Economic Education,
I was at a restaurant for lunch and had time to visit with the waitress, who turns out to be a college graduate from a good institution. She has a degree in European languages. Here she is waiting tables with nondegreed people, some five years her junior, some 10 years her elder.
She is making good money, but so are her co-workers. You have to wonder: given her position, what was the professional advantage to her of those four hard years in school and the $100K spent on them? What were the opportunity costs?
This is not another article to disparage the value of a college degree. I would like to raise a more fundamental question. It concerns the strange way in which our education system has overly segmented our lives into a series of episodic upheavals, each of which has little to do with the other, the value of one accomplishment being oddly disconnected from the next stage, and none of them directly connecting to our professional goals except in the unusual case.
From the earliest age until adulthood, we’ve been hurled from institution to institution in a way that eventually sets young people back from developing continuity of plans and a social support system to realize their goals. At the end of it all, people find themselves back where they started: figuring out their market worth and trying to find a buyer for their services.
Instead of drawing down on accumulated capital, they end up starting fresh at age 22. Even after years of building social capital, they are drawing down on a nearly empty account.
There is something seriously wrong with this system. Shouldn’t our investments in our friendship networks extend across and beyond the stages of our development to make more of a difference in our lives?
The post-graduation diaspora
In a couple of months, for example, many millions of high school students will graduate. Celebration! Sort of. It’s great to finish school. But what’s next?
Many students find themselves devastated to lose the only social group and friendship network they’ve ever known. They worked for years to cultivate it, and in an instant, it is blown apart. They are left with a piece of paper, a yearbook of memories, a transcript, and, perhaps a few recommendation letters from teachers — recommendations that do them little good in the marketplace.
“Don’t ever change,” they write in each other’s yearbooks. The sentiment expresses a normal longing to hold on to the investment the students make in each other’s lives, even as everything about the system tries to take that investment from them.
Is this the way it should be?
Then, the same group, or at least many among them, look forward to college, where they are mostly, again, starting from scratch in a social sense. It can be very scary. College students begin their new experience isolated. They work for another four years to develop a network — a robust social group — to find their footing and to establish both a reputation and sense of self. This is the only world they’ve known for years, and they have invested their hearts and souls into the experience.
The social fabric ends up rich and wonderful, with intense friendships based on shared lives.
Finally, after four years, the graduation march plays, the tassel is moved from one side of the cap to the other, and the whole social apparatus goes up in smoke — again. Then, another diaspora.
Once again, students find themselves nearly alone, with few hooks into the world of commerce and employment. They have a degree but few opportunities to monetize it. Their social network is of limited use to them. All they have, yet again, is a piece of paper. Plus they have recommendation letters from professors that still do them little good in the marketplace.
This not always the case. There are workarounds, and digital networking is helping. People join fraternities and social clubs, and those can be useful going forward. But it might take years for these connections to yield results. The more immediate question is this: What do I do now? Lacking a broad sense of the way the world works, and missing any influential hooks into prevailing networks, a college grad can often find herself feeling isolated once again, starting over for the third time.
The failure of the central plan
This is the system that the civic culture has created for us. For the years from the ages of 14 through 22, students’ primary focus of personal investment and social capital building is centered on their peers. But their peers are just the same as they are: hoping for a good future but having few means to get from here to there.
Why does this keep happening? Looking at the big picture, you can start to see a serious problem with the educational system politicians have built for us. It is keeping people “on track” — but is it a track that prepares people for the future?
A core principle of the education system, as owned and controlled by government, is Stay in school and stay with your class. This is the emphasis from the earliest grades all the way through the end of college. The accidents of birth determine your peer group, your primary social influences, and the gang you rely on for social support.
To be “held back” is considered disgraceful, and to be pushed forward a grade is considered dangerous for personal development. Your class rank is your world, the definition of who you are — and it stays with you for decades. Everyone is on a track as defined by a ruling class: here is what you should and must know when. All your peers are with you.
