The problem is that education has become a commodity. You pay money for a diploma and it opens doors for you to make more money. Quid pro quo.

It's sort of like buying a job, you pay someone (like a crooked floor manager) for the privilege of being a hotel waiter or bartender because the tips are enormous, and it may take years to pay it off. This used to be a common practice in Miami, when many exiled educated Cubans, like doctors, businessmen and lawyers, were trying to get hotel work because their professional licenses were invalid in the USA or they didn't speak English. Welcome to Capitalism, Pedro.

An education has always been expensive, even for those that could afford it, or in countries where it was subsidized by the state, you still had to be affluent enough to pay for your room and board, books and clothing even if your tuition was taken care of. This kept most people out of school, especially those with families.

America partially solved this problem with the state university system of the turn of the century, and later with GI Bill (I needed both to be able to afford my education). Without it, and a university within commuting distance of my home, I just couldn't have gone. But even this was a racket, because there was still tuition and expenses, so only those that could afford the price of admission could take advantage of the government subsidy. Welfare for the affluent, free enterprise for the poor.

But as I mentioned, you shouldn't need a university degree for most jobs, and most scholarly pursuits, like our French Medieval Linguist, were not that high paying anyway. Some careers, like medicine or the sciences, required big investments in equipment, labs and libraries.

But once you could get an almost guaranteed position in a cushy office job (or as a military officer) just because you had a degree in speech or political science, it really didn't matter what you studied. Education was commodified, and it became a prerequisite for white collar employment. Employers used it to weed out lazy and dumb kids, not because they needed the diploma skills.

Now you have to borrow to afford the price of admission, so it has become a source of revenue for the banking industry, and the government facilitates the whole system with loan guarantees. I was lucky because I was born in 1947 and served in the military and lived near a brand-new big state school. Ten years earlier or later, or if I hadn't been in the service, I would have missed the bus. I'd probably be an out of work bus driver or something like that now.

Damn straight its a racket. And those academics that do make it into the system, get very petty and mean about protecting their turf and their little departmental wars. At the student level, you get grade inflation, erosion of standards, all sorts of other destructive consequences.

But fortunately, at least I got a good education, both in my technical discipline and in my humanities electives. These weren't just padding, USF was serious about the General Studies program, and top professors and resources were thrown into those courses. My teachers really cared, too, they busted ass to help me succeed. That's why I am so positive about that experience. My fellow students were also highly motivated. Yeah, we had sex, drugs and rock and roll, but we were hungry to learn and idealistic, ready to change the world. And we weren't all spoiled rich kids, either. We were working class kids, many of us veterans, we were already tough and street smart when we got there. I don't think kids have that today.

I suppose the university system started to decline about the time I was a student, or maybe a little later. But it wasn't politics, or ideology. If you need one single driving cause to blame it all on, it comes from the fact that the taxpayer felt he was entitled to send his kid to college so his kid could get a necktie job. What he studied, or how good he was at it was irrelevant. It was all about the job. Well, that attitude has turned the university into a marketplace, and its a seller's market.

I got in and out just in time, for more reasons than one.