People are confused what a university is for. Most seem to think it is a job mill turning out individuals with the appropriate pieces of paper to enter the work force. Others think of it as a farm system for professional football. Some think of it as a research facility of corporations and medicine.
The original intent of a university was to create a well rounded individual who possessed an appreciation for learning. It was meant as a continuum for the trivium and the quadrivium.
What it has become is a place where people mark time without serious study awaiting endowment of a degree supposedly to gain employment. No wonder they are disappointed after graduation. What they really need is trade school.
For anyone who cares, I suggest reading Simon Ley’s “The Idea of the University,” from his book “The Halls of Uselessness.”
I spent an hour on the phone tonight with an 85 year old Reagan Republican who started as a teacher and ended up a vice principal and then a principal at some of our local high schools for over 20 years. She is a retired head of the retired teachers association. She escaped the poverty of post war Germany by marrying an American soldier. They are still married. Strangely, we discussed what I read in the op/ed that started this thread and she said almost exactly what you just wrote.
I am a baby boomer as is the author of the op/ed. When I was a kid average class size in our public schools was between 30 and 40 students. In dollars adjusted for inflation our local public school district now spends almost exactly three times as much per student as when I was in school.
One fact that a lot of my baby boomer brethren do not seem to be aware of is that in most cases the performance of current high school graduates from our local school systems on standardized tests is far lower than when we baby boomers graduated. In many cases those who receive associates degrees from community colleges and even some of those graduating with four year degrees are not as well educated as those of us who received a high school diploma forty years ago. This is even more true in critical thinking than in math and English.
All of our own children graduated a long time ago, but we have a whole heard of nieces nephews and grandchildren in public schools. When I try to have a discussion with any of them it becomes obvious quickly that their critical thinking abilities are especially deficient. They are able to parrot what their liberal teachers and the mass media have told them. When you ask questions that challenge the belief system they have been indoctrinated with it causes them to become agitated. Their ability to comprehend anything that contradicts what they have been spoon fed is nearly nonexistent. Unfortunately, further “education” by liberals who have taken over all levels of public education from preschool through graduate school is unlikely to expand these young people's horizon. They have almost no exposure to rational conservative thought.