I think you're right that there is a sleight-of-hand in the modern higher educational system: given that most of the substantive knowledge is publicly available

I think you're right that there is a sleight-of-hand in the modern higher educational system: given that most of the substantive knowledge is publicly available (e.g. I can download any textbook I want), they really offer something different than technical knowledge. I think that the real product is networks: if you attend a top university, you trade money to be placed with a bunch of very smart people with lots of social capital, and the credentials conferred upon graduation give you access to to other networks afterwards (professional, social, and more often than not, some hybrid of the two). Where I disagree strongly with the above "granfalloon" critique of liberal education is that I think it's a side effect of bringing together people from geographically disperse regions and widely varying values and backgrounds and making them live and work together. Profs just offer a framework to think about it, especially relating it to a historical context.