Many factors entrench this reality. The public school system is organized on the assumption of homogeneity, a central plan imposed from the top down. It didn’t happen all at once. It came about slowly over the course of 100-plus years, from the universalization of compulsory schooling, to the prohibition of youth work, to the gradual nationalization of curricula.
In the end, we find the lives of young people strictly segmented by stages that are strangely discontinuous. Where are the professional contacts that result? Where are the friends who can smooth your way into the world of professional work? They aren’t among your former classmates. Your peers are all in the same position you are in.
Laws that lock people out
The workplace might help to mitigate this problem, but it’s incredibly difficult for young people to get a regular job thanks to “child labor” laws that exclude teens from the workforce. For this reason, only one in four high school kids has any real experience outside their peer group. They miss all the opportunities to learn and grow that come from the workplace — learning from examples of personal initiative, responsibility, independence, and accountability.
There are extremely narrow conditions under which a 14-year-old can find legal employment, but few businesses want to bother with the necessary documentation and restrictions. A 16-year-old has a few more opportunities, but, even here, these young people can’t work in kitchens or serve alcohol. The full freedom to engage a larger community outside the segmented class structure doesn’t come until after you graduate high school.
By the time the opportunity comes around to do authentic remunerative work, a student’s life is filled with other interests, mostly social, but also extracurricular. Instead of working a job, people are doing a thousand other things, and there seems to be no time left. It’s not uncommon for people to graduate with no professional experiences whatsoever to draw on. Their peers are their only asset, their only really valuable relationships, but these relationships have little commercial value.
How natural is any of this?
If you look at the social structure of homeschooling co-ops, for example, younger kids and older kids mix it up in integrated social environments, and they learn from each other. Parents of all ages are well integrated too, and it creates a complex social environment. The parents know all the kids and, together, they form a diverse microsociety of mutual interests. This is one reason that homeschooled kids can seem remarkably precocious and poised around people of all ages. They are not being artificially pegged into slots and held there against their will.
A better way
When you read about the experiences of successful people in the late 19th century, they talk of their exciting and broad experiences in life, working in odd jobs, meeting strange people of all ages and classes, performing tasks outside their comfort zone, encountering adult situations in business that taught them important lessons. They didn’t learn these things from sitting in a desk, listening to a teacher, repeating facts on tests, and staying with their class. They discovered the world through mixing it up, having fabulous and sometimes weird experiences, being with people who are not in their age cohort. They drew on these experiences for years following.
The system to which we have become accustomed is not of our choosing, and it certainly isn’t organic to the social order. It has been inflicted on us, one piece of legislation at a time. It is the result of an imposed, rather than evolved, order. Why wait until age 22 to get serious about your life? Why stick with only one career choice in the course of your appointed 40 years in professional life? Why retire at the young age of 65, just because the government wants you to do so?
Think about this the next time you attend a graduation. Are the students shedding only tears of joy? Or, in the sudden mixture of emotions, is there also the dawning realization that they are witnessing the destruction of a social order they worked so hard to cultivate? Are they also overwhelmed with the knowledge that, in short order, they will have to recreate something entirely new again? Where is the continuity? Where is the evidence of an evolved and developing order of improved opportunities?
The most important question is this: What are the alternatives?
Bring back apprenticeships. Bring back remunerative work for the young. Look beyond the central plan, and don’t get trapped. Rethink the claim that staying in school is an unmitigated good. Find other ways to prevent your heavy investments in others from dissipating; ensure instead that they will pay more immediate returns. Our friends should remain in our lives — and yield a lifetime of returns.
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Yes, if you get a degree in European Languages you will probably end up waiting tables.......
Socializing with what passes for civilized beings is hardly a worthwhile endeavor. They're just meat puppets.
http://isnt.autistics.org/
What Is NT?
Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.
Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum.
NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic individual and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behavior.
"This is not another article to disparage the value of a college degree"
I missed that article.
re-post.
er, sheep's skin?
Universities try very hard to break all ties between their students and their communities. The University of California makes it nearly impossible to get in to a university near where you live. It is that way all over with these politcally charged statist tools of the state. Universities have created their own disparaging term for parents who are concerned with their kids at college: "Helicopter parents." Screw these snobbish institutions, you'll get better training at a Community College.
