Indeed. Instead of seeking a broader understanding of the world and a greater ability to question and think critically about it, more students are seeking know

Indeed. Instead of seeking a broader understanding of the world and a greater ability to question and think critically about it, more students are seeking knowledge of a more practical nature that can lead to better employment opportunities in the near term. It's understandable. On the whole, I don't think this is good... but this has been coming for a long time, due to many reasons, including: * a broken funding system that saddles a majority of students with life-altering debt, effectively keeping many of them from studying what they love and forcing them instead to study what will land them a decent job; * the slow-motion takeover at many universities and colleges by professional managers who use financial and other metrics to measure the "success" of and decide on the funding for different academic departments; and last but not least, * the gradual takeover of liberal arts faculties at many colleges and universities by individuals whom I can only describe as very ignorant -- uneducated, really -- in mathematics, the hard sciences, modern technologies, and the ways of business.[a] Perhaps the smart kids don't want to study with these ignorant individuals? [a] As C. P. Snow wrote about these people in 1959 in his famous Two Cultures lecture: "A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of Have you read a work of Shakespare's? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question—such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?—not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures)