Professor Ron Srigley, who teaches at the University of Prince Edward Island, has written a devastatingly accurate piece about the scam that much of higher education has become. You can (and absolutely must!) read it here.

To the conventional notion that college students are eager to learn, he writes, “A university degree, after all, is a credential crucial for economic success. At least that’s what we’re told. But as with all such credentials — those sought for the ends they promise rather than the knowledge they represent — the trick is to get them as cheaply, quickly, and with as little effort as possible. My students’ disaffection is the real face of this ambition. I teach mostly bored youth who find themselves doing something they neither value nor desire — and in some cases, are simply not equipped for — in order to achieve an outcome the are repeatedly warned is essential to their survival. What a dreadful trap.”

Srigley goes on to argue that the curriculum has badly eroded in order to keep things easy and entertaining for the customers. Grades have been inflated to prevent kids from complaining. Top administrators waste lots of money on staffers whose work consists of maintaining the potemkin village’s appearance of “success.” Costs keep rising while educational value plummets.

Read and savor this wonderfully iconoclastic essay.

Hat tip: George Avery