Huge Reddit thread on the College-Industrial complex:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1eiuy2/dear_class_of_13_youve_been_scammed_you_paid_300/

Great paragraph from Brent Arends: "U.S. colleges are a rip-off. Two decades ago I spent six years at Cambridge and Oxford universities, and it didn’t cost me a nickel. Admittedly, one reason was social policy: The taxpayers paid the bill (and a very good return they earned too, given the British taxes I paid once I graduated and started work). But the second reason was that these universities did not charge an arm, leg and other appendage for the act of teaching."

There are some things mass production doesn't do well with, human brains being in that group.  Getting an _actual_ education at an American university is pretty rare.  Case in point: Comp-Sci. Most CS programs are vocational, which is fine for most code monkey jobs, but when you need deep hardware or near-hardware hacking done, you're far more likely to find decent candidates out of European universities.

Hmm, I've found it exactly the opposite--for software at least.  I don't have a lot of experience in deep hardware.  Most businesses complain that US CS programs are too theoretical and don't spend enough time teaching students real-world skills.  I taught both a senior level project course and a software tools and methods course.  Students for years afterwards still tell me to this day that those were the best courses they took because I included real world scenarios, tools, and strategies--something that was *missing* from all their other coursework.   They definitely need the theoretical to help them succeed, but the hands-on helps them get started. Also, my experience is that most code-monkeys are non-CS majors who have transitioned into CS out of career expedience. 

In any case it feels like there are not enough software developers in the world today.