Universities should be more than toll gates

In contrast to many comments, I had a great time studying. Sure, the staff didn't have great teaching skills (classical prof with an unruly hairdo reading from the syllabus in a large hall), but after the first year, classes became smaller and teaching was --while not passionate-- certainly inspired in many cases. It was a period in which students could still pick an academic topic and write a (small) thesis for graduation, or do some internship and write a report about that. I had a supervisor who was into some of the newer stuff and gave me practically free reign with regular feedback.

That was in 80s. I stuck around, changed faculty (AI, cogsci, neuro), and saw university change. It became very financially oriented. The number of students kept rising, norms kept dropping (2nd year student asking: what does this symbol √ mean?), students participating in real research became rarer and rarer, even PhDs shifted towards more and more teaching, and 20 years later, the most influential member of a university's board was the one doing real estate, and an academic career was based on the amount of funding obtained.

> It became very financially oriented.

> The number of students kept rising, norms kept dropping

All due to the student loans scam.

https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-first-myth...

https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-second-myt...

https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/myth-3-college...

https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-last-myth....

In the US perhaps, but it happened in Western Europe too, even where there weren't student loans. Simplistic explanation: the right wing parties were in favor of "austerity" measures, i.e. budget cuts, and the left-wing ones of getting as many people through college as possible. Unfortunately, both got what they wished for.

On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people, cheaper (because let's be honest, a "left-wing" party in Europe that conquer power in Europe is at most a "third way"-type party, sometime with a green tint), and are all equally at fault for the situation.

The meaningfull difference between right-wing and left-wing parties is how the University should be organized, with right-wing party pushing for centralized, more powerful unis that can reach international "power rankings", and left-wing parties usually push for a decentralization (that's how you get university branches in small towns usually). Also most right-wing/third way parties seems to want the admin staff to have power over the education staff, that there's that shift too (the exact same stuff is happening in hospitals).