"Eventually you could have local campuses becoming places where MITx students seek tutoring, network, & socialize—reclaiming some of the college experience they’d otherwise have lost.

Phil thought this sounded like college as a giant coffee shop. I agree. Every education would be ad hoc. It would be student-directed toward the job market she’s aiming for.

This trend toward…coffeeshopification…is changing more than just colleges:

Book Stores Will Shrink to Coffee Shops…

The Coffee Shop Will Displace Most Retail Shops…

Offices Become Coffee Shops…Again…

What Doesn’t Become a Coffee Shop?…

…houses of worship…

What will remain other than coffee shops? Upscale retail will remain…[for] experience…Restaurants remain. Grocery stores remain.

Brick and mortar retail stores will be converted to public spaces. Multi-use space will be in increasing demand as connectivity tools allow easy coordination of impromptu events…"

"If one looks again at the Board of Regents, one sees that it's packed with oligopoly capitalists, well insulated from the rough-and-tumble of the idealised competitive marketplace that conservatives rhapsodise over. Both the actual capitalists and the idealised marketplace are far removed from everyday reality - as far removed as any theocracy on Earth.

Indeed, market fundamentalists are like any other fundamentalists: sacrificing the lives of their young in the self-deluded service of their gods. And that's the real bottom line behind the pepper spray video, and pepper spray nation for which it stands."

"Christopher Newfield is not the only sober, informed observer who believes that political elites are deliberately attacking middle-class education.

Perhaps it’s not a crisis. After all, as many observers have pointed out, this is the way we live now, and room remains for exceptions and for hope. Still, the dark hordes of forgotten students who leave the university as Napoleon’s army left Russia, uninspired by their courses, wounded in many cases by what they experience as their own failures, weighed down by their debts, need to be seen and heard. Perhaps some of those who write seriously about universities could stop worrying so much about who gets into Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and start worrying about the much larger numbers who don’t make it through Illinois and West Virginia, Vermont and Texas…"

"Only when the humanities can earn their own keep will they be respected in modern America…will only happen when you convince majority of people to be interested, of their own volition, rather than begging/guilting them into giving you money to translate your obscure French poem on vague grounds of “caring about culture.”…either figure something out, or shut up & accept that the humanities are an inherently elite activity that will rely on feudal patronage. Just like they always have. (If you think of Maslow’s hierarchy, it’s obvious why leisure class, which generally has money, sex, food, & security taken care of, has been in charge of learning.)

You have no idea how much it pains me to say this, but speaking from experience I now believe that private industry is doing a better job of communicating, persuading, innovating, of everything university has stopped doing. I do not take this as indicator of how well capitalism works…[but] of how badly universities have failed…"

"Here’s an arresting statistic that economist Richard Vedder thinks goes a long way to explaining the rapid rise in college tuitions: 80% of faculty at the University of Texas, Austin teach fewer than half the students. In view of the fact that faculty salaries make up the largest expense at the university, one simple change would reduce tuition. Get the 80% back into the classrooms.<br />
<br />
Vedder anticipates the objection that forcing the bulk of professors into the classroom will harm the research mission of the university. His most devastating response is again a simple statistic—20% of faculty account for 99.8% of external research grants and funding. That leaves 60% of faculty who have very low teaching loads whose research—or in many cases lack of research—is financed by the general operating budget of UT. His proposal: have them teach two classes each semester, adds up to 200 hours per year in the classroom. As they say in Texas, that ain’t too bad for a payin’ job."

"College education is the largest scam in U.S. history! http://inflation.us"<br />
<br />
[via: https://twitter.com/qui_oui/status/74803663612293120 who says: "Depressingly accurate libertarian documentary about the U.S. #HigherEd "bubble" & economics"]

"I don’t expect Kevin Drum to have the answers, and we can debate what it will look like when this bubble finally bursts. Some people think it will be a good thing; I think it will be a clusterfuck for the middle and lower classes. But we all need to open our eyes to the fundamental transformation of American society that it represents. The generation before Drum’s made it possible to get an excellent education even if you couldn’t afford to pay the $9,000 that Stanford charged in 1981. Kevin Drum’s generation enjoyed the benefits of that system and then they dismantled it. My generation is muddling through by going deep into debt. The next generation will not."

"Imagine a retirement where you could have an extra $1million to $3 million in the bank with basically no effort. Now imagine telling your kids that you aren't going to send them to college. And, you go on, you want them to immediately start a business or get to work as soon as they finish high school.<br />
<br />
These are difficult things to imagine because we've been so scammed by the "career industry" that tells us we need college degrees in order to succeed in life, regardless of how much money we spend for those degrees or what we actually do with our lives during the four to eight years it takes us to get those degrees.<br />
<br />
But in my view, the entire college degree industry is a scam, a self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that needs to stop right now."

"his parents themselves did not follow Scott's path: grandfather…& dad…were right at the start of businesses, they didn't slide into middle management at Sterility Corp. But after taking those chances that ultimately resulted in prosperity & blah blah blah, they taught their children to do the opposite: look for new parents. Someone else to pay the life insurance policy…<br />
<br />
The parents & grandparents, like so many parents today, are disappointed in their son because he's not taking their advice, but in fact their son is taking their advice to its inevitable conclusion: he's holding out for the perfect corporate job. What they meant to advise him was to improvise towards a career like hopping a creek; but what they taught him to do was wait for the package…<br />
<br />
Where Scott is going wrong is not that he is holding out for a "better" job that isn't there; he's holding out for a job that shouldn't be there. We don't need more corporate management guys…What we need are more businesses."