Increasing funding for higher education is one of the worst ideas possible. It sounds good to parents strapped by the monopoly pricing of universities, but the reality is that the universities will simply raise prices in lockstep to steal the money from the parents.
Higher education badly needs to be dope-slapped into reality. There is no real reason for the modern university, with its enormous costs. Most instruction, which is now handled by grad students, could be done online at a fraction of the cost by the best teachers in the country. These institutions remind me of the newspaper industry, so intoxicated by its own self-importance it couldn't appreciate the changes going on all around it.
A university is a great place to spend a few years to party, have lots of sex, do drugs and dabble in radical politics if that's your thing. Universities are still relevant because they remain the gatekeepers to an upper middle class lifestyle. At some point they will lose that stranglehold and have to survive on merit. When that happens, I predict that few parents will pony up $50k a year so their kid can have a good time.
Higher education badly needs to be dope-slapped into reality. There is no real reason for the modern university, with its enormous costs. Most instruction, which is now handled by grad students, could be done online at a fraction of the cost by the best teachers in the country. These institutions remind me of the newspaper industry, so intoxicated by its own self-importance it couldn't appreciate the changes going on all around it.
A university is a great place to spend a few years to party, have lots of sex, do drugs and dabble in radical politics if that's your thing. Universities are still relevant because they remain the gatekeepers to an upper middle class lifestyle. At some point they will lose that stranglehold and have to survive on merit. When that happens, I predict that few parents will pony up $50k a year so their kid can have a good time.
