Sure. But bear in mind that all these benefits existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, before the higher education bubble. When there was no web and little or no stude

Sure. But bear in mind that all these benefits existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, before the higher education bubble. When there was no web and little or no student debt. Yet there are more people in higher education now. Heavy drinking and radical indoctrination are optional They're notionally optional but don't underestimate the effects of social pressure. In fact, conformity prevails strongly on the academic as well as the social side of university life. People talk about discussion and perspectives but in practice they want and expect accredited professionals to conform and to believe the same things. We don't generally want our doctors, for instance, to be original and creative. (Whereas, by contrast, we can have real discussion here.) Students want to know whether a given topic will be in the exam or not, and what the right answer is. In the arts/humanities, where fashions tend to prevail, they try hard to give approved answers in original or disguised form. I suppose this isn't surprising, historically speaking. The first universities were religious institutions founded to train priests, to inculcate doctrinal uniformity, stamp out heresies, and so on. If we judge the rationality of institutions by whether they meet the problems they purport to address then by that standard universities are pretty irrational. In fact I think one of the main functions they serve isn't mentioned very much: getting the kids to leave home.