QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:48 A.M. ET:  From the great Mark Steyn, commenting on this "age of education":

In 1940, a majority of the US population had no more than a Grade Eight education.

By 2008, 40 per cent of 18-24 year-olds were enrolled in college.

So we're on track to a world in which the typical American is almost twice as old by the time he completes his education as he was in 1940, and has spent over twice as long in the classroom...

Eighth Grade America won the Second World War and emerged as the economic and creative dynamo of the planet. Complacency Studies America can't even put up a building within a decade - or find anyone other than a half-blind Muslim security guard to watch o'er it. (If al-Qaeda had a sense of humor, they'd blow up the empty World Trade Center "Freedom Tower" the day before the ribbon-cutting. But fortunately they don't, so they won't.)

You can't (as Obama wants to do) send everyone to university and still expect it to be "university" as that term was understood through the previous half-millennium. It's now a euphemism for (from the faculty's point of view) a little light social engineering in the manners and mores of progressive conformism and (from the students' point of view) an agreeable and undemanding extension of adolescence for another half-decade. Whether it's worth over a trillion dollars in collective personal debt or the attendant costs in later workplace participation, later family formation and general societal infantilization is another matter. But it's not "university".

COMMENT:  Well said, but don't expect the mainstream media to do any serious reporting on the state of higher education.  There are too many "star" journalists and news executives waiting for their honorary degrees or their invitations to deliver commencement addresses.  Indeed, one of the most corrupt relationships in media is the relationship between journalism and universities.  With all that we read in the alternative media about low standards, political correctness, hate-America-ism, and bloated college budgets and fees, we see little hint of these plagues in the mainstream media. 

And we must ask ourselves whether two generations of college graduates have actually improved the country.  I have my doubts.  Look around you.

April 1, 2014