Higher Education in America
Among educated Americans, however, I suspect there’s another factor at work: elite overproduction. In the 1990s and 2000s, smart young Americans were told that a college education was the ticket to a career that wasn’t just high-paying, but also deep, fulfilling, and meaningful. And even if that was true for the median college graduate, there were ... See more
Noah Smith • Yes, we still have to work
About one-third of the college students today will drop out, a marked rise since the 1960s, when the figure was only one in five.
Tyler Cowen • The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better: A Penguin eSpecial from Dutton
When polls were conducted of incoming American freshman in the late sixties, a full 80 percent of respondents said it was essential to them to develop a meaningful philosophy of life; around 45 percent felt financial success was essential.43 For the students surveyed, university was less about career training than self-actualization.
Astra Taylor • The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (The CBC Massey Lectures)
Certain features of the modern academic system, like underpaid PhDs, interminably long postdocs, endless grant-writing drudgery, and clueless funders have lowered productivity. The 1930s academic system was indeed 25x more effective at getting researchers to actually do good research.