"The people alone can protect us against…evil…Kings, priests and nobles…will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance…” T. Jefferson

Opinion | What Students Read Before They Protest – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

I commented as follows.

Beware.

First, a large proportion of Columbia’s undergraduates are engineering majors. They don’t have to take all the courses.

Second, some of the core courses aren’t what you might expect. (For example, there is “Game of Thrones”: On Epics and Empires)

Third, what does the student really have to do to pass these courses? Without being inside the university, you can’t know. (I know because I’ve been inside. It’s not good “business” to tell students and parents what is really going one.)

Finally, here is what is behind this paucity of learning at colleges.

“…the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of students…” (David Riesman, “On Higher Education: The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism”, 1980

As a former professor at an “elite” school, I can tell you that it is much worse than in 1980. You can look at my blog inside-higher-ed to see how much worse. Also, search for Columbia there.)

For many, many reasons, higher education in America needs to be understood, then fixed.