Is careerism a problem in college?

Just read this article for ENG008: The Key to Success in College Is So Simple, It’ s Almost Never Mentioned It's pretty interesting. This post is my rambling thoughts on it.

My first criticism is that the article does not explicitly define "success in college". The article states that college "has more to offer than job training", implicitly stating that success is not focused on employment. I disagree. I believe that students' goals really boils down to getting a good job. Everything else (notably getting good grades) is simply a stepping stone to said job. The article seemingly make the argument that the satisfaction of curiosity and overall intellectual development is more important. I do not dispute the usefulness of those things. However, I believe that there are simply way more efficient ways to obtain them. I find paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn in an age where almost everything can be found on the internet with little effort just sounds economically irresponsible. College learning's advantage is its structural nature and the certification it provides, neither of which is required for curiosity and general development.

As I believe success is defined by a career, from here on, I will assume that the article is arguing that careerism is harmful to the goal of getting a career.

The "careerism" that the article presents is an unwillingness to learn topics that are not related to one's (prospective) career. While I agree that the willingness to learn a large breadth of knowledge may be somewhat helpful, I disagree that it is any more useful for finding a job than the same effort spent in one's own specialty.

The article states as evidence that learning calculus "expanded [the author's] brain". Firstly, this benefit is way too vague for me to understand, much less convince me that there is beneficial side effects to calculus. Perhaps the author means an improvement to problem solving (as is the common argument for learning calculus in high school). That may be the case, but the side effect of one course does not justify the hundreds of others that may or may not have none at all, such as the "philosophy, literature, astronomy, and music" that the article mentioned.

Furthermore, even if a course has a beneficial side effect, to prove that careerism is harmful, one must show that one's own specialty has a lower return for the same investment. One may very well be better at critical thinking with calculus, but does that improvement always justify the loss in the skills one would've otherwise gained in accounting? The article does not provide any evidence for this, simply the unquantifiable and personal anecdote of brain expansion.

Lastly, it is important to mention that I agree with the Knowingness argument wholeheartedly. I want to give credit when it's due and I'm not writing about it simply because I have little to add.