The most damning testimony against higher education today may be that students have not rebelled; they are evidently incapable of it. Two things prevent such rebellion. One is the inability of high school graduates to take their own education in hand. We do not teach them to become self-learners. I am constantly amazed at the number of adults that, if they are to learn anything new, they must "take a class".
The second obstacle, pointed out in [Albert] Borgman's analysis, is the fact that, for extraneous social reasons, we insist on the academic degree. It is one of the revealing facts about the Information Age that it is the supreme Age of Credentials. Not just credentials as such (about which I have no complaint), but wooden credentials - degrees, certificates, diplomas, and licenses based solely on "measurable outcomes," such as credit hours and standardized test grades, with scarcely any reference whatever to the inner accomplishment and capability of the certificate bearer.
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