> An easier way is to water down the educational system to a lower standard and then peg the university income to the number of students accepted while reducing the funding per head. In that way universities are given the happy choice of losing money and enforcing redundancies or watering down their requirements.
This has also become true at many US universities.
You can't water down the requirements and maintain placement stats at the same level. Many companies will simply pull the plug on recruiting and hiring once they have a bad experience with lame recent grads.
The really sad thing: The universities take the student's money, and then leave the kid unemployed at the other end. All that student debt is not dischargable in bankruptcy.
I don't know how elite US universities were. In the UK very very few people went and pretty much guaranteed middle or upper class life. One of reasons we boosted universities in the UK was because USA was sending a lot to univeristy. However it ended the guarantee of middle or upper class life.
They were education path of the elite, but we let a few working class smart people in via the grammar schools(Elite state schools) to keep the majority happy. Grammar schools selected at 11. The other way to get in was private schools, if you had the money. My ex-school is now an ex-grammar school because selection was banned for state schools. The people who did not pass selection went on to vocational training at 11.
Note - Working class in the UK is roughly the same as lower middle class US.
The university system in UK is still one of the best, were small country and have many universities in the top 100. However it's gone down.
In the old days, you could study at a library, go to private tutorials, then take a bar exam or accounting exam to become a lawyer or accountant or doctor. I doubt even the public service required a degree, as long as you could pass their entrance exam. There were other requirements for the professions, (such as an apprenticeship), but a degree wasn't always needed. (note, I'm not certain of the details, that's just what some of my relatives have said about how people used to cope without degrees).
The more people get degrees, the more things they are needed for. The lower class were mostly freed by economic growth. In 1960, the UK GDP/capita was about $3 a day, which is about the point where people stop worrying about what they are going to eat, and worry about health, education, their career, and where they are going to eat. If they needed to study at privatized training centres, then pay for a professional board to assess them, they'd have done that too, but the government responded faster than the professional societies.
You're right, and it was the same in the other medieval institution he doesn't talk about-- the Church. Unlike today, you didn't need a Master of Divinity (M.Div) to be offered a job as a pastor or priest. You presented yourself-- and were usually sent-- to a bishop (or consistory or presbytery) as one prepared, usually with Latin and Greek, to "read for Holy Orders." Often, the student was taken into the home of the bishop (!) and ate all meals with his family while being tutored in Greek, Hebrew, biblical exegesis, and Church history. Before the advent of the theological seminary in the early half of the 19th century in America, all ministers were educated this way. It worked very very well up until recently.
I mention this because it parallels the University exactly. They changed the system, and educationally we are all the worse for it because the most important thing now is the credential rather than knowledge. To get the credential you have to go into extreme debt if you happen to be poor. If you don't believe that there's been inflation and the system has gone soft, just take a look at a McGuffey's Sixth Reader. Shakespeare and Dryden at that stage! Something very important has been lost, but most Anglo-Americans don't realise it.
This has also become true at many US universities.
You can't water down the requirements and maintain placement stats at the same level. Many companies will simply pull the plug on recruiting and hiring once they have a bad experience with lame recent grads.
The really sad thing: The universities take the student's money, and then leave the kid unemployed at the other end. All that student debt is not dischargable in bankruptcy.