In brief, there's only one thing standing in the way of Mr. Tucker's worthy insights: everything.
The system he is criticizing is working exactly - and as nefariously - as the ruling power structure designed it to be. It's always sold as "improvement" and people buy the propaganda and have trouble discerning the evil intent of the power elite (they are not interested in creating anything nor anyone that will challenge their power).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UadPqGscfI
I had to login just to post to your comment.
YOU ARE EXACTLY CORRECT. There are so many things that society knew about work, that every generation forgets by the end of the 2nd generation of foregtfullness, that it all seems new again.
The only thing I would add to to your comment is that the "march to global governance" so devoutly wished by those in control, no longer depend or matter to the lives of individuals as part of a greater society. Many have become dependent on the nihilism of the state while discounting the value of society all around them.
great article, great comments.
Library....as Zappa said.
I can see the future and fully expect GEN X to redefine and rip the old world a new one. Mommie is dead, bitchez.
"just say no... to everything"
"The system to which we have become accustomed is not of our choosing"?? It's exactly of our choosing. The entire "occupy" mooovement was for moar of the same. The austerity riots are for moar of the same.
Where ever there is a free lunch, you need to be looking around for the slaughter house.
Sounds like the girls clique in HS.
Upvote. Because you have shed light on something (whether you're being sarcastic or not) that's troubled me for most of my life.
And here I thought it was something wrong with me.
Yes, look at all those wonderful jobs out there that will make you the life of the party. Patching potholes in the street with asphalt. Handing out parking tickets. Working as an order picker. Supermarket checker. The real difference between now and 30 years ago is that the cost of college has gone through the roof, a tenfold increase in some cases. The U.S. economy has hollowed out, the Wall Street looters run the show. And 30 and 40 years ago, it wasn't so great for most but a college degree got you a job that put you in the middle class. This idea that friends are so important is deranged. First, you need a paycheck.
"This idea that friends are so important is deranged."
I liked your comment, but this maybe misses the point. Not so long ago social relationships were integral to one's livihood. I think his point about the routine smashing of social and family relationships is noteworthy in that it fragments (weakens) the non-ownership classes. The irony is that that same process is often personally liberating.
How are the Lodges, Rotary and Knights doing?
You may need a job, but once you have one it is less what you know (or how productive you are) and more who you know.
Lived it to many times...many qualified internal applicants; job goes to someone the boss likes to party with.
What education system?
You mean the propagandized brainwashing program referred to as "education?"
Got it.
"Then, the same group, or at least many among them, look forward to college, where they are mostly, again, starting from scratch in a social sense. It can be very scary."
I was homesick so bad as a college freshman I literally threw up every morning before I went to class for several weeks. All I wanted to do was go home where it was "safe" and things were familiar.
I got past that. My first college girlfriend helped a LOT. She was her high school prom queen. I was a complete geek in HS. Now I was dating a prom queen. You know, I may just be OK after all, I thought. Everyone needs a reset every now and then. A chance to remake themselves in a better way. Being thrown into new circumstances isn't a curse, it's a fucking opportunity. Make the best of it you can. You are stronger and more adaptable than you think.
NONE of my HS friends have been of any use whatsoever to me in my adult life (though they're still great people, in small doses). After college I drifted away from most of my college friends pretty quick, too. They were all pretty much worthless outside the sheltered circumstances under which we became friends.
Sorry, but that's what growing up is like sometimes. Find something you want to do for the rest of your life, move towards it a little every day and you'll make new, better friends along the way in that path. Life is never how you plan it. It's how you adapt to it along the way that matters.
And then there are those of us who absolutely DID NOT fit in at high school, and much to our horror, discovered that "adult" life is little more than a continuation of it in many ways.
Ha! Yep.
Did you here that Ms. T. was a drunken mess at the sales conference?
Again? Why is she still here?
Well you know she used to "date" R. (the company president), and now she is J.'s (VP) mistress.
No Debt, did you matriculate at Slippery Rock?
