Talk of “fixing” higher education continues to take place within the same framework. No one wants to even talk about if that framework is appropriate or not. It goes unquestioned. The framework is vocational. Education has become vocational. The idea that one learns in order to begin a career has always existed through apprenticeships and technical programs. But the notion that ALL education must serve future career goals is the problem, and it is distinctly a contemporary post-war (WW2) phenomenon.

Fix that way of thinking and maybe the education bubble will be deflated before it bursts. But I have doubts that America can do that. We are far too infatuated with money-making schemes to care about what something’s optimal purposes are for. All things must have every penny twisted and wrung out of them until they are “worthless”.

And this sort of view is distinctly American, a view dating back to the Founding Fathers. You want a revolution? We’d have to start there. Anything else is merely figuring out a new way to twist the rag and pinch a few more pennies.