This is also mirrored by the move in Science from an explanation to a prediction paradigm.

Exclude the middle class who need to work in order to live, and only teach the children of billionaires (and maybe a small number of very smart people who won scholarships)? Nothing in this question concerns philosophy though.

@curiousdanni: Thats not going to work. And nor does it actually address the issue that I'm talking about. Are you aware of the Jeffrey Epstein case? One should not trust billionaires merely because they are billionaires.

@MoziburUllah: I think the point being made is that if universities become completely impractical, they will return to be a luxury for the elite, as they were a century ago.

@criaglcraigl: As far as I recall, Ayn Rand wanted her 'hero' to set up a isolated outpost for all her bunch of pseudo-intellectuals. We'll, we've seen what they really get up to when they do that, as opposed to a fictional and falsified rendering, and it ain't pretty. It doesn't surprise me the billionaire business class fell for Ayn Rand - she just tarted up American pragmatism and marketed it to them as 'philosophy'. She told them what they wanted to hear about themselves - and not the truth about themselves. And that's really what counts.

I do not know what happened to you that you became that snarky, but you really need to tone it down. The comment by @curiousdannii clearly is a sarcastic comment on how you can get the career part out of university: only admit those who (can) have it all regardless and do not need the credentials of official education to be successful, ie. only the very rich and extremely smart. That's how it used to be.

@Phillip Klocking: If CuriosDannii is being snarky, then why is it wrong for me to be snarky back?

@phillip Klocking: I'm not actually looking for snarky comments - I'm looking for an answer that actually addresses the issues that I'm raising. It was an honest question. And thinking that we are to return to a 17th century model of education just doesn't cut it with me.

I'm talking about the general conduct, not singular comments. And as much as you'd like to have the questioned answered, you know very well that it's on you to demonstrate and define the philosophical scope here.

@phillip Klocking: In what way have I not mentioned the 'philosophical scope' here? The neo-liberalisation of education is a well-known issue to not require a massive disquisition going through its ins and outs. This is why I quoted Ilan Pappe's comment.

@Phillip Klocking: I know that this is supposed to be a Q&A site but what it reminds me most of all is twitter, with all the well-known problems of general conduct there.

@MoziburUllah: Wow, epic strawman - possibly the new Reductio ad Hitlerum. You are talking about turn the clock back to a 'historic mission', CuriousDanii was responding sarcastically about what you should recognise are obvious problems with that. If you keep higher education to the elite, the average quality will be higher. But at what cost? Maybe clarify the terms of your question, and make a case what you think the 'historic mission' was, with evidence.

@craiglcraigl: What strawman? I'm talking about recognising education in its essential meaning, and to which Ilan Pappe is referring to, and not as the 'site for careers'. Which is exactly how business would like us to think of education. If you look at the world through the eyes of a business-man, then everything looks like a business opportunity.

You are painting a romanticized picture of how universities should educate. They almost never did it that way, especially historically, where the core was cultural reproduction, ie. in-depth knowledge of as much classical literature as possible. Humanities and esp. philosophy is as close as it gets to the kind of education he speaks of these days. I think it would be better to leave that out and focus on a reference request regarding the academic teaching ever more conforming to industrial/capitalistic structures and needs instead of emancipation and building a counterweight.

I wasn't being snarky! When universities weren't educating for careers it was because they were educating only the upper class, so if you want to stop them educating people for careers I can't think of any way to do that other than returning to how it used to be.

Other comments have alluded to this... I completed my bs in 1970 (CCNY in NYC), with about 60 of 128 credits in my major physics, and math. The other half were all required humanities courses -- english, literature, history, foreign languages, music, art, etc (no philosophy requirement). You couldn't get a degree without all the requirements, period. That was while the US was enjoying its post-WWII boom; anyone with a reasonable education could get a better-than-reasonable job without looking too hard. But the world's way more competitive now. And survival's a necessity. Education follows suit