At the college -level, the number of post-doc is at an all-time high. The professors are working less, the none-tenbured, and post-docs and the Teachings assistants are doing more—and all for less. An increasing portion of the university’s income to going into administration. They are following the business model, where the upper levels get a greater and greater share for doing less.
The idea of tenure is as destructive at the college level as it is for public-school teachers at the elementary and high school levels; I remember enrolling in courses where you would rarely see the professor who was listed as the instructor of the class.
The whole basis on which the education industry was built up (by which you would improve your alary prospects by investing in education) has crumbled; if anything, the reverse is true: the more you can command in salary, the harder whole industries are working to either 1) have the work done elsewhere, or 2) import foreigners to do it here for (much) less as indentured servants (even if it means training them here to do it). Because of these trends, Americans are looking a lot more closely at how “education dollars” are being spent, and they’re not happy; they are paying more & more for an education worth less and less.