Bring back apprenticeships.
I agree with this, my education was engineering and the only useful skill I got from the program was to learn how to use an index. I learned how to effectively use a bibliography from a graduate liberal arts program.
Bring back apprenticeships, any necessary advanced knowledge like mathematics or physics can be supplemented in the apprenticeship. Another complaint I have about my former career is the lack of mentoring. Standards, codes and software were used by upper management to avoid any kind of adequate mentoring. So, when the dinosaurs pass on they take a lot of valuable experience from trial and error learning a person cannot get by relying on automated design.
/rant
Agreed on both the apprenticeship and mentoring comments. Never met anyone worth a cup of warm spit who hadn't been walked through any process by somebody more experienced.
"Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others."
- Otto Von Bismarck
My younger brother is quite a wise man, indeed
But this can also be a freeing experience.
My dad moved us to a small town with rural people. I was an outsider at the age of 6; my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had not been born, grown up, and lived until death in that small town. I was not harassed, but not really accepted; I grew up, got some skills, made some friends, kept none of them when I went off to college.
I made new friends, developed more skills, graduated college and went to work. I left the state.
I made new friends, married my college sweetheart, worked for nine years for the first company, transferring (moving) twice from the original job, still within the first company. Then I started changing companies ....
I think I have moved something like eight times, counting from high school to now (and the way this country is going, I may have to move overseas to retire). Each time, I made new friends, learned new skills, tried new things. I have been a barbershop singer, a stained glass srtist, a woodworker, a carpernter / plumber / minor electrician, and a gardener among other hobbies, while raising a family. i put my first through college, and the second is a junior. They grew up in more than one town, and are finding out how to make friends, earn money, and so forth.
Growing up in one place is fine for some; others of us thrive on variety.
After the Crunch things may change, but I suspect people with people skills and useful abilities will be welcomed in nearly any commnity for what they bring. Would you turn out and run off a doctor, farmer or mechanic just because they didn't grow up in your town?
Then again, you never know.....
"But this can also be a freeing experience."
Totally agree. The freedom comes, at its core, from conquering your own fear of the change. Believe me, I know it doesn't feel anthing like that while you're actually going through it, but when you make it through you come out of it a little more confident, a little more sure of yourself and less afraid of the next challenge.
Amen to that.
When I was in college I met a girl in the library who was searching for overseas job opportunities online. She'd been a military brat and had unplugged as she called it--she'd go wherever the wind took her. I was so envious at the time.
Now that I've moved 11 times in 6 years, in country, out of country, in state, in province, out of state out of province? I'd just like to plant some trees and see them grow tall.
beautiful. that's the life trajectory I want.
i haven't lived in 1 place longer than 2 yrs. straight since i left high school.
every day you learn something is a day not wasted.
every place you visit, the people you interact with, open your eyes a bit more to the world.
variety prevents stagnation, boredom.
When I was in HS you couldn't take college classes (you couldn't get college credit for them)
Now you can and I tell all the kids I come across that if there is any way to take classes at the local Jr. college to go for it. The classes count more toward HS and you get credit for college. Its a twofer. Get out of HS as quickly as you can (graduate a year early if you can)
High School is a joke. (at least mine was)
What for? Working-class white men have become useless to our masters except as cannon fodder. Ideally none should even leave the womb alive. If white women breed, the offspring should resemble the son Obama never had.
Again---this is a class war, which our masters have every intention of winning. They do not, in the end, expect us to get good jobs and live full lives..They expect us to commit mass suicide and make room for robotic New Socialist Men, allowing the banksters to inherit the earth.
Internet Party: Why Nobody Gets Anything Done On the Web - If Famous Websites Were People
Old classic
[They are left with a piece of paper, a yearbook of memories, a transcript, and, perhaps a few recommendation letters from teachers]
That's pretty much the same wit everyone, young or old. You simply make new acquaintances and move on with life. Seems like people these days are more worried about the social aspect than the actual education and boy can you see it looking at todays academic numbers.
