My thesis is simple and I will present it simply and up front.  The Academy/College/University is an institution   founded on a single value proposition.  The proposition is that studying, however loosely defined, under the guidance, however loosely defined, of a professor, has intrinsic value.  The definition of a "professor" in this formulation is not loose.  A professor is someone recognized by society as being able to profess - i.e. to state things about the world that have a valid claim on being true.  This is contrasted to the classical definition of a professional, who is someone who has made a commitment to a single profession, i.e a way of life, but is not expected to continue to profess on a constant basis.

Some people almost get it.  Some don't have a clue.  But higher education worldwide is inching toward a crisis.  And the nature of the crisis takes some thinking to figure out; hence this blog.  The symptoms are quite clear for all to see. Here are some:

1. My kids can expect to pay more in one year for college than I did on four.  Same college.
2. While I am told to cram 60 students in a graduate course to help make ends meet at the university level, it takes only 15 to pay my salary, benefits and operating expenses.
3. Governments everywhere can no longer afford to subsidize universities to the same level as before
4. College loans are the fastest growing sector for consumer debt in the USA
5. People can take courses for free because the marginal cost of one more student visiting a web site with a video and a auto-corrected quiz is almost zero.  But this everyone is nervous about how long this largess will last.
6. There appears to be a very successful business model that operated on selecting the top students from any major and paying them three to five times the average salary to be management consultants for as many years as they can keep up.  The university is a spectator and sometimes victim of this (e.g. when students cut short their research to take an offer or skip class to attend day-long interviewing sessions.

What is going on here?  How are these related?  Come with me and find out.