Yes, school is important. As someone who is going into their sixth year as a graduate student, I've given this some thought.
School is one of the few times when it's okay to just learn without also producing something of value. What I chose to learn was computer science and some math and physics. In grad school, I've learned a lot about high performance systems. While this knowledge and related skills are highly valued in the real world, very few real work entities would be willing to pay me to acquire it.
It's tough to learn this stuff on the side. You really need to devote years to learning to be useful. During that time, you're not producing much of value to the outside world. My PhD dissertation will not represent six years of effort; more like one or two. But it took four years of learning to be in the position that I could do that level of work in a year or two.
If you take a CS undergrad, some company somewhere can probably get use of them at their current skill level. But that company will have little interest in paying them to continue learning.
Regarding what you put out versus what you put in, that's true of everything.
School is one of the few times when it's okay to just learn without also producing something of value.
That is so weird to me. When I was in school, I spent about eight hours a day, five days a week learning stuff that had little practical application. And now that I work, I spend, oh, six hours a day seven days a week learning stuff with little practical application. Bizarrely, the fact that I'm neither paid nor graded for learning has not stopped me.
Maybe school is good for people who are unable to learn without those incentives, but I'm not sure how much of the population shares that problem. After all, for schools to have something useless to teach, they needed someone to get the ball rolling by learning that stuff before schools existed. So it's been possible in the past.
I'm not sure if you understood me. If you're paid for your work, I assume you're also producing something.
School is the only time we're allowed to learn without also producing something. You can learn on the job, but there's an expectation that you will produce something as well. They're not paying you to learn for your sake, they're paying you to learn so you can produce something for them. This does not exist in school; everything you produce is only for pedagogical purposes.
I don't know why you brought up incentives; my point has nothing to do with them. My point has to do with time and money. Since you produce nothing of value in school, no one will pay you for it. So you're deferring income so that you can devote all of your time to learning - school is an investment.
I really don't understand you. I have a shelf full of computer science and math textbooks behind me, which I read even though 1) I do not need them for work, and 2) I am not currently in school. I don't produce anything of value by reading The Art of Computer Programming, but I am still 'allowed' to do it. Nobody is paying me or permitting me, even though the stuff I do is still for pedagogical purposes.
I assume that most of your day is still spent producing something, which you get paid for. In school, such time does not exist; it's all learning. I think you're focused on incentives, which is orthogonal to my point. Regardless of why you learn (ranging from for your own enrichment or for practical gain), having a few years set aside to do nothing but learn means you will learn more.
If you somehow have a job where you are allowed to do anything you want and produce nothing, then I'd like to know who you work for.
Surely you don't mean that you spend all of your time at school doing thins with no productive value. I assume that you were still able to complete basic chores, personal hygiene tasks, etc. I spend more time on non-learning tasks while I'm at work, but it is feasible to work hard for a while, stop to learn things, work hard for a while again, etc. You seem pretty smart, so it's surprising that you'd doubt your ability to ever save up enough money to take some time off from working.
School is one of the few times when it's okay to just learn without also producing something of value. What I chose to learn was computer science and some math and physics. In grad school, I've learned a lot about high performance systems. While this knowledge and related skills are highly valued in the real world, very few real work entities would be willing to pay me to acquire it.
It's tough to learn this stuff on the side. You really need to devote years to learning to be useful. During that time, you're not producing much of value to the outside world. My PhD dissertation will not represent six years of effort; more like one or two. But it took four years of learning to be in the position that I could do that level of work in a year or two.
If you take a CS undergrad, some company somewhere can probably get use of them at their current skill level. But that company will have little interest in paying them to continue learning.
Regarding what you put out versus what you put in, that's true of everything.