Some thoughts: * Inflation of people with college degrees. From 5% in 1940 to 35% in 2019. This dilutes the quality of both the student pool and of the profess

Some thoughts: * Inflation of people with college degrees. From 5% in 1940 to 35% in 2019. This dilutes the quality of both the student pool and of the professorial pool. * Distance from the last major war, all the way back in 1945. Educate like your life depends on it has long faded from memory. In medicine, in engineering, in hard sciences. * The mismatch between skills taught in academia and job market skills. By now everyone is jaded at the notion that the main point of education is the diploma, seen as a key to unlock the job market. Of second importance, networking, get into an Ivy to rub elbows with the right crowd. Knowledge and critical thinking come as a distant last. * Or perhaps, even simpler, the dilution of the male spirit which sees competitiveness in excellence as an inherent moral good. Our forebears wore educational attainment as a peacock plumage. These days peacocks are outright vilified.