I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears
Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it&#x27;s unsustainable.<p><pre><code>    - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs
    - teaching &quot;how to think&quot; and learning about art and culture
    - Performing cutting edge research
    - minor league sports teams
</code></pre>
The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities.<p>If you have a physicist who&#x27;s at the leading edge of research in their field, you want them doing that research, not teaching 18 year old&#x27;s Newton&#x27;s laws of motion. And they&#x27;re mostly not doing that teaching, that gets farmed out to an adjunct paid starvation wages. So the kid who&#x27;s paying through the nose to attend a top university with the best researchers doesn&#x27;t get to interact with them much and gets an inferior education compared to one where they hired and properly compensated someone to actually focus on teaching.<p>If we want to train people for specific jobs - create institutions that do that. If the upper class want someplace to send their kids to read poetry and binge drink for 4 years before they get a jr. associate position at their Dad&#x27;s investment bank, create a separate institution for that. Major league sports should create and manage their own feeder leagues to develop players, no reason to cram that into a university. We should create dedicated research institutions so researchers don&#x27;t have to pretend to care about teaching.