The US college education is faced with a definitional crisis The problem is not definitional: politics (reflecting the ethnic composition of the votership

The US college education is faced with a definitional crisis The problem is not definitional: politics (reflecting the ethnic composition of the votership of the Democratic party) decided that social engineering is a key function of universities, in particular that women and blacks be given preference, regardless of academic merit (although the Trump government will probably try and roll this back). The problem is that this political command cannot be openly stated, for it is in direct contradiction with current law, whence universities keep their admission policies hidden / obscure. huge number of students who run from [IITs] to a liberal arts education in the US. Why is that s a problem? It's part of one's maturation to work out what one wants to do in life. More important is that IITs consistently produce excellent graduates, eg. Sundar Pichai, Sachin Bansal, or the undergraduates who developed the AKS primality test. (Note I'm not saying that IITs are ideal, indeed they can do much better.) Universities (or at least elite universities) should be judged primarily by the quality of their top graduates (for they have a disproportionate impact), and not by their failures.