It doesn’t.
It takes time and effort to gain more knowledge. It has never been cheaper or more accessible to acquire knowledge than it is today.
To increase your intelligence, is another matter all together.
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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I would also add that damn near all of human information is free to be had on the internet for the low, low price of a monthly broadband bill. The real expense comes when you want a piece of paper that says you know all this that other people will take seriously.
While absolutely true. I would say it's much harder to find today than ten years ago. The Internet as an information source is being degraded on a daily basis. The amount of misinformation, ads disguised as information, and AI slop is destroying your ability to find that information.
Textbooks on any subject are easily retrievable for free. You could previously go to a library, but the internet makes it much easier to retrieve that kind of information.
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I would argue that its rare for education to make you smarter, it mostly makes you more knowlegable.
Knowledge is mostly free though. You can get it from the internet, from the library etc. A lot of what you are paying for is the certification - some places let you just sit the exam I think.
Or in some cases, like FOSS, the knowledge is freely available, but you pay for a detailed course or tutorial to receive that information in a simpler, more streamlined way.
A lot of the time I paid to have it taught to me so badly that I would have been better off with a textbook. 😢
They then call me up once every few years to ask for a donation! Fk off, I'm still paying off the loan!
Exactly. Smarter doesn't equate well educated.
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The library is free, my dude
Thats about certificated stuff from school. Knowledge has never been more accessible than today.
It is wild to me that tuition is SO expensive and quality educational content is SO ubiquitous now. It does take a lot of time, skill, and effort to provide quality educational experiences, but man is it weird that it is simultaneously free and ridiculously overpriced.
University is overpriced, but a degree isn't just saying that you've gained knowledge. Being able to look up and memorize stuff doesn't mean you'll be good employee. if you can't work effectively with a team or tend not to finish a project all the knowledge in the world means nothing.
The most important thing most degrees demonstrate is that you can work for years on a project with multiple milestones involving multiple disciplines, work with others or self-direct, and meet goals.
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In Australia University used to be free. At some point they realised that Asia is close and has a virtually limitless supply of rich parents who want to pay big money for their kids to be lawyers and doctors.
Education is now one of Australia's main exports.
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I guess you're talking about the US.
Well, everything costs money there: education, health, safety... It's capitalist dystopia.
*in the US. In Germany a semester at my university costs about 300 Euros and that includes cheaper lunch and a ticket to use all public transport in the whole of Germany.
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It doesn't. It costs money to skip a lot of the effort and have someone guide you through a curriculum and give you direct guidance and feedback on how to get that knowledge.
I have an Engineering degree, everything I learned there could absolutely be learned by someone curious poking around on the internet for videos, papers, and course slides that you'll probably need to read alongside a wiki page. They tend to come up pretty quickly once you're familiar enough with a field to start investigating one level deeper from a basic high school education.
It only costs money to get the little piece of paper that says you did the thing and are therefore smarter. 🙃
There are a lot more quality free learning resources than people realise.
Honestly, there isn't hardly anything you couldn't learn on your own. But what higher education provides is structure. It can be very difficult to actually follow through with the education if you do not have scheduled classes, exams you have to study for, deadlines for projects/exams, etc
One of the reasons some branches of learning are called "disciplines"
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Formal education isn't for education but for the formal paper. There is so much information on the web, just learn from that. Also, libraries often times have material other than physical books
Formal education can be good for guidance. For learning the "unknown unknowns" as a famous scholar once said. Also, in terms of career, networking is the most important thing. The world is built on nepotism, unfortunately.
It doesn't. It costs money to get the diploma that's proof of your smarts. The Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz didn't actually get a brain, he got a diploma.
My son is a committed cinephile, and has systematically watched nearly every movie ever made, in any country, in any era ( it seems). He's an expert, by anyone's estimation. He just started back to college for a degree in Film Studies, because while he has the knowledge, in order to get a job teaching film, or working in an archive, etc., he needs the degree.
So you aren't buying the knowledge, any person who makes a serious commitment can get the knowledge, you are paying for an organization ( a school) to endorse your knowledge. Kind of a Certificate of Authenticity for your intelligence.
Essentially, because it takes labor to create educational material. Unless you own slaves labor isn't free. And in fact with the modern library and Internet access I'd argue self educating is more accessible than ever in history.
Because knowledge is power.
But also it depends. Learn on the job is a thing too in some industries, and in some people can do quite well for themselves here.
It also costs money to make money, if you have a lot of it you can make it work for you and make even more than someone who doesn't have it. This is why kids of rich ass parents get it so easy.
an important rule of capital is that in order to get it, you must have it
I'd argue it doesn't, and moreover you cannot buy intelligence.
Sure, you can buy some books with some stuff in it and memorize that stuff, or pay for a class on some stuff and test well, but critical thinking skills seem to either innately exist, or not (depending on the individual in question), within us.
I've met people with pieces of paper that proclaim them to be certified smart that are dumb as rocks but were simply able to move through the system well enough to fool people, and people who have no such paper who are more intelligent than the former could ever hope to be. Shit happens.
Obtaining education doesn't increase your intelligence.
Getting smarter doesn't really cost much. Public libraries exist, go read books and get smarter.
University degrees though... Yeah, those are fucked up.
Or you could emigrate to the EU, where higher education is free.
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Where im from we have libraries and the internet. Now getting job skills. that is a tough one.
gatekeeping
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