The only reason we go to college is thats where all the nookie is
Whats to worry about friendship networking in school? How about learning some 3 Rs, catching up educationally withe the rest of the world and THEN learn how to make friends. (Get your kid out of public school)
So you go to Philips at Exeter or a similar prep school; or you go to a Jewish school, and you then keep your close affinity group before joining Skull & Crossbones at Yale and you keep your cabal through life. The elites keep bonded to their peers, the rest are lost sheep avoiding wolves
Exactly.
In the USA, the only real community is to be found among the owners. And even the so-called "ruling class" is only loosely affiliated.
All else is a pathetic effort to overcome insurmountable barriers.
The most important question is this: What are the alternatives?
Communication is the key to understanding. I found out long ago if I couldn't understand a teacher go find another.
Back then it required going to another adult, but today it's UTube
Take any subject and go to youtube and watch videos after videos on that subject and I bet an epiphany will occur.
For the first few years maybe a teacher in a class room is required, after that chart a coarse to follow and provide testing along the way.
As far as social interaction that can be incorporated.
Would you like to know how the universe works? I figure it out all on UTube.
1st Problem solved, what besides a black hole is needed to hold a galaxy together?
A black hole gravitational pull is not enough to hold a galaxy together
Dark matter, (this science has theorized) is everywhere, doesn't interact with regular matter (so no gravitational effects apply),
Answer, a black hole also acts like a Cyclone sucking in dark matter, lowering the pressure in a region of space proportional to the size of the black hole. the region effected is the diameter of the galaxy it's in.
The Star systems furthest out are circulating not because of gravity or being pushed upon, but because they are feeling the tug of low pressure as dark matter is being consumed by the black hole.
Second Problem, What is a big bang?
A black hole that explodes
Third Problem, Where do black holes come from?
Created by the trillions during the inflation phase and before hydrogen atoms come into existence.
The universe is infinite in size and what we call our universe is a bubble in it.
Over time every black hole and associate galaxy will either consume or be consumed by other black holes originating from our known universe or from the mother universe until BOOM and the process repeats.
Yes, we can educate ourselves.
FUCK SCHOOL.
FUCK "TEACHERS".
And let employers do the testing.
Being in the modern western education system, including college and grad school, left me with a feeling I'll try to describe with a metaphor.
Imagine somebody looking at the pomp and finery of the Austro-hungarian empire, lets say a whole assemblage of military generals and brigadiers dressed in their immaculate, bedazzled uniforms circa 1914. And they're eating ostrich eggs and dalmatian figs, or whatever the delicacies of the day are. And meanwhile in the back of your mind, you know that World War I has broken out two months ago, and that the very empire these people represent has as tenuous a claim on the future as an baby bird that's abandoned by its parents. The future is going to eat these people for lunch.
And you sit there, admiring their finery. And they sit there, admiring their finery. Boy, the caviar is amazing, and the wine is truly excellent! And they all make pleasantries and talk about how the war is going. Somehow you're watching a scene that has already passed into the history books, but people keep playing out their roles as if nothing is unusual. Meanwhile the empire is in flames and half of them are going to be sent off to the front in the next two weeks.
That's the impression that grad school left on my mind.
That's a beautiful metaphor.
Government, being nothing but a criminal syndicate of theft and violence, always accomplishes the opposite of the stated goal. Always.
Even in education.
The banksters need to repay us.
Now Hiring! Guillotine Operators. No experience necessary. Student loans, as well as other fiat debts, diminish with each pol, crats, and bankster successfully fed thru the machine. Be a part of history, make yourself debt free, and Restore your Liberty. Must have guillotine. Baskets and drip pans provided. Apply in front of any bank or government office.
There IS something wrong with the system - THIS is what is wrong:
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
And articles like the one above and many others on this site point out the symptoms of what happens when growth stops due to the very high production costs of oil.
