The author embraces a noble and historically justifiable view of the university. I wish he were right to do so. Academia does have venerable traditions stretching back to the rituals and prerogatives of medieval guilds of learned men (and women). However, two key changes have hollowed out that tradition: education has turned into job training, and many, many teachers, far from paragons of academic virtue, are overworked wage-slaves.

The first key change is that contemporary students, droves of them, attend university just to get a job. Job skills, as represented by so many facts, can be learned from books, worksheets, online tutorials, and prefab curricula. A good teacher might make it easier to learn the rudiments of compiler design or marketing principles, but is hardly essential.

Not so long ago, students, fewer of them, attended university to study rhetoric and philosophy and the other subjects of the trivium and quadrivium, in order, as they hoped, to become more civilized and humane, or at least to acquire the intellectual trappings of the elite classes. (At some point, of course, such students might take up professional studies in medicine, law, or theology.) Literature and philosophy are not just a set of facts, the way, say, the keywords or design patterns of C++ are. Appreciating literature or living a philosophy, at least doing it well, requires a community of practitioners. There are lone mathematical geniuses (Ramanujan), but rarely a lone genius of literary criticism (Harold Bloom probably spends many hours alone with his books, but he has never existed apart from a sophisticated milieu so far as I know -- not that he's a genius). The acquisition of independent thought, good taste, and even morality must be learned from those who are more adept at them. Such intangible goods represent humans' unsteady and imperfect climb to civilization, and have been handed over from person to person for ages. Books may have been part of the process, but it is humans who humanize humans.

But, I can hear you saying, even the most careerist education tries to nurture independent thought and requires apprenticeship to masters. Nobody can really become an expert at object oriented design without learning from an acknowledged expert -- such design takes experience and taste and sensitivity to nuance, not simple formulas and rote memorization. But really, I would respond, no employer gives a fuck, because a moderate degree of cleverness, ample supply of facts, and ability to research more facts, is more than enough for a new hire. Intellectual sophistication, morality, the dawning of wisdom -- these things don't make money. Philosophy majors suck at following directions.

So the first key change, as I have said, is the careerist rather than humanist emphasis in education.

The second key change is that universities produce way more Ph.D.s than they can employ. Ph.D.s in some disciplines (statistics, molecular biology) can get professional jobs in their field outside of the academy, but Ph.D.s in many other disciplines cannot (Ph.D.s in classics can teach high school or serve french fries -- noble occupations both, but they don't require graduate school). By glutting the labor market with their own graduates, universities can bid down the wages, which they have done and will continue to do.

If students primarily want to learn just the facts (job skillz), and most of their teachers are wage slaves -- overworked and not fully credentialed (no tenure) -- why wouldn't a university contract out curriculum design to for-profit enterprises? If the modern university, heir to hallowed traditions and one-time crucible of civilization, is going to enter its death throes anyway, some savvy entrepreneurs should make a few bucks off it. Otherwise it would be a complete waste.