That’s if you buy into the narrative that university should be a fancy vo tech
The problem is that when we were trying to fight the Cold War with science, an era of hyper specialization took hold
That’s counter to the ideals of university training where a broad base of study is supposed to support you in your ‘loftier’ pursuits
(Now we’re asking 8th graders to pick a ‘pathway’ that will help them get into the college that will help them get into the grad school that will give them the best job - we’re asking 12 yr old to predict what they’re going to be when they’re 30 - it’s insanity)
To compound the issue, the Cold War specialization hit when we were also dealing with racial (and economic) and gender inequity- vo tech and ‘secretarial schools’ were where we dumped PoC and women who didn’t really have entry into regular ‘higher education’
People rightly pushed for racial and gender inclusion- those previous ‘dumping grounds’ were seen as institutions of an antiquated past (which they partially were) - no rich kid was ever going to be placed in vo tech so ‘upward mobility’ meant deinstitutionalizing trade schools bc we still haven’t figured out the difference between equality and equity
The financial crisis is a fallout of our lurch towards ‘equality’
When universities figured out that high schools were funneling nearly all students into college, it became a sellers market and when govt and banks backed education spending, colleges started jacking up prices and piling on amenities
Again like many other things, the problem isn’t college, predatory capitalism is