Perhaps university isn't the best place to educate everyone. But lets not be so cynical as to suggest the problem with our universities is that too many people are going to them. That's insulting and degrading to all young people.

Sure, if you give millions of pounds of funding to a class teaching 2 people, it will produce good results.

We are a developed economy, and as such, ought to be continually better educating people. What's wrong with that aspiration? It's certainly much more helpful and useful than John Smith's assertion that large swathes of the younger generation are only fit to be serving him burgers for an American chain outlet.

Of course, if he were better educated he might have a little more respect for the things he doesn't know, and the realisation that actually, that future Burger King employee still knows plenty of things that he doesn't, wherever they were educated.

Indeed, the wisest people know, that there's still plenty for them to learn, whatever age they are.

You obviously did not do your homework. The major problem lies with defaults lies with private for profit "universities." The problem behind the problem is that too many professions that used to require a 6th-grade education 100 years ago, now require a university degree. Why do you need a degree to sell life insurance, to work in a bank, to manage a restaurant or a store, etc. Most business pursuits only require remedial 6th grade arithmetic plus the knowledge of PRT. And now, computers already do the math for the employees. About 90% of US universities could be shut down and never be missed. But students do learn critical thinking, something which lowers the Republican (or Re-Pukes, as we call them) vote count

Jeeze, it's simply ages since we've come across the IQ word in the NS. IQ = Idiot Quotient. OK, by implication and we cotton on - it's the economy, stoopid.
However, can you blame the youngsters? Since the early part of the 20th century the entire US populace has been the dupe of the graphic artist and bubble dialogue.
In the austere forties and early fifties, the Labour government had the insight to ban these fairy tales about Super Heros. No dames? Suspicious! But, no sooner had that great wordsmith and phrase-maker, Winnie been elected, than the Tories rescinded the ban and we were deluged with pulp fiction. Wait - this was before commercial television.
Movies, television, cable and the internet have merely augmented this visual recreation.
Most films now have their origins in the world of puerile pulp.
And as for electronic games.
Just look at NASA. Intellectual property imported from abroad at an increasing rate since the Space Race was up and running. ' You haf relatives living in Ghermany?' And Silicon Valley - electronic coolies in abundance. Asia comatose!
Look, Homer Simpson once said ' DOH' And what was it that straight-arrow Mitt misspoke. "S****'.

OLYMPIC MAN

Repeat after me until you have grasped it: the reason for the financial crisis in the UK tertiary ed system IS THAT THERE ARE FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE GOING INTO TERTIARY EDUCATION. The idea that 40-50% of 18 yr olds are capable of beneffitting from a college education is simply risible: it is not just a massive scandalous waste of resources and a ludicrous piece of utopianism: it is also a piece of downright cruelty to all these kids who are being conned by their lecturers into believing that they are uni material when they aint. There simply are not that many clever people in the world. 15% is probably the max who ought to be in 3rd level ed. The massive expansion over the last 20 yrs has largely been a YTS scheme designed to disguise the true rate of yoof unemployment and unemployability