exactly why is left as an exercise for the reader. Because for a long time politicians in all western countries have been pushing the idea that attending unive

exactly why is left as an exercise for the reader. Because for a long time politicians in all western countries have been pushing the idea that attending university shouldn't be a rare or elite thing, that instead nearly everyone should go to university and get a degree. Scaling up changes things fundamentally. Numbers of students graduating with degrees has been showing a clear exponential growth curve over the last 100 years, see page 14 here for the UK: http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04252/SN04252.pdf http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN042... The explosion in size and funding levels of the university system that accompanied this growth has radically changed society in many subtle ways I suspect we're still struggling to understand. Why did politicians do this? We must speculate. The explanations given at the time were somewhat dubious and tended to revolve around "the knowledge economy" (at least in the UK). Tony Blair was big into this around the turn of the millennium - the idea that the rise of China meant western countries couldn't compete anymore in traditional labour intensive industries and would have to move on to "knowledge work", which they then assumed meant needing a degree. Quite why China would be unable to educate its workforce to the same level, or why labour costs would not eventually rise in China to western levels, was left unexplored. I personally suspect there was another agenda at work. From the mid 1990s to early 2000s, the USA and Europe were dominated by left wing parties (arguably Europe still is). People who spend more time in the university system tend to get more socialist in general. The correlation between increasing student populations and increasing future left wing voters would be hard for any political strategist to ignore. That leaves the question of why university tends to make people more left wing. Leftist academics themselves tend to explain it as "smart people agree with left-wing policies" and leave it at that. But there are lots of smart people who don't, so that explanation seems lacking. However that's a topic for another time.