Comment by cutler

Despite the author's 40 years in education he still doesn't get it. Education is an end in itself not a job qualification. You can only grok this if you have lived in a country in which higher education is/was fully funded by the state. As soon as it becomes a cost/benefit exercise the original ideal behind education is lost and subjects such as Philosophy, Literature and History appear to be a waste of time and money. Ironically, when higher education in the UK was fully-funded by the state the resulting degrees, regardless of the subject(s) studied, were far more valuable in the job market than the more vocational degrees which today saddle students with £50k of debt. A society which doesn't value education as an investment is a society in decline. The same can also be said about a nation's health service.