Couple of thoughts: https://twitter.com/policytensor/status/1279664471351242752

1) With the WW2 GI bill, there was a deliberate attempt to use college to transmute social classes via: Elites go to college, therefore if we send everyone to college, they will all become elite (in the Lake Wobegon everyone's above average sense)

That's obviously not what happened, since a liberal arts education was a signal, not the thing itself

2) With the elimination of tests for hiring, higher Ed became a proxy for intelligence and conscientiousness, indirectly via the SAT/ACT tests. This led to runaway tuition cost disease as every tiger parent vied for the highest tier signal they could afford among their peers

3) Rising education rates diluted the signal value: Bad money drives out good

4) The actual things taught, classically, were devalued, despite being the hugely distilled residue of countless prior generations. Most of it was wasted on everyone who has ever gone to college, but for the few who did absorb it, they formed the backbone of society

5) Can't say this enough in current times, but go read Eric Hoffer's explanation of how mass movements get started based on a frustrated intellectual class in "True Believer: The nature of mass movements"

6) the intellectual fomenters will all be replaced by sociopath Men of Action: Trotsky versus Stalin

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