I could not possibly agree with you more, having basically lived through this. When I look at the current tuition rates for my alma mater, Northeastern University, it makes me cringe. However, the fact that the default experience at Northeastern requires a student to undergo multiple &quot;co-ops&quot;, 6 month paid internships, is genuinely a smart thing in my mind.<p>By the time I had graduated, I had work experience in embedded systems, a criminal justice stats analysis lab, the Red Sox, and a counter terrorism research center in DC.  And that&#x27;s all well and good, but the most important thing I took from it was that it taught me very quickly which sectors I <i>did not</i> want to work in.<p>You often come out of high school with this idealized version of what it would be like to work in X field. To learn what that field is really like, and to learn if it&#x27;s something you truly want to pursue, is a huge win in my mind for an undergraduate.