America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy | The Economist

America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy | The Economist.

I tried to explain my view.

The most important fact about higher education is missing from this analysis. That fact explains much of what we see happening here on many fronts: socially, politically, economically.
The eminent sociologist David Riesman observed (in 1980)how corrupt American universities were becoming; I saw the effects of this corruption trivialize much of high school education;(I’m a former math prof. I taught math at Wash. U. in St. Louis.) the authors of “Academic Adrift” reported on the effects of this corrupting at the college level.
Here is Riesman.
“..advantage can…be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions.. the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends..
Here are two critical facts from “Academically Adrift”.
In the 60’s students were required to study about 25 hours a week to learn the required material. Now it is less than half of that. At the same time, critical thinking skills have gone from an increase of 1 sigma after 2 years of college, to an increase of .07 sigma.
BUT, at the same time, colleges have become so corrupt that they grant doctorates (and get big gov’t money for it) who don’t know the subject. (See my blog for outrageous examples.) These grads become “professors” at schools where the needier kids’ high school teachers don’t learn much. And so, even though the luckier college grads don’t learn much, the unlucky high school grads learn so little that the GAP in education, and pay, becomes big.
That is it in a nutshell. For documented examples of the outrageous things going on, see my blog inside-higher-ed