Form: Mini Essay

UNIVERSITY: A VERY DIFFERENT HYPOTHESIS THAT IS FAR MORE LIKELY OUTCOME

I would say that the American model of undergrad > grad > phd > prof is no longer any more necessary than are elected representative politicians and is probably on its way to being dead, and with it the upper unversity system. And just for the simple reason that access to information, to books, to research, to intellectuals, no longer requires the university system, and we are in the early stages of circumventing the university system, and drastically reducing demand for professors.

What I expect is that the top teaching professors will produce content and teach online, earning appropriately scaled incomes, and that this early market will turn into a competition that drives down prices until those that are the best TEACHERS of the material drive out competitors.

I suspect that just as private grade schools will exist for normative and physical defense of high investment children, or for remediation of those with behavior problems, the vast majority of students will combine working with a degree over longer periods, producing little or no debt, with the emphasis on starting the ‘degree’ process earlier and earlier – which will, as a consequence cause the necessary reformation of the junior high school, and high school experiences, which, along with the university undergraduate experience are the source of the lack of competitiveness of American students.

If it isn’t clear what that market analysis means, it’s that universities have created a demand for an overpriced underperforming good the externality of which has allowed the monopoly that exists in the form of the state-education system, to be insulated from market demands, and to produce generations of underperformers. The consequence of which has been national underperformance, increase in the demand for better disciplined, harder working, better educated immigrants.

The research function then will no longer be able to subsidize from the sale of non-performing indulgences, and be increasingly dependent upon research money. That research money will be provided outside of the university system, to groups that specialize in research.

And I suspect (and hope) this will eliminate the Cult of the Humanities, and the Social Pseudo-Sciences that has succeeded in replacing the Supernaturalism of the relatively moral church punished for its sale of indulgences during the reformation, with the drastically immoral Pseudo-Science that the postmodern academy is so happy to attempt to profit from – repeating the process of reformation once again.

The evidence is that very, very, few people who publish contribute to the discourse, and that the vast majority of ‘papers’ are valueless. And that the era of papers has largely ended, because only the book format allows sufficient illustration, application, and defense of any addition to the body of thought.

The evidence is that the german PhD system which requires you survive prosecution by professors (judges) in a ‘trial’ is superior to the american system.

The university’s sale of the diploma as an indulgence necessary to enter workforce-heaven will end as soon as accreditation is available online. And the second largest cost after house, and divorce, that we call ‘buying a college degree’ will be forever eliminated from our cost structures, and the original function of ‘colleges’ which was to pay professors independently for their work will return.

In other words, the accreditation (licensing) process creates an artificial monopoly that is easily ended by electronic means. And with it, the social indoctrination that is the primary function of the university.

So I’m not claiming that the university system aside from the science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and law disciplines, is simply immoral and pseudoscientific – but that it cannot and will not survive market competition now that their partial monopoly is no longer necessary nor affordable. And that as always, the market will do its work on the University as it did to the Church.

Now, we can test this hypothesis easily if we require universities to carry the debt of students, and for that debt to be limited to ten years deducted as an equivalent of a payroll tax. If the universities are unwilling to do that it means that they are unwilling to warranty their products and services.

I will close with the fact that the most likely alternative solution to the physical sciences and the most likely solution to the social sciences, and by consequence the most likely solution to moral and conscious artificial intelligence, have been produced outside of the university system by those of us unwilling to forgo years of our productive lives and serve as labor to the specialization and paradigm anchoring of the postwar university system.

Markets always win.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine