The Slow Death of the University

Let's also not forget that what was so amazing about post-war education is that it went exactly opposite to the points you stated: it became subsidised, democratized, inclusive to lower socioeconomic classes in general and to minorities and women, and started to do more genuine research.

There's little misty-eyed nostalgia for 18th century universities, there is for the 1970s.

The issue for me isn't that 10k tuition fees is so bad (once you add non-teaching staff, or teaching-supporting staff, rent for facilities, administration, equipment, licensing access to libraries etc it'll be at least 15k). It's the fact that studying is supposed to be a full-time occupation. We don't ask of 12 year olds to work a 40 hour week, but we do of 20 year olds despite the fact they have as many classes but a higher study load outside of class.

Now if we consider that studying ought to be a full-time occupation, there's obviously an opportunity cost to studying or lack thereof. It's not just having to pay 15k per year for tuition, it's also forgoing the opportunity to work a job and make money to pay every expense a non-studying adult human normally needs to pay, rent, food, insurance etc. Another $15k per year is on the low-end.

So you end up with 30k over 4 years, at an average of 5% interest rates you easily graduate with 150k debt.

This is unworkable. So we require of students to work extra jobs next to their studies, knowing juggling a 70h work week for years on end while still living under crappy circumstances negatively affects studies, health etc. We require students to choose jobs that are most financially rewarding (knowing all too well that pursuing remuneration over everything else leads not to happiness, and that at the higher end the correlation between salary and benefit to society is weak). We see students accessing higher education with funds from family, something reserved for the (upper) middle class, and even for these kids it's very normal to have to not view studying as a full-time occupation despite being enrolled in a full-time program, and even so average debt in many countries sits around 30-50k.

Meanwhile, a country like Germany is offering free tuition, without having invented a magic money machine.

I think the crux of the problem lies in the sheer number of students who attend college today; as the author points out:

    "It is true that only about 5 percent of the British population attended university in my own student days, ... [today] that figure has risen to around 50 percent..."

The reality is that teaching critical thinking doesn't scale nicely, because it requires an intimate dialogue; the process of rigorously critiquing ideas is a two-way street. In today's institutions, where professors lecture to classes of 200+ students, this simply isn't possible.

In the article, the author claims universities have abandoned their roles as centres of critical thinking due to capitalistic forces. While I think this is true, I also believe that our collective attitude towards university shares the blame. Unfortunately, college is seen as the only legitimate path to success after high school.

If students had more opportunities to explore their interests, instead of being funnelled into university, perhaps universities could re-establish themselves as institutions where critical discussion takes place.

So it's like programming?

In theory technology costs should drive others down, no? But that's more true in the corporate world than non-profit or government which the universities resemble.

I agree on tenure costs. It seems like they're really bloating the system in the name of academic freedom. I get it at the large research universities where the professors bring in lots of research money, but is it really worth it elsewhere? People say it's a bulwark against poor administrators making short term decisions, but that's what the rest of the world has to deal with too.

Perhaps just timeboxing the tenure part would work. "The department has X tenured slots. After 65, you can stay on as an untenured professor emeritus at a lower salary."

I took a class on child abuse while at college. To say it had graphic recountings of abuse would be an understatement. It was one of the most extreme experiences I had during my time there.

On the first day, the professor told the class that we would be getting into some pretty extreme material, and if at any point someone needed to leave class or even skip it, to just let him know and schedule some one on one time with the professor. That seems to have worked as a good solution. Far better than banning that class or censoring material.