Given the glut of PhDs on the job market and the decreasing value of a college degree, I'd say you a right. And as Doug said in his book, in the future there will be way more truck-driver jobs than programmer jobs.
> It needs a more
> disciplined and subservient populace.
No it doesn't. Or not only that. It needs employees who are self-motivators and incite themselves to be caring, enthusiastic employees while performing their work, but placid in their relations with employers.
By linking these two in this way, it seems like you are equating lower education with greater discipline. But there's no necessary relation there. In fact, today I'd say that higher education produces just the sort of self-starters neoliberalism needs. I'm reminded of this every time I go to Barnes and Noble, where the master's-holding clerks inquire about my grandmother, just the sort of personal treatment a consumer economy needs. Meanwhile, at Wal-Mart the beautifully surly GED-holding clerk could give a shit about my grandma.
> It is always worthwhile at least _to consider_ that the apparently
> unintended consequences of a policy are in fact its intended effects.
Why? This only seems worthwhile if you are trying to discover the "true" ideology of the bourgeois, which is too overdetermined and complicated to ever gainsay with any clarity. Besides the fact that intended consequences are irrelevant because they exclude any moment of resistance. All that matters is consequences; let the historians quibble over intent.