David Warren writes for The Ottawa Citizen and has a firm grasp on the reality of higher education. Consider this column published Oct. 12. Is higher education a great, crucial investment in human capital? Here's what he says:
The great majority of the universities -- founded since the Second World War to bureaucratically process and credentialize a large part of the general population, as a matter of 'right' and regardless of their intellectual capacities -- are in effect 'community colleges' or trade schools. Many of the trades being taught are perverse and wouldn't exist without further government subsidy ("women's studies" for instance, to produce professional feminist agitators). But most are the commonplace trades, and the colleges only provide incredibly inefficient and ineffective ways to replace the older apprenticeship arrangements, while cosseting the young from demands of the job market until they are thoroughly spoiled.
Read the whole, wonderfully iconoclastic thing. If you can stomach pure bile, read the comments too. I'll be on the lookout for more of Warren's columns. Hat tip: Geoff Hawkins.
