a college degree in 2025/2026/2027 ... don't

Michael Cox wrote:

How many degree level people does the world need in ethnobotany? I suspect that the number is small because, as you imply, the knowledge is readily accessible to the interested lay-person through books and other resources. Degrees shine on the level of an overall society when they are deep, and that deep expertise brings special insights that are valuable to a society in a way that is uniquely distinctive. But even then, the utility of having more people with the same narrow expertise is limited.

Not only that, things can be learned about herbs and plant uses, not only through how other people use(d) plants (ethnobotany) but also through experimentation, accidents, glimmerings, instinct and random bursts of creativity—I think there is also an element of, if you listen, the plants will teach you. It’s something the modern, scientistic approach that is encouraged in society does not typically allow for, the spontaneity of it all. I believe sometimes, in order to learn, you have to make a complete fool of yourself, and that is something that, if you are in a place liable to be judged by others—i.e. as a professional scientist or student, is extremely discouraged.

These teachings from the plants helped me through a difficult sickness and continue to be making their way into my life, not because I’m seeking them out but because I stay receptive. Maybe that receptivity is another of the things you can’t get from any amount of education on a particular subject—being educated implies it’s someone else teaching, so you stay firmly planted in the human-linguistic world, the word-mediated perspective—elevated above, separated from the animal, the vegetable, the life speaking in that “language older than words”. To learn from nature in this way it seems important to be receptive to that which is beyond the human, the non-verbal, the instinctual communication between radically different forms of life, the inexplicable for which the human body/mind is the instrument of scientific measurement.

I guess the ultimate question is this: are we at a point where the kind of life most people want will soon be out of reach?
Lets face it: the gert life, even the life of a skipper who gets ahold of larger property for farming, will sound great to people on this site. It will not sound great to the majority of Americans, many of whom are freaked out by the idea that their carrots ever touched dirt.
At the risk of over generalizing, I think that the majority of Americans consider a nice house with flush toilets, automatic thermostats, purchased food, and a Netflix subscription to be prerequisites for a comfortable life. To maintain these things and cover other expenses throughout life, you need a stable job with a decent income. Historically and even today, people with those jobs are far more likely to have a university degree. Is that about to flip? Are the white collar jobs about to become so rare, and standard of living so low, that growing your own food on a few acres with an RMH and willow feeder and an income way below the poverty line is actually your best option even if you don’t like gardening, despise building fires, and gag at the thought of a bucket of aged poop?
I honestly don’t know. It is hard to imagine. To me, it seems more likely that we will see an extension of the computer era: computers automated a lot of jobs (human computers, hand accounting, research aides) but created so many more by expanding what was possible. Maybe AI will do the same. Or maybe it will collapse under its own energy needs. Or maybe we really will see massive unemployment of college degree holders, beyond anything that went before. Wish I had a crystal ball.