Higher education is leading us astray

Taking off on Voltaire's comment on the Holy Roman Empire, I wrote in an opinion piece, which was published a while ago, that there was no"higher" nor "education" in contemporary higher education.

Especially, once we muddied the waters by misrepresenting education as the ticket to jobs, instead of education simply as a pursuit of knowledge with jobs as a wonderful byproduct, well, we have quickly slid down to an incorrect belief that everybody needs to go to college and, worse, that those who choose the trades over college are somehow inferior humans.

With the net result that we are wasting precious time and money, and the ones who will be really screwed by this are the students themselves, who have to pay for the mistakes--individually and as a society.

College is not necessary for most people. It never was. In fact, the preoccupation with college has left America bereft of its former ability to create wealth.
An unhealthy cultural myth has flourished that says everyone must go to college and get an advanced degree, even if it’s something for which there is virtually zero market demand. Meanwhile, below-market interest rates and government-backed loans have lured a couple generations of Americans down the road to higher education.
Further, the kind of education colleges provide — indeed, all of American schooling from kindergarten onward — doesn’t produce innovators, entrepreneurs and job creators.

Oh well ...

If you worried that the excerpt was from a Wall-Street-type guy, how about the following from an academic:

I believe one now has to wonder if going to college is a sensible decision. Such a suggestion would have been unthinkable as recently as five years ago, perhaps, but the combination of two factors—soaring tuition costs and what seems to be a permanently stagnant economy (or at the very least, yet another jobless recovery from a recession), have made me seriously consider whether going to college is now a good choice.
...
So here’s my somewhat obvious question: Is it worthwhile for high-school graduates to go to college right now? My provisional answer, and I’d really like to be persuaded otherwise is “no.” The Republican Party and President Obama are clearly, as we’ve learned in the last weeks, at loggerheads over student-loan reform, so it’s unlikely to happen. Obama argues that students are being crushed by education-related debt; Republicans argue that tightening student-loan regulations and making it easier (and ultimately less punitive) for students to borrow will only serve as an incentive for colleges to increase tuition even more. Both positions are supportable, but as for high-school graduates right now, I think college is a bad bet. The exceptions:  highly practical occupation-related fields and quick and cheap two-year credentials, or, of course, independently wealthy parents or some other guaranteed lifetime-income stream. Otherwise, to start your life with a massive amount of debt (on which one cannot default) and a good chance that you won’t find a full-time job, let alone a secure one with career potential, just doesn’t make sense.

At the end of the day, higher education merely comes across as a giant money-sucking industry--never satisfied with any amount of money spent on it.  After all, the Taj Mahal costs money, right? :(