Higher Education As We Presently Know It Is Obsolete
And not simply because of technological change.
Many of us have followed the campus disruptions over free speech. Some students as well as faculty appear ready to do away with free speech altogether, if it permits “microaggressions” or offends their sense of “wokeness.”
But focusing on a handful of dramatic, well-publicized incidents of this sort doesn’t scratch the surface of the problems plaguing higher education today.
Just to note: I spent over 17 years teaching in colleges or universities at various levels before departing academia in 2012. Some of my jobs were at flagship state universities; one was at a liberal arts college; a few were at technical colleges and business schools.
I mention this only so readers will know I’ve seen higher education from the inside, and can report from a boots-on-the-ground perspective.
And from my perspective, with rare exceptions these institutions are by and large obsolete. They are tied to educational models that existed not just before today’s era of rapid technological change but predate the industrial revolution itself.
This, though, is just one kind of problem. Other problems involve the kinds of moral corruption and intellectual decay that led to the…