OIL BECOMING TOO EXPENSIVE TO EXTRACT
It emerged this week that the drilling of wells in the North Sea has crashed by around 50% this year, compared to the year-ago period. The reason for this is simple: the cost of extracting oil in North Sea has quintupled over the last decade, discouraging companies from investing within the region. http://www.fool.co.uk/investing/2014/07/18/surging-north-sea-project-costs-are-putting-the-regions-future-at-risk-tullow-oil-plc-premier-oil-plc-xcite-energy-limited/
The marginal cost of the 50 largest oil and gas producers globally increased to US$92/bbl in 2011, an increase of 11% y-o-y and in-line with historical average CAGR growth. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/05/02/983171/marginal-oil-production-costs-are-heading-towards-100barrel/
Sanford C. Bernstein, the Wall Street research company, calls the rapid increase in production costs “the dark side of the golden age of shale”. In a recent analysis, it estimates that non-Opec marginal cost of production rose last year to $104.5 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent from $92.3 a barrel in 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ec3bb622-c794-11e2-9c52-00144feab7de.html#axzz3T4sTXDB5
Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood said the productivity of new capital spending has fallen by a factor of five since 2000. “The vast majority of public oil and gas companies require oil prices of over $100 to achieve positive free cash flow under current capex and dividend programmes. Nearly half of the industry needs more than $120,” he said
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11024845/Oil-and-gas-company-debt-soars-to-danger-levels-to-cover-shortfall-in-cash.html
Or in other words - WE ARE FUCKED.
There is no way to fix this or reset it. This is AS GOOD AS IT GETS. So be happy with a job waiting tables. Because when this unravels you'll be eat sewer rats roasted over a plastic bag fire. - and that will put you in the 1% (how about that!)
Civilization is a product of cheaply extractable oil. Oil ain't cheap to extract no more.
Therefore civilization is about to end
I do not accept the absolutism when you say that there is no way to fix this because it isn't known what results we could achieve if we tried. Ironically, it would be educating every woman, man, and child on Earth to the part they could play in solving the problem that may buy us the time we need to work through the problem you correctly identify. We've ALL got work to do...
ALL ROADS LEAD TO PARIS
In the early 20th century, and following WWII certainly, the public education system in west Europe was good and fully functional. From around the early 1970's it has been deliberately undermined for political reasons. Why? Because it was producing people who could think for themselves which is bad news for TPTB especially when those people are from the poorer classes.
That is the case for US as well. Endowments from oligarchs to the system steered it into worker training. So Europe and US, almost as if a group of few conspired on a plan.?
Oh did I mention that PM will probably be useless post APOCALYPTO.
I have a couple of boxes of gold coins stashed in a bank vault and a sack that I keep closer to home but have concluded it will likely be worthless.
Why?
Because 7 billion people won't have food - because industrial farming needs cheap oil. Every calorie we take in has 10 calories of oil behind it
And guess what - we have FUCKED the soil with petro chemical fertilizers --- it grows FUCKALL without years of organic inputs.
The starving masses will crawl right past a pile of gold --- to get at a can of beans.
Gold is money and money only has any value if there are surpluses. There will be nothing of the sort going forward
Oh, did I mention that We Are Fucked?
Well yes, we are Well and Truly Fucked.
Bowling for Soup - High School Never Ends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrxI_euTX4A
Good article, nice angle on school dumbification.
Businesses need to quit perpetuating the acceptance of the typical mindest/skillset by eliminating the HR system that is in place. It is the same mentality that looks for the cookie cutter approach to people instead of the intangilbles. I have had success in different industries but it is getting harder with application automation and HR dingbats that cannot psychologically evaluate a toddler, so getting funneled into the same industry/position is becoming the norm.
Great article and very thought provoking. However, the ability for anyone to move from one stage to another, e.g. high school to college, college to professional life, is an immense opportunity for someone to reinvent himself. You should always try to improve on a daily basis, and accumulate social captial on a consistent basis, but I don't think there's no merit in these right of passages and educationhal social constructs.
Yes you will slowly get distant from your friends after graduation, but that's just an opportunity to build another kind of life that you want, while still have the chance to catch up with old friends once in a while.
The task of exploratory social connection is going to depend on the effort of individuals, not the insitution that they are subjected to.
I've been saying this for years. Our education system and mandatory attendance laws are completely at odds with economic reality.