>Brad De Long said:
>
> >
> >The point about explicit tuition fees is an
> interesting one I think. You
> >could
> >argue that one problematic feature of fees would
> be to tie students into the
> >idea that education, is merely another commodity
> for which they are a
> >passive
> >consumer, thus degrading it.
> >
> >A bigger problem than fees however (students
> have been paying fees in one
> >way or
> >another for some time, either as official
> student loans, or before that,
> >overdrafts),
> >is the official degradation of higher education.
> It is now not seen to be
> >worth anything
> >more than a chance of some sort of job, and is
> no longer seen to have a
> >value of
> >its own in creating a more educated independant
> thinking individual.
> >
> >cheers,
> >Paul
>
> A still bigger problem with the lack of explicit
> tuition fees is that
> those who attend institutions of higher education
> have high lifetime
> wealth relative to the rest of their society.
> Truck drivers' taxes
> should not be going to pay for the training--or even the
> enlightenment--of future lawyers...
>
>
> Brad DeLong
>
Actually I think truck drivers should contribute to universities and higher education, very much so, whether they personally attend or not. Universities, are not (in my opionion) meant to be places where people improve their job prospects, but where society educates itself, and generates new knowledge, by questioning existing knowledge.
They have a higher remit, I think, than just the training of people to fill jobs, there is the potential there to lift the whole of society. The loss of their academic freedom in order to produce supposedly trained individuals required by industry is a terrible shame.
Is it not possible for truck drivers to appreciate knowledge generated in a univerisity? Why is assumed that ordinary people could never value or understand this - isn't this a rather dim view of truck drivers?
cheers, Paul