Reply #28: There isn't any one answer

[gaia_gardener]

it will be different for everyone. Some people will never discover the "love of learning". It just won't happen. For those people, the best we can do is provide them skills to be self-supporting.

For everyone else, they'll find it at some point. I found it early. And I'm still learning (hence why I'm here). Other people find it in a particularly challenging job.

If education does nothing other than allow you to feed yourself and your family, it's still worth the effort.

For what it's worth, I'm not using my college education for my job. I found that I would have to (metaphorically) sell my soul in order to get a permanent job and I refused. I'm still glad I got the education, I learned a lot of fun things and things I'm passing down to my kids.