There's a lot that can be said about this, so I'm just going to focus on what I think is the nub of the disconnect here. Studying philosophy, art, history, rel

There's a lot that can be said about this, so I'm just going to focus on what I think is the nub of the disconnect here. Studying philosophy, art, history, religion, science and the classics (that is, education as opposed to mere training) is supposed to bring people in touch with their humanity and, more relevantly, their mortality-- the fact that we'll all die and that it can happen at any time. The first 5 to 15+ years in the professional and corporate life (and not just in the demonized investment banks and consulting firms, because this is a common trait of human organizations and every bit as entrenched in academia and mainstream corporations) are about denying said mortality. You're expected to focus on a far-off distant future that may never come and, in the mean time, "pay your dues"-- that is, work in conditions that no one would accept unless harboring a delusion of infinite time, a misguided belief that the present doesn't matter because the future will be flush with riches, prestige, and make all those present-time sacrifices irrelevant. I don't support war or conscription in general, but it's no coincidence that the "yuppie" phenomenon was born after the abolition of The Draft. Once kids lost awareness of death (not that it exists, but that it will happen to them at an inconvenient time; it's always "inconvenient") they could treat their own time as limitless and without value, so they relaxed their demands for autonomy, rewarding work, and mentorship in exchange for a 10 or 20 percent bump in immediate prosperity. I would call this a failure of the educational system, but I don't think it is. We have a deeply deluded culture focused on the transient and on seduction and I don't think (even if individual professors do a great job) this is something that schools can fix.