Recently I wrote (again) of the terrible decline of academics in academia. This is becoming a pet subject of mine because of my tenuous ties to higher education and, more importantly, because education is critical in the quest for personal freedom. There’s a reason why they didn’t want slaves knowing how to read.

Here are some links, one based on the other, providing more evidence of the decline. They are derived from studies and experiences in Canada. I suspect American students are even worse off.

No offense, USC sweeties. Google.

Charles Hugh Smith takes a look at the insane and unrewarded growth in the costs of higher education. U.S. student debt has ballooned by $1 Trillion in the past decade – with nothing to show for the expense. Students emerge from the schools burdened with debt, knowing nothing, unprepared for employment in jobs that don’t exist.

Smith cites to an article by Ron Srigley, a professor at Prince Edward Island University in Canada. Srigley gives an insiders account of what education should be, what it used to be and what it has become. He explains the lack of reading, comprehension, and motivation on the part of students, grade inflation, the lack of substantive curriculum, administrative tyranny, and gradual loss of scholarly faculty.

Great works—of science, art, literature, philosophy, and history—are the giants on whose shoulders we stand in our efforts to become giants ourselves. The fact that such works may now plausibly be replaced by narcissistic and transparently self-promoting twaddle, or indeed by nothing at all, is a sign of the nihilism of the modern academy. This is the classroom in which our sons or daughters (or you) very likely sit each day…

• Srigley.

Great works inspire great work and through great effort produce great minds. Today pandering and mediocre works produce nothing aside from years of debt repayment.

Smith wrote a book, The Nearly Free University, which outlines a better, modern alternative to the expensive, dreary and pointless university system. With technology and determination a student today can still receive a real liberal education, minus the costs and nonsense which accompany the “traditional” school experience. Please share this information with anyone you know in higher education, especially if he happens to be a university bound student. In addition to the mind, money and time are terrible things to